Vivian van de Perre, Deputy Special Representative for Protection and Operations in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and Interim Head of MONUSCO, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2026 (IPS)

In the month following the reopening of the Burundi-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border, the humanitarian crisis in the DRC has deteriorated considerably, recently marked by an influx of Congolese refugees returning home, where they face overcrowded conditions and a severe shortage of essential services. This comes in the midst of escalating clashes between rebel groups AFC and M23, and forces affiliated with the Kinshasa government, with drone strikes causing widespread destruction and pushing violence closer to Burundi’s borders, where conditions are most dire.

Vivian van de Perre, Deputy Special Representative for Protection and Operations with the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), described the current humanitarian situation as “extremely volatile”. During a press stakeout on March 26, she highlighted that the rapid spread of the conflict from North and South Kivu into Tshopo Province and toward Burundi’s borders is a major concern, warning that it increases the risk of a broader “regional conflagration.”

Van de Perre also warned that armed militants have been increasingly relying on the use of heavy weapons and drone strikes in densely populated urban areas, which have caused great damage to civilian infrastructure as well as serious risks to civilian safety, underscoring recent violent incidents at the Kisagani Bangoka International Airport and in Goma, the largest city in North Kivu. Additionally, she warned of M23’s growing presence in Goma, where the coalition has managed to gain influence, undermine state authority, and disrupt humanitarian aid deliveries.

Furthermore, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC (UNJHRO) has uncovered a considerable rise in human rights violations committed by armed groups. Since December 2025, approximately 173 cases of conflict-related sexual violence have been documented, affecting at least 111 victims, the majority of whom were women and girls.

Van de Perre described these findings as “only the tip of the iceberg,” and highlighted growing rates of exploitation, particularly along artisanal mining sites, where child labour is especially pronounced. Armed groups have also been alleged to hamper monitoring, investigation, and justice mechanisms, and subject human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society actors to intimidation and arbitrary detention.

This follows a sharp escalation of hostilities between the armed groups in December 2025, which forced hundreds of thousands of Congolese to flee to Burundi, most coming from Uvira in South Kivu Province and the surrounding areas. Figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) show that after M23’s withdrawal from Uvira in January and a relative return of stability, more than 33,000 refugees began returning home since the border’s reopening on February 23, with most crossing through the Kavimira border point. Many of these returnees already received little humanitarian assistance in Burundi due to chronic underfunding.

“Conditions in many areas of return in the DRC remain fragile, with acute humanitarian needs,” said Ali Mahamat, UNHCR Head of Sub-Office in Goma, DRC, on March 24 at a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. “Initial UNHCR assessments in Uvira and Fizi show families arriving with few belongings, in urgent need of shelter, basic household items, health care, and access to water and sanitation. Many returned to find their homes destroyed and belongings looted, leaving them in deep despair and unable to resume normal life without substantial support.”

According to the latest updates from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), roughly 60 percent of returnees are living in damaged shelters and over 30 percent face challenges accessing their land. Returnees face heightened risks of gender-based violence, forced recruitment into armed groups, extortion, and exploitation, with female-headed households disproportionately affected due to limited livelihood opportunities for women, which leave these communities entrenched in poverty and especially vulnerable.

Figures from UNHCR show that approximately 30 percent of returnees had been taking refuge in Burundi’s Busama displacement camp, where they faced significant levels of overcrowding and limited access to clean water, sanitation services, healthcare, and shelter. Currently, roughly 4,500 Congolese refugees remain stuck at transit points as they await being relocated to Busama. Additionally, Burundi continues to host over 109,000 Congolese refugees, with 67,000 of them in Busuma alone.

Additionally, internal displacement remains widespread in the DRC, with more than 6.4 million people currently displaced. IFRC estimates that over 5.2 million internally displaced Congolese are concentrated in North and South Kivu, as well as Ituri, 96 percent as a result of ongoing armed violence. According to van de Perre, over 26.6 million people, roughly a quarter of DRC’s population, are projected to face food insecurity this year.

Currently, UNHCR’s response plan to assist returnees, refugees, and displaced Congolese civilians is only 34 percent funded, seeking a total of USD 145 million. MONUSCO is currently on the frontlines providing protection services for nearly 3,000 civilians in Djaiba village. Through the mission, the UN has been able to support over 18,000 farmers in harvesting and transporting crops and has conducted 204 patrols. Van de Perre stressed that stronger governance and security enforcement are crucial in protecting vulnerable civilians, and disarmament and repatriation efforts must be conducted to resolve broader regional tensions.

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Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti and Head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 2026 (IPS)

As Haiti’s Transitional President Council (TPC) approaches its February 7 expiration date and the country remains without a newly elected president, humanitarian experts warn the nation risks further sliding into insecurity, raising fears of broader collapse.

The United Nations (UN) notes that escalating violence by entrenched armed coalitions, persisting impunity for human rights abuses, political instability, and mass civilian displacement are straining aid operations to their breaking point, leaving millions with dwindling access to essential services and pushing hopes for stability and national self-sufficiency further out of reach.

