Former child soldiers enlisted by Al Shabaab are handed over to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) after their capture by forces of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Credit: UN Photo/Tobin Jones

By Beatriz Ciordia
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 14 2015 (IPS)

Whether in Palestine, Ukraine or Somalia, wars result in millions of children threatened by the brutality of armed conflict.

The numbers speak for themselves: more than 300,000 child soldiers are currently exploited in situations of armed conflict and six million children have been severely injured or permanently disabled, according to UNICEF.The past year was one of the worst ever for children affected by armed conflict due the alarming rise in abductions, especially mass abductions, of children and adults in Nigeria, Iraq, Syria and South Sudan.

Likewise, an estimated 20 million children are living as refugees in neighbouring countries or are internally displaced within their own national borders as a result of conflict and human rights violations.

And the U.N. Secretary General’s most recent report, published on June 5, shows that in too many countries, the situation for children is getting worse, not better.

“There is still room at the individual agency level to strengthen safeguards towards prevention of child rights violations,” Dragica Mikavica, advocacy officer of Watchlist, a network of international non-governmental organisations, told IPS.

“For instance, more recently, Watchlist has been lobbying for the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to develop a policy that would ban states placed on the Secretary-General’s ‘list of shame’ from contributing troops to peacekeeping forces in other countries,” she added.

Jo Becker, Children’s Rights Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch, agrees that the U.N. could better protect children from armed conflict in several ways.

“When governments or armed groups refuse to agree to such steps and continue abuses, the Security Council could be much more aggressive in imposing targeted sanctions, such as arms embargoes, or travel bans and asset freezes on the leaders of such groups,” she told IPS.

“The SC should also refer such cases to the International Criminal Court for investigation and possible prosecution,” she added.

The past year was one of the worst ever for children affected by armed conflict due the alarming rise in abductions, especially mass abductions, of children and adults in Nigeria, Iraq, Syria and South Sudan.

In addition to kidnappings, thousands of children were killed last year in different parts of the world.

In Iraq, for example, 2014 was the deadliest year for children since the U.N. first started systematically documenting violations against children in 2008, with nearly 700 children killed and almost 1,300 abducted – and these are only the recorded cases.

Likewise, in Palestine, the number of children killed by Israeli forces jumped to 557, more than the number killed in the last two military operations there combined.

In order to step up the fight against this violence, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted on June 18 Resolution 2225, which strengthens the international community’s mobilisation in support of children in armed conflict and condemns their abduction.

The resolution, tabled by Malaysia and sponsored by 56 member states, added abductions as the fifth violation that can trigger a listing of a party to the conflict to the Secretary-General’s “list of shame”.

This list facilitates greater monitoring of abductions and ensures that parties which engage in this particular crime are included on it. Once listed, the U.N. is able to engage the listed parties in negotiating action plans to stop this and other violations from occurring.

The vast majority of these abductions are carried out by non-state groups, including terrorist organisations such as Boko Haram and ISIS, which see mass kidnapping as a shining symbol of success.

Raising the profile of the abduction of children at the highest level – such as in form of a Security Council resolution – also endows child protection actors with greater capacity to advocate for response surrounding this egregious violation.

However, as UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Yoka Brandt argues, abduction is often only the first in a series of grave violations, followed by sexual assault and rape, indoctrination, recruitment as child soldiers and murder.

“Each offence blights that child. It robs her of her childhood and threatens her ability to live a full and productive life,” she said in an open debate on Children and Armed Conflict at the Security Council on June 18.

Brandt also stressed the importance of providing critical support to children after their release so they can resume “normal life”.

“These children are victims and must be treated as such. They’re inevitably burdened by physical wounds and psychological scars,” she said.

Raising awareness remains a critical point in the battle against the brutality suffered by children in situations of armed conflict.

Social media has proven a valuable tool for raising the public profile of the atrocities committed against children, especially mass abductions in contexts like Nigeria, Syria and Iraq.

“Social media contributed to internal U.N. debates around abductions of children, as the world could not turn a blind eye on what was happening to children last year,” Mikavica told IPS.

“All of this resulted in concrete actions by the Council at the last Open Debate as seen through trigger expansion,” she added.

However, as Becker told IPS, it’s important to keep in mind that although social media has been exceptionally effective in raising awareness of mass abductions of children by Boko Haram and other armed groups, it’s just a tool, not a substitute for action, which remains the real challenge for the U.N. and other international organisations.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

On the eve of negotiations on the political declaration for the United Nations Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the Women’s Major Group (WMG) calls on governments to define a transformative agenda to ensure just, sustainable and rights-based development.

The goal of the event “No Sustainable Development Without Equality”, held on Tuesday, was to launch 10 Red Flags reflecting concern about gender equality and human rights and highlighting the areas that need to be strengthened to achieve a truly transformative agenda.

“Gender equality and human rights are cross-cutting priorities but they have never received enough recognition,” said Eleanor Blomstrom, WMG Organising Partner and Program Director of Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

“If we want the Post-2015 Development Agenda to be successful, these issues must be fully recognised as critical priorities,” she added.

Women and girls comprise the majority of people living in poverty, experience persistent and multidimensional inequalities, and bear a disproportionate burden of the impacts of financial and environmental crisis, natural disasters and climate change.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), girls account for the majority of children not attending school; almost two-thirds of women in the developing world work in the informal sector or as unpaid workers in the home. Despite greater parliamentary participation, women are still out numbered four-to-one in legislatures around the world.

Gender equality and the full realisation of the human rights of girls and women of all ages are cross-cutting issues themselves but they’re also essential for poverty eradication and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Nurgul Djanaeva, WMG Organizing Partner and President of the Forum of Women’s NGOs of Kyrgyzstan, stressed the importance of keeping the private and public sector accountable, especially on gender equality, in order to achieve gender equality and sustainable development.

