UN-CHILDREN: Special Representative to Protect Children

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations has appointed a Special Representative to protect the rights and interests of a highly exploited and vulnerable segment of society in military situations – children .

Secretary-General Kofi Annan Tuesday named Olara Otunnu, a former Ugandan ambassador to the United Nations, as his Special Representative to study the impact of armed conflict on children. He has a mandate to ensure the safety, security and well-being of children caught up in warfare in various parts of the world.

Otunnu, who currently heads the New York-based International Peace Academy, will coordinate with four U.N. bodies, namely the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The Special Representative will seek assurances from warring parties to provide the highest priority for children in armed conflicts – with special concern for their human rights. He will also draw the attention of member states to the vulnerability of refugees and internally displaced children to recruitment to armed forces, as well as to sexual violence, exploitation and abuse.

Last year the 185-member General Assembly, which adopted a resolution creating the new post, urged member states to criminalise commercial and other forms of sexual exploitation of children and to support effective national, bilateral and multilateral measures to eradicate such practices.

The Assembly also called for legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from economic exploitation and for action to address the problem of street children and child prostitution.

The only reservation came from the United States which questioned the need for such an appoinment. Prezel Robinson of the U.S. delegation said it was doubtful that adding another Special Representative to the U.N. system was the best way to produce real change.

“It would be preferable to have this issue handled through existing entities,” he said. But the resolution creating the new post was adopted over U.S. reservations.

The proposal for the appointment of a Special Representative was originally made by Graca Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique, who completed an exhaustive global study of the exploitation of children in the world’s battle zones. She decried the abuse of children as soldiers, prostitutes and slave labourers.

Asked why there should be a new layer of bureaucracy when there is an entire U.N. body dealing with children, Machel said, “that’s exactly the problem, because people believe that children are UNICEF’s problem, and I am saying no, this is a global problem and I proposed a Special Representative because this is a global issue.”

The appointed official should have the authority to interact with all agencies dealing with children, refugees and human rights, including the Security Council because “we want to bring the issue of children to the top of the political agenda, not keep it just as a specialised issue,” she said.

One of the key recommendations of her report was that the age of military recruitment should be raised to 18 and children below that age, now serving in any armed force, should immediately be demobilised.

“By the year 2000, there should be strong public opinion against using children as soldiers, rape as a weapon of war and the use of landmines,” Machel added. She also urged the Security Council to emphasise the protection of children when it adopted mandates for peacekeeping operations.

Machel said that in today’s conflicts, more than 90 percent of war casualties were civilians, and half of those children. “Adults were able to talke about their victimisation, but one rarely heard from the children.”

She recounted the story of a nine-year-old girl from Sierra Leone who had been raped by soldiers, and a remorseful 15-year-old boy soldier who had lost his childhood. She had also heard a Cambodian mother tell of seeing her children blown to pieces by landmines in the family fields just when she believed they had made it home safely after the war.

Asked why increasing numbers of children were becoming soldiers, Machel said military commanders had told her that children were impressionable and easy to dominate.

“They were good soldiers because they obeyed orders without challenge. Moreover, when they lost their parents and communities, they often joined the armed forces for food and safety,” she added.

Although the primary focus of the Special Representative would be on problems relating to children involved in armed conflicts, the mandate would also include the sexual exploitation of children.