“Violence has intensified and expanded geographically, exacerbating food insecurity and instability, as transitional governance arrangements near expiry and overdue elections remain urgent,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in his latest report on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). “Gang violence affects communities nationwide, with particularly devastating consequences for women, children and youth, undermining the country’s social fabric over the long term.”

Currently, it is estimated that armed gangs now exert near-total control over approximately 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as large parts of the surrounding provinces, severely undermining government authority and humanitarian operations. Presidential elections have not been held in a decade, and ongoing political instability, coupled with the continual adaptive reshaping of gang networks, has made establishing security increasingly difficult.

Gangs continue to launch coordinated attacks, seize control of critical economic corridors and agricultural areas, and drive mass displacement—exhausting both law enforcement and humanitarian systems. In 2025, Haiti’s murder rate rose by roughly 20 percent compared with the previous year, with Guterres informing reporters that more than 8,100 killings were recorded across Haiti between January and November 2025.

Child trafficking and recruitment have surged, with children and youth now making up roughly 50 percent of all gang members. They are being forced into a range of roles and to participate in violent attacks. Sexual violence – particularly against women and girls- has also escalated sharply, leaving deep and lasting trauma for survivors with limited access to psychosocial support, while perpetrators face widespread impunity.

Approximately 6.4 million people—more than half of Haiti’s population—are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that a record 5.7 million people are currently facing acute hunger, which is expected to rise to 5.9 million by March without prompt intervention. This hunger crisis is largely driven by rampant insecurity across key transport routes and agricultural regions, which has severely disrupted crop production and movement to markets. Food prices remain extremely high and increasingly beyond reach for many households.

Civilians continue to live in overcrowded, unsanitary shelters marked by widespread malnutrition, disease outbreaks, limited access to clean water, and escalating insecurity, with women and children being disproportionately impacted. Additionally, internal displacement has reached record highs, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimating that roughly 1.4 million Haitians are internally displaced, including over 741,000 children.

At Jean Marie César School, now serving as a displacement site in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, UNICEF continues to provide psychosocial activities to help children cope with trauma. Credit: UNICEF/Herold Joseph

Humanitarian experts remain deeply concerned about the continued adaptive reorganizing and restructuring of gangs to bypass national security measures and expand their influence. John Brandolino, Acting Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has said that gangs have transformed into more structured criminal networks with defined leadership, territorial ambitions, and diversified streams of revenue.

The Viv Ansanm coalition has carried out large-scale attacks on police forces, prisons, and critical economic infrastructure, enabling gangs to tighten their grip over the capital and key corridors into Artibonite and Plateau Central. Extortion, as well as the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and ammunition, have become major sources of revenue, further entrenching gang control and undermining state authority.

Despite this, notable progress has been made in recent months through police operations supported by the UN Security Council-authorized Gang Suppression Force, which was deployed in October 2025. These efforts have yielded significant early results, including the reopening of key roads in parts of Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite Department, as well as the restoration of government presence around the capital’s Champ de Mars. These gains demonstrate that sustained, coordinated pressure on armed groups can weaken gang control and yield meaningful improvements in security.

However, Carlos Ruiz-Massieu, UN Special Representative and Head of BINUH, warned that these gains remain extremely fragile and it is imperative to address the root cause of insecurity—political instability. Haiti currently stands at a precarious crossroads as it nears the end of its TPC, with a newly issued electoral decree and calendar calling for the inauguration of an elected president by early 2027. Despite this, humanitarian experts and civilians have raised concerns on whether such elections are realistically feasible amid the country’s entrenched insecurity.

“Haiti has entered a critical juncture in its process of restoring democratic institutions,” Ruiz Massieu told the Security Council on January 21. “Let us be clear: the country has no time to lose to prolonged internal conflict,” he warned, emphasizing that it is imperative for national stakeholders to set aside differences and uphold their political responsibilities, and maintain momentum on security efforts.

The following day during a press briefing, Ruiz-Massieu emphasized to reporters in New York that improving security conditions is essential for Haitians to have freedom of movement and the ability to participate in society, which paves the way for eventual, credible elections. He stressed that Haiti’s recovery will depend on close cooperation between national authorities and the international community.

“What we need is an authority that can work with the international community and manage the public forces in a way that can really increase security in different areas,” said Ruiz-Massieu. “How you measure success is by improving security in certain areas of Port-au-Prince that can enable Haitians to walk freely, to work freely, and the country to be able to organize elections in a meaningful way. We expect authorities to continue after February 7 and work with the international community to improve security.”

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A new era of crisis for children, as global conflicts intensify and inequality worsens. Credit: UNICEF/Diego Ibarra Sánchez
 
A five-year-old walks amongst the ruins of houses in southern Lebanon. An increasingly turbulent geopolitical and financial landscape mean systems for protecting children must be stronger than ever.

By Jasmina Byrne
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2025 (IPS)

In 2025, the world is facing a new and intensifying era of crisis for children. Climate change, economic instability, and conflict are hitting harder and more often, intersecting in ways that make the challenges of addressing them even more severe.

These developments reflect a world of rising geopolitical tensions and competition among nations that is delaying global action we desperately need.

For children, the stakes couldn’t be higher. To uphold children’s rights and well-being, we need to rethink how to strengthen the very systems that provide key services for children. These systems must be equipped to meet immediate needs, withstand growing pressures, and adapt to the uncertainties of the future.

Resilience has to be built into every part of these systems, ensuring they can protect children at scale, no matter the crisis.

When it comes to geopolitics, conflicts and war will continue to be among the most serious threat to children’s lives and wellbeing. Over 473 million children – more than one in six globally – now live in areas affected by conflict, with the world experiencing the highest number of conflicts since World War II.

In these settings, systems for protecting children must be stronger than ever. Clear rules of engagement for military forces, measures to address violations by non-state actors, and effective monitoring and reporting systems are all crucial to safeguarding children’s lives and rights in conflict zones.

Squeezed from all sides

The economic landscape is no less alarming. Right now, governments’ coffers are being hit by a mix of weak tax revenues, declining aid and rising debt. Rising debt, in particular, is creating unprecedented budget pressures. Nearly 400 million children live in countries facing debt distress, where the financial squeeze is cutting into investments in education, healthcare, and safety nets.

In 2025, we face crucial decisions about reforms to the framework of institutions, policies, rules and practices that govern the global financial system – decisions that could reshape the financial landscape to prioritize sustainable development, intergenerational equity and investment in children.

Climate change, of course, is a crisis that touches every aspect of children’s lives. From extreme weather destroying schools to diseases spreading in its wake, children are disproportionately affected.

In 2025, we must focus on ensuring that climate governance and accountability mechanisms work for children – from incorporation of child rights into national mitigation and adaptation policies to providing necessary finance to implement these plans. Strengthening legally backed climate reporting and monitoring are key to effective climate action for children.

Securing the digital future

When it comes to technological trends, we see clear benefits but also potential risks for children – a reality of the past several years that will continue in 2025. Rapid adoption of digital public infrastructure is one of the trends that can enable systemic changes and fundamentally shift how governments engage with citizens.

But what is digital public infrastructure (DPI)? Sometimes compared to physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure can allow citizens to access digital public services and take part in digital economy through use of digital IDs, data sharing and digital payment systems.

DPI can play a crucial role in advancing children’s well-being by ensuring equitable access to essential services such as education, health care and social protection.

However, DPI it is not inherently inclusive, and too often children in lower income settings are left behind. So, we must prioritize children’s rights and enable seamless, safe and secure data exchange between health, education, and social services to create a holistic support system for child development.

In 2025 and beyond, progress for children demands stronger alignment between global and national priorities. Strengthening national systems and ensuring they are aligned vertically (from global to local) and nationally (across sectors) is critical to achieving our shared goals in health, education, safety, poverty eradication and climate adaptation.

Getting it right creates a foundation of resilience. After all, children and young people are looking to us to ensure their futures today.

Jasmina Byrne is Chief, Foresight & Policy, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.

Source: UNICEF

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Carter was a man of decency and integrity who devoted his life to promoting peace and democracy. Credit: Courtesy Kul Chandra Gautam
 
Former US President Jimmy Carter, a leader of impeccable integrity and decency who devoted his life to promoting peace and democracy worldwide. I recall his contribution to the peace process in Nepal and his leadership in combatting deadly diseases in Africa.
 
Jimmy Carter enthusiastically supported the child survival campaign led by UNICEF. He had nominated Jim Grant to be the Executive Director of UNICEF and said that it was one of the most important decisions of his presidency.

By Kul Chandra Gautam
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 2 2025 (IPS)

Former American President Jimmy Carter was a man of peace and principles. He presided over a tumultuous period in American history from 1977 to 1981, working hard to restore trust in government after the Watergate scandal and the divisive era of the Vietnam War. He brokered a landmark peace deal between Israel and Egypt and negotiated a historic treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to Panama.

Carter, a champion of human rights both in the US and around the world, passed away at 100 on December 29, 2024.

More than any recent American president, Carter pressed gently but firmly on autocratic regimes worldwide to respect human rights and the rule of law. When he led the country with immense moral authority, it encouraged many human rights advocates, while dictators worried about the US sanctions.

At home, Carter got many progressive legislations passed in areas of consumer protection, welfare reforms and the appointment of women and minorities in America’s judiciary. However, he had difficulties managing the US economy, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And in the 1980 Presidential election, when he lost his bid to Ronald Reagan, his active political career came to an end.

Kul Chandra Gautam

With his team, he worked tirelessly to help resolve conflicts, monitor elections and improve human health through campaigns to eliminate several neglected diseases afflicting the poorest people worldwide, particularly in Africa.

“For his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development,” Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Links with UNICEF and Nepal

Carter greatly admired UNICEF Executive Director James Grant and strongly supported the UNICEF-led global child survival and development campaign. Further, the organisation was a key partner in the Carter-led global campaign to eradicate a debilitating disease called dracunculiasis or Guinea-worm disease.

My first substantive meeting with Carter took place on August 3, 1995, at an event in Washington, DC, organised jointly by the Carter Center, USAID, WHO and UNICEF to mark the 95 percent reduction in Guinea worm cases worldwide and to recommit to its total eradication. I had a long and fruitful discussion with Carter on strengthening our collaboration in the global campaign to eradicate Guinea-worm disease.

In February 2004, I joined President Carter and WHO Director-General JW Lee on a 3-day field visit to observe and advocate for Guinea-worm eradication in Ghana. I learned about Carter’s humble personality, deep commitment to many worthy causes and impressive advocacy skills.

In our informal interactions, we often talked about Nepal.

Carter’s involvement in Nepal

Carter visited Nepal twice to observe Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Elections. He advised Nepali leaders, including the Election Commission, based on his worldwide experience and credibility in observing elections and conflict resolution. Over the years, the Carter Center produced several reports on Nepal dealing with issues related to the peace process, challenges in drafting Nepal’s Constitution and other important issues of social justice and equity.

I instinctively supported Carter’s noble efforts to promote peace, democracy and development. However, like everybody else, Carter was human and fallible, and some aspects of the Carter Center’s reports on Nepal were flawed.

In particular, Carter’s hasty verdict that Nepal’s first Constituent Assembly election was free, fair and peaceful ignored the fact that there was an unusually high degree of intimidation in many rural constituencies. The non-Maoist parties’ candidates were prevented from campaigning, and voters were threatened with physical violence for weeks preceding the actual voting.

There were well-intentioned but inaccurate analyses of Nepal’s socio-political dynamics by the Carter Center, the International Crisis Group, and even the United Nations. In their effort to appear “balanced and even-handed”, they gave the undue benefit of the doubt to the progressive-sounding rhetoric of the Maoists, ignoring their violent and corrupt practices.

Carter witnessed the insincerity and duplicity of the Maoists when they initially welcomed the 2013 election for the second Constituent Assembly but then denounced it as rigged and unfair when the results showed that they had suffered a humiliating loss.

Unlike during the first CA election, Carter took the necessary time to analyse the second CA election better. He left somewhat sobered by a deeper understanding of the Maoists’ opportunistic and undemocratic nature.

A man of faith and integrity

Jimmy Carter was a deeply religious and spiritual man who often turned to his faith during his political career. But as a progressive man and defender of human rights and gender equality, he found himself at odds with his Southern Baptist Church when it opposed gender equality, citing a few selected verses from the Bible that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and must not be allowed to serve as priests.

Carter protested and took a painful decision to sever ties with his Baptist Church, saying that parts of its rigid doctrine violated the basic premises of his Christian faith. He wrote to his fellow Baptists and published an op-ed article “Losing my religion for equality”.

Carter had a philosophical and spiritual perspective on death. As he suffered from multiple bouts of cancer treatment, he remarked, “I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death”.

May Carter’s noble soul rest in eternal peace.

Source: Kathmandu Post, Nepal

Kul Chandra Gautam is a distinguished diplomat, development professional, and a former senior official of the United Nations. Currently, he serves on the Boards of several international and national organizations, charitable foundations and public-private partnerships. Previously, he served in senior managerial and leadership positions with the UN in several countries and continents in a career spanning over three decades. As a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, he has extensive experience in international diplomacy, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance.

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Furtuna (5) is getting the early education she deserves, and she loves counting with children at the Mahabre Dego Primary School, Tigray Region, Ethiopia. ECW and strategic partners’ investments in the country provide much-needed support for young crisis-affected girls and boys to have a better start in life through quality early education. Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

By Joyce Chimbi
ADDIS ABABA & NAIROBI, Dec 9 2024 (IPS)

Ethiopia’s education system is buckling under the weight of complex, competing challenges. The aftermath of a deadly war in the north, ongoing violence, climate-induced disasters, and widespread forced displacements have converged to push as many as 9 million children out of school. With close to 18 percent of schools in the country destroyed or damaged and persisting intercommunal conflicts in various regions, there are fears that many might never find their way back to school.

“In the absence of education, both boys and girls may be mobilized into militant groups, and frequently, girls will be subjected to child marriage. The choice is to provide them with an education, as it is the pathway to their future and contribution to their society and also as a protection mechanism,” says Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises in the United Nations. “Being out-of-school puts them in harm’s way and onto the path of abuse, violations, and the destruction of their lives, their communities, and eventually their country. We must ensure that no child is left behind in the education system. Investing in the very real potential of Ethiopia’s young generation is not an option—it is an absolute necessity.”

Sherif traveled to the Tigray region in the first week of December 2024 together with the ECW Global Champion and Finance Minister of Denmark, Nicolai Wammen. ECW’s high-level delegation saw first-hand the devastating effects of the deadly three-year conflict between the Ethiopian central government and the northernmost region of Tigray, Ethiopia.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and Nicolai Wammen, ECW Global Champion and Danish Minister of Finance, visit a school in the Tigray Region in Ethiopia. The delegation met with girls and boys whose education was interrupted for over three years due to conflict. Thanks to ECW & strategic partners’ support in the region, students are back in the classroom where they belong.
Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

The aftermath and recovery process are such that, amid limited resources, the country is putting back the pieces of a broken education infrastructure to jumpstart an education system that had come to a complete halt. At the end of their joint visit, the two called for bold donor action to deliver the promise of a quality education to millions of crisis-impacted children.

“We have a multi-year investment and great partners on the ground, including a very supportive government. We work with UN agencies, including UNICEF, and civil society organizations such as Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Image1Day and other local Ethiopian organizations,” Sherif told IPS.

The ECW delegation visited schools benefiting from funding by ECW and strategic partners, met children, parents, and teachers, and saw first-hand the impact of ECW-supported programmes. In one school alone, enrollment increased by an impressive 20 percent last year due to a comprehensive package of interventions funded by ECW.

“It is heartwarming to witness the life-transforming power of quality education in the most complex crisis situations. I met strong and resilient girls and boys who are returning to learning, healing and thriving thanks to ECW’s support. However, conflicts, climate change and other crises continue to push millions of children out of school every year—in Ethiopia and beyond. Business as usual will not meet this challenge. I encourage private sector partners to join ECW’s efforts and invest in new and innovative financing strategies to fill the widening gap,” said Nicolai Wammen, Minister of Finance, Denmark, and ECW Global Champion.

Breiy Nuguse is a teacher at the ECW-supported FreKalsi Primary School in the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, where children are back in classrooms after over three years of missing out on an education due to the conflict that devasted the region. “Teaching makes me happy. I love teaching and when I see children learn, it is so rewarding. I was inspired to become a teacher, as my teachers were so wonderful when I was at school. I realize the gift of learning that they gave me, and I wanted to do the same for the next generation,” Nuguse said. Credit: ECW//Tesfaye

Sherif says the delegation saw significant progress in supported schools, such as “rehabilitated infrastructure and others rebuilt from scratch. We saw learning supplies, teachers who are well trained and sensitized, and professionals offering mental health and psychosocial services. There is a strong academic curriculum. Included in the national curriculum are critical issues of peacebuilding, ethics, and the arts. Education is ongoing in primary and secondary schools but also in pre-primary and early childhood development schools. Children with disabilities also benefit from targeted supports and inclusive education.”

Overall, they witnessed a protective learning environment that included systematic implementation of a referral identification of children in need and distribution of assistive devices, and children in need of assistance integrated with their peers, which promotes their inclusion and improves their social and learning skills.

There were girls’ clubs too for pursuit of shared and common interests. Teachers are trained on gender-sensitive issues, and there is systematic implementation of menstrual hygiene for adolescent girls, designated sanitation areas for girls, and promotion of water and sanitation.

Displaced and host community students who attend the ECW-supported Embandaso Primary School in the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, enjoy drawing so they can express their feelings and their dreams.
Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

“The children are receiving quality, safe, and inclusive holistic education. Having gone through mental health and psychosocial support through ECW investment, they are confident and expressive of their dreams. This is what investment in education can do, and we can do even more through bold donor action to reach every child with quality education and prospects for lifelong learning and earning,” Sherif observes.

But the challenges are still significantly complex and pressing, and resources are scarce.

Ethiopia also hosts the third largest refugee population in Africa, significantly exacerbating the country’s educational challenges. There were over 200,000 new arrivals from Sudan and Somalia in 2023-2024 alone, further increasing pressure on existing resources.

After a visit that revealed the numerous challenges Ethiopian children face and their unwavering determination to learn, ECW announced a USD 5 million First Emergency Response grant, increasing its total investments in the country to USD 93 million since 2017.

Of the new USD 5 million grant, UNICEF will be the implementing partner for USD 4 million. A local organization, Imagine 1Day, will implement the remaining USD 1 million. The organizations will work together with their partners to address urgent needs in the Oromia and Afar regions, where renewed conflict, intercommunal violence, drought and displacement have further disrupted education services in recent months.

These emergency interventions will build on the USD 24 million Multi-Year Resilience Programme announced last month by ECW, targeting needs in the Amhara, Somalia, and Tigray regions.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and Nicolai Wammen, ECW Global Champion and Danish Minister of Finance, are welcomed by students at the ECW-supported Chila Primary School in Tigray, Ethiopia. Children here have missed more than three years of education due to COVID and the conflict that devastated the region.
Photo credit: ECW

“Imagine1Day is deeply grateful for this Education Cannot Wait First Emergency Response grant. With this generous support, we will provide over 13,000 out-of-school children in the Afar region—60 percent of whom are girls and 13 percent are children with disabilities—with access to safe learning environments. This project will not only enhance their well-being but also empower them to reach their full potential. Given that education in emergencies in Ethiopia has been severely underfunded, this grant is crucial in ensuring that crisis-affected children receive the education and support they need to build a brighter future,” said Dr. Seid Aman, Country Director of Imagine1Day.

To date, ECW’s combined multi-year and emergency investments in Ethiopia have reached more than 550,000 children and adolescents, providing a comprehensive range of supports—school rehabilitation, teacher training, mental health and psychosocial support, inclusive education, school feeding, gender transformative initiatives, early childhood education, and more. ECW’s support focuses on the most vulnerable, including girls, children from refugee, displaced and host community communities, and children with disabilities.

ECW’s investments are aligned to the Ethiopia Humanitarian Response Plan and the Ethiopia Education Sector Development Programme VI, a detailed planning document that provides a comprehensive outlook of the roadmap that the country’s education sector is taking. The Global Fund urgently calls for additional resources to fill the USD 64 million funding gap to meet the requirements for the acute education needs in the 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Ethiopia.

Working in emergency and protracted crisis settings across the globe, ECW supports quality education outcomes for refugee, internally displaced, and other crisis-affected girls and boys, so no one is left behind.

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In Sudan Children are facing climate and conflict challenges at the same time. Photo: JC Mcllwaine/Flickr

By Tanka Dhakal
BAKU, Nov 17 2024 (IPS)

As the world grapples with ongoing armed conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza, advocacy for a more proactive approach to understanding and effectively responding to the needs of children affected by both armed conflict and climate-induced crises is growing.

A paper published in 2023 confirmed the link between climate insecurity and grave violations against children in armed conflict, including recruitment, use, and denial of humanitarian access. The Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) highlighted this connection in a study titled “Climate Insecurity Impacts on Children and Armed Conflict.” 

The study suggested that decision-makers and practitioners should integrate a dual approach, incorporating both a climate lens and a child-centered lens into their work.

One year after this report was published, world leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the UN climate conference, COP29, and the call to integrate climate, armed conflict, and their impact on children has gained momentum.

Virginia Gamba, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC). Credit: UN Photo

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) emphasized the importance of addressing the links between climate, peace, security, and the children and armed conflict agenda.

“From the Lake Chad Basin to Syria, from Mozambique to Myanmar, in 2024, children have been the most impacted by both armed conflict and climate insecurity. Yet, children affected by armed conflict remain largely absent from ongoing climate, peace, and security discussions. We must change our approach to include these children if we are seeking inclusive and sustainable solutions,” Gamba said.

“Incorporating a climate perspective in our monitoring and reporting is also essential to better tailor our actions to end and prevent grave violations against children in armed conflict.”

According to UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Security Risk Index, nearly half of the world’s children—approximately 1 billion—live in extremely high-risk countries, where climate change contributes to conflict-related displacement.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNICEF produced the Guiding Principles for Children on the Move in the Context of Climate Change, which provides additional explanation of children’s movement in the context of climate change. The report notes that while the rights of children displaced by conflict and climate change should be protected, governments and humanitarian actors often struggle to access and assist these children due to conflict.

The Special Representative calls on all leaders not to overlook children affected by conflict in climate, peace, and security discussions and to include them in financial commitments supporting sustainable solutions for both peace and climate.

Gamba added, “In a context where CAAC is often underfunded in humanitarian responses, supporting flexible funding for emergency response that considers both children affected by armed conflict and climate peace and security can have a multiplier effect and provide sustainable solutions to closely linked issues. We will continue to highlight these connections.”

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A young child in Cox’s Bazar engages with her peers at one of BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs. CREDIT: BRAC

By Abigail Van Neely
NEW YORK, Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

A Rohingya woman tells a forum of peer counselors the story of her divorce. A survivor of domestic abuse, she has started a new life alone with her daughter. She has weathered a storm of neighbors telling her she was the problem. Now, she provides the support she didn’t have to other women like her.

Similar scenes occur across refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Here, BRAC, an international NGO based in Bangladesh, has developed a program to train counselors who can provide mental health services to Rohingya refugees. This includes 200 community members who have begun to practice the psychosocial skills they’ve learned in their own lives.

A Growing Need for Support

Over 900,000 Rohingya have fled to Cox’s Bazar since massive-scale violence against Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State began in 2017, the UN Refugee Agency reports. The prolonged exposure of the ethnic minority group to persecution and displacement has likely increased the refugees’ vulnerability to an array of mental health issues, a 2019 systematic review found. Their struggles include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and gender-based violence.

Around the world, there is growing attention to the importance of socio-emotional learning as a skill to help people in areas of crisis cope with challenges. Educators are often tasked not only with providing traditional academic instruction but with building resilience in children. They are asked to create a sense of normalcy in environments that are anything but normal.

The teaching the children need is much more than about reading, writing, and math; but about giving young children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills. CREDIT: BRAC

“It’s about not only teaching [kids] how to read and how to do mathematics … in these settings, kids and teachers themselves have the need for psychosocial support,” Ramya Vivekanandan, the senior education specialist at the Global Partnership for Education, said.

Teachers, caregivers, and frontline mental health providers are overburdened, Vivekanandan explains. They lack adequate pay, working conditions, and professional development. As they try to support the growing number of people in crisis, who will support them?

For some counselors in Cox’s Bazar, the answer is each other.

Community Care

Even when resources are available, stigmas around mental health can prevent support from being received. Taifur Islam, a Bangladeshi psychologist responsible for mental health training and supervision at BRAC, says people in the communities he works with are rarely taught to identify their feelings. When you are struggling to access basic needs, Islam explains, it is easy to forget that emotional well-being can improve productivity. If a person seeks help, they may be labeled ‘crazy.’

Training people to take care of their own communities can be a powerful way to overcome stigma in a culturally relevant way.

BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs were established in 2017 to give Rohingya children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills through play. Erum Mariam, the executive director of the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, explains that each play lab is tailored to fit the community it serves. Rohingya children now rhyme, chant, and dance in 304 Humanitarian Play Labs across the camps in Cox’s Bazar.

“We discovered the Rohingya culture through the children. And the whole model is based on knowing the culture,” Mariam said.

‘Play leaders’ are recruited from the camps and trained in play pedagogy. Mariam watched Rohingya women who had never worked before embracing their new roles. As they covered the ceilings of their play spaces with rainbows of flowers – the kind of tapestry that would hang from their homes in Myanmar – Mariam realized that a new kind of social capital could be earned by nurturing joy. Traditional play didn’t just help uprooted children shape their sense of identity – it was also healing for the community.

If a play leader notices a child is withdrawn or restless, they can refer the child to a ‘para counselor’ who has been trained by BRAC’s psychologists to address the mental health needs of children and their family members. Almost half of the 469 para counselors in Cox’s Bazar are recruited from the Rohingya community, while the rest come from around Bangladesh. Most para counselors are women.

Many para counselors are uniquely positioned to empathize with the people they serve as they go door to door, building awareness. This is crucial because it creates a bottom-up system of care without prescribing what well-being should look like, Chris Henderson, a specialist on education in emergencies, says.

At the same time, by supporting others, mental health providers are learning to take care of themselves.

Learning by Doing

A play leader engages the children in the session. Humanitarian professionals encourage frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors to actualize their own ideas for improvement. CREDIT: BRAC

For months, Suchitra Rani watched violence against Rohingya people every time she turned on the news. When she was recruited by BRAC to become a para counselor in Cox’s Bazar, she saw an opportunity to make a difference. Alongside fellow trainees, Rani, a social worker originally from Magura, poured over new words she learned in the foreign Rohingya dialect and worked to find her place in the community.

Rani tested what she had learned about the value of psychosocial support and cultural sensitivity when she met a 15-year-old Rohingya girl too scared to tell her single mother she was pregnant. Terrified of bringing shame to the family, the girl had an abortion at home. As the young woman spiraled into depression, Rani felt herself slipping into her own fears of inadequacy.

It took time for Rani to convince the girl to open up to her mother. Talking through feelings of guilt slowly led to acceptance. As they worked to heal fractured family bonds, Rani began to feel surer of herself, too.

Now, the Rohingya community calls Rani a “sister of peace.” Rani says she has become confident in her ability to use the socio-emotional skills she’s learned to both help others and resolve problems in her personal life.

Throughout the program, para counselors have changed the way they communicate their feelings and felt empowered to create more empathetic environments.

Islam recounts a 26-year-old Rohingya refugee’s perilous journey to Cox’s Bazar: In Myanmar, the woman’s husband was killed in front of her. One of her two young children drowned during a river crossing as they fled the country. She arrived at the camp as a single mother without a support network. Only once she had the support of others willing to listen could she speak openly.

Islam remembers counselors telling the woman about the importance of self-care: “If you actually take care of yourself, then you can take care of your child also.”

Toward Empowerment 

According to Henderson, evidence shows that one of the best ways to support someone is to give them a role to help others. In places where there may be a stigma against prioritizing ‘self-care,’ people with their own post-crisis trauma are willing to learn well-being skills to help children.

A collection of teacher stories collected by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies reveals a similar pattern. Teachers in crisis areas around the world say the socio-emotional skills they learned to help students helped them reduce stress in their own lives, too.

Henderson suggests that the best way international agencies can promote trauma support is by holding up a mirror to the strength already shown by refugee communities like the Rohingya.

Instead of seeing what they lack, Henderson encourages humanitarian professionals to help give frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors the agency to actualize their own ideas for improvement. Empowered community leaders empower the young people they work with, who, in turn, learn to empower each other. This creates “systems where everyone sees their position of leadership as supporting the next person’s leadership and resilience.”

At the end of her para counselor training, the Rohingya domestic abuse survivor said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the skills she’d learned for working through trauma, Islam remembers. But she did say she wished they were skills she had known before. According to Islam, she is now one of their best para counselors.

“The training is not only to serve the community; that training is something that can actually change your life,” Islam says. It’s why he became a psychologist.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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The al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls after it was struck by missiles fired by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, Hodeidah, 9 November 2015. Credit: Amnesty International

By Matthew Wells
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

Frontline workers who document and respond to violations against children have faced a particularly challenging last year, from the impact of Covid-19 on operations and child protection to the record levels of displacement worldwide to the ever-worsening threats from militaries and non-state armed groups.

Beyond the public eye, there’s another challenge that devastates morale and undermines the protection of children in armed conflict: the politicization of a key UN process for holding accountable those responsible for grave violations.

In 2005, the UN Security Council established a Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) to document grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict. It was a landmark achievement.

The documentation feeds into an annual report from the UN Secretary-General with an annexed list of perpetrators; it is meant to form the backbone of UN-led accountability efforts for militaries and armed groups alike, and to help prevent further violations against children.

The Security Council will discuss this year’s report on 28 June.

The report comes as conflict’s devastating impact on children – and the repercussions of inaction – has yet again been made apparent. At least 65 children were killed and a further 540 injured during the Israeli military’s bombardments in Gaza in May, according to UNICEF.