“There must be regional, national and global reviews and constant data collection and analysis. Likewise, all the results need to be measured,” she said.

“Transparent and inclusive processes, as well as effective monitoring and evaluative mechanisms, are a must here. A lack of accountability tools is considered as a violation of human rights”, she added.

Speakers at the event also put special emphasis on the key role played by feminist organisations at both the grassroots and international levels, as well as the urgent need for international cooperation and public-private partnerships to achieve gender equality and therefore sustainable development.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

“Civil service excellence can only be achieved if countries have access to an international forum where they can exchange innovative approaches and initiatives,” Patrick Keuleers, Director of the Governance and Peacebuilding Team of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said Friday.

The event, “International cooperation on civil service excellence: A bridge to achieving sustainable development goals”, was co-organised by the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

“There must be a senior level global exchange of knowledge and expertise not just following the traditional North-South schema, but also on South-South and triangular basis,” said Stephen Tull, U.N. Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Building strong public services, especially in developing countries, is more important than ever. As Tull stated, effective and responsive administrations are, according to the U.N., a key element to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to implement the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Speakers at the conference put special emphasis on the 16th SDG, which promotes peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, aims to provide access to justice for all and builds effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations, also said that civil service excellence cannot be achieved without a change in the structure of international governments and organisations.

“A long-term vision of reforms require a new generation of political leaders and policymakers,” he said.

Speakers also stressed the importance of institutionalising dialogue as a way to ensure political engagement and commitment to build new organisations and institutions.

Empowering dialogue would also encourage citizens to participate in the process of decision-making and facilitate the collection and dissemination of data.

Rolf Alter, Director of Governance and Territorial Governance of the OECD, explained that achieving civil service excellence also means creating inclusive administrations in terms of gender and ethnic backgrounds.

“Diversity, inclusiveness and equity are fundamental pillars here. High quality and inclusive public services do not have to be contradictory realities because they all converge in the same idea: achieving sustainable development,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The sharp contrast between the poorer communities’ shanties and the skyline of the Makati City financial district underscores the huge income gap between the haves and have-nots. The Philippines’ income disparity is one of the biggest in South-east Asia. Credit: IPS

By Beatriz Ciordia
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

With cities increasingly in the spotlight on the international stage, urban planning and development has become a critical issue in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While slums continue to grow in most developing countries, reinforcing other forms of inequality, urban planning requires a shift from viewing urbanisation mainly as a problem to seeing it as a powerful tool for development, according to the 2015 UN-Habitat Global Activities Report.“The U.N. is fundamentally challenged with its construct of one country, one vote, when most of the implementation of sustainable development will fall to the world's 200 or so largest cities." -- Daniel Hoornweg

Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson says cities have the potential to shape the future of humankind and to win the battle for sustainable development.

“Cities are at the forefront of the global battle against climate change,” he said last week at the Mayor’s Forum of the World Cities Summit in New York.

“The way in which cities are planned, run and managed is crucial. The leadership role of mayors and city governments is therefore of fundamental importance,” he added.

In the last two decades, cities and urban centres have become the dominant habitats for humankind and the engine-rooms of human development as a whole. For the first time in history in 2008, the urban population outnumbered the rural population, marking the beginning of a new “urban millennium”.

Today, more than half of humanity lives in cities. By 2050, around 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas, according to the report.

Poverty, which remains the greatest global challenge facing the world today, is increasingly concentrated in urban areas.

As Eliasson highlighted, close to one billion of the world’s urban dwellers still live in dire, even life-threatening, slum conditions – and this figure is projected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2030. Some 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to improved sanitation, not least in urban areas.

Daniel Hoornweg, a former World Bank specialist on cities and climate change, says that the lion’s share of implementation will fall to cities regardless of what countries agree in terms of the SDGs.

“National governments, when negotiating, need to fully reflect local government capacities as the ‘doing arm of government’. This is less about urban planning than it is about empowerment and assistance to local governments,” he told IPS.

As stated in the 2014 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, urbanisation is integrally connected to the three pillars of sustainable development: economic development, social development and environmental protection.

However, international governments and organisations have not respected this triumvirate, going against the 11^th SDG, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

“Urban planning is still too focused on economic efficiency and growth, leaving aside the goal of upgrading sustainable lifestyles,” Leida Rijnhout, director of Global Policies and Sustainability of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), told IPS.

“Facilitating a well-functioning and affordable public transport system can be more important than building highways for an increasing number of private cars. Also, preserving local shops (SMEs) and not ‘killing them’ by building big shopping malls is another example of urban sustainability that provides social cohesion,” she added.

The equation is clear: if well managed, cities offer a unique opportunity for economic development and growth, but at the same time, they can expand the access to basic services, including health care and education, for millions of people.

In other words: providing universal access to electricity, water, sanitation, housing and public transportation for a densely settled urban population promotes economically, socially and environmentally sustainable societies.

However, this goal can only be achieved if U.N. member states and U.N. agencies come together to promote sustainable urbanisation and if there’s a connection between the power dynamics of local governments and national governments.

“The U.N. is fundamentally challenged with its construct of one country, one vote, when most of the implementation of sustainable development will fall to the world’s 200 or so largest cities,” Hoornweg told IPS.

According to Hoornweg, the U.N. needs to be reformed in order to get a fair representation of large cities on the international stage – “Countries like Fiji and Vanuatu cannot have more influence than Shanghai and Sao Paulo.”

He says an alternative approach could be establishing a “pragmatism council” of the world’s largest cities –say those that are expected to have five million or more residents by 2050 (around 120 cities).

“Having this council negotiate things like SDGs would not yield binding accords but they would yield a very powerful ‘shadow accord’ that no country could easily ignore,” he told IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp