MALI: Children Feel The Weight of Violence in Mali

By an IPS Correspondent Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2013 (IPS) - Watchlist, a network of international non-governmental organisations, released a new report Wednesday detailing violations against children by armed groups in Mali, where a conflict that erupted in January 2012 is taking a heavy toll on young people.

In his annual report on children and armed conflict released last month, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon listed Mali as having child soldiers, the first time the West African nation of 15 million has appeared on this list of shame.

Three armed groups in Mali—the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Ansar Dine, and Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO)—currently stand accused of using children as soldiers, killing and maiming children during times of war, and rape and sexual abuse.

The new report, entitled ‘Where are they?’ reflects the lack of clarity about how many children are suffering as a result of armed conflict in the country.

Due to inadequate funding, data and monitoring, the international community has only rough estimates for the number of afflicted children, largely from field-based interviews with affected community members.

Watchlist and other human rights organisations estimate that armed groups have recruited hundreds of boys.

“The groups capitalised on the desperation of both the boys and the families, they offered large sums of money to impoverished families, they offered free education at a time when schools were closed, and they took advantage of children who don’t have parental care,” Watchlist Research and Reports Officer Layal Sarrouh said at a U.N. press conference Wednesday.

The MNLA, Ansar Dine, MUJAO and also Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have all been implicated in the rape of young girls. The first three groups are also accused of forcibly marrying girls, seizing them from their homes against the wishes of families and religious leaders in the community.

Conflict has seriously disrupted education in Mali. Though the country achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for education in 2009, there are now 200,000 children without access to education in the north, where armed groups have pillaged and destroyed many schools.

Funding remains low, according to Sarrouh. In 2012, the education sector in Mali received just 6.4 percent of the funding it needed, while child protection services received only 15 percent.

With a U.N. Security Council-approved peacekeeping force, MINUSMA, scheduled to arrive in the country by early July, Watchlist stressed that peacekeepers should also ensure child protection.

Although MINUSMA’s mandate addresses demobilisation and rehabilitation programmes for children, the peacekeeping force is not expected to conduct rescue missions by directly engaging with armed groups thought to be using child soldiers, Sarrouh told IPS.

Ioannis Vrailas, deputy dead of the European Union delegation to the U.N., is hopeful that the peacekeepers will be able to foster national reconciliation.