The Israeli military has never been among the report’s listed parties, despite years in which its incidents of killing and maiming were among the highest verified.

Meanwhile in Myanmar, the security forces have killed at least 58 children since the 1 February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPPB).

Last year, despite the MRM’s verification of more than 200 instances of the Myanmar military’s recruitment or use of children, the Secretary-General de-listed them for that violation, while continuing to list them for other violations, including killing and maiming.

This year saw the military re-listed for recruitment and use – the right result, as they never should have been removed in the first place, but more a reflection of the changed geopolitics post-coup than of a major surge in such abusive practices.

To be effective, the criteria for listing and de-listing perpetrators must be applied consistently. Instead, politics and power dynamics in the Security Council and Secretary-General’s office have at times replaced objectivity.

Earlier this year, a group of eminent experts published an independent review of listing decisions between 2010 and 2020. It found at least eight parties who were not listed despite verified responsibility for killing and maiming more than 100 children in a year.

Militaries are less likely to be listed than non-state armed groups even for similar numbers of verified violations, as the experts and civil society groups have noted, with discrepancies even in the same country situation. And de-listing decisions have flouted criteria established in 2010, which require a party to end such violations before removal from the list.

For example, in 2016, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces were initially listed for grave violations against children during the war in Yemen but were quickly removed by then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He publicly called out Saudi Arabia and others for effectively blackmailing the UN by threatening to pull funding from UN programmes.

The coalition forces were then listed for grave violations from 2017 to 2019, before UN Secretary-General António Guterres again de-listed them in 2020. They remain off the list this year, despite the MRM verifying their responsibility for 194 incidents of killing or maiming children.

Two children walk home from school in the neighbourhood of Dara’iya, Raqqa. January 21, 2019. Credit: Andrea DiCenzo/Panos via Amnesty International

A former UNICEF staffer put it succinctly in an interview with Amnesty International: “No-one wants to be the [Secretary-General] who lost a massive amount of money.”

Amnesty International recently carried out interviews with over 110 experts, including frontline actors reporting into the MRM in eight different conflict-affected countries. Their experiences further reveal the politicization’s sobering impact, with implications for which incidents even make it into the Secretary-General’s report.

When individuals and organizations feel their reports are ignored or that militaries and armed groups remain unlisted despite ample documentation, it understandably reduces their continued willingness to report to the MRM. In Myanmar, for example, several people said they felt defeated when the military was de-listed last year and wondered what their difficult documentation efforts had been for.

In Iraq, a humanitarian worker, who resigned because of the politics around the process, said that survivors, witnesses, and those involved in the documentation would put themselves at risk to provide information, only to see a politicized outcome.

Such concerns, recurrent among those we interviewed, are particularly damning as they come from people working at great risk to respond to violations. The MRM has achieved much in 15 years – documenting conflicts’ impact on children and putting pressure on perpetrators – precisely because of these frontline workers’ efforts.

The growing pressure from influential leaders and states undermines their work and the credibility of accountability efforts meant to respond to and prevent grave violations against children.

Among the frontline workers we spoke with across eight conflict situations, roughly half were national staff and more than two-thirds were women. This raises further questions about the power dynamics behind ignoring the findings of their reports.

Secretary-General Guterres has just been given another five-year term; he must become bolder and more courageous in prioritizing human rights and calling out perpetrators, including on children and armed conflict.

Together with the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, he should commit publicly to applying the same standard irrespective of perpetrator or context – producing a complete list based on evidence and objective criteria, something he has failed to do again this year.

Next year, he must follow the criteria laid out in 2010; the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Israeli military, among others, will again prove a key test.

For their part, UN member states must demand a credible list. Why have teams on the ground put themselves in danger to document violations that get ignored?

Frontline workers need confidence that their work is part of a credible accountability process. To fulfill its potential, the Secretary-General’s report must follow the evidence, not a politics of power that shields certain perpetrators from scrutiny. Anything else makes a mockery of the system and undermines the protection of children.

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Excerpt:

Education Cannot Wait’s funding has helped provide education to 140,000 pre-primary, primary and secondary refugee school children — 38 percent of whom are girls — in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions. South Sudanese girls in grade two learning at Tierkidi School No. 3, Refugee Camp, Itang Woreda, Gambella Region. Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2018/Mersha

By Ed Holt
May 4 2021 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old Chuol Nyakoach lives in the Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp in Gambella, Ethiopia. Chuol is grateful that despite the trauma she has already experienced in her young life, she is able to continue her education in the refugee camp. Learning has given her a reason to wake up every day.

“My life has changed and ECW’s [Education Cannot Wait] education has given me something to look forward to every day in my life. In the future, I hope that I will be able to help my community and my country using the knowledge that I am gaining now in my education while a refugee,” Chuol told IPS.

The Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp is the largest in the area, comprising some 82,000 South Sudanese refugees, many of whom fled their homes in South Sudan after the escalating conflict in 2016 forced thousands to cross into Ethiopia through the Pagak, Akobo and Burbiey border points.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, 68 percent of those who live there are children and adolescents under the age of 18, who need to continue their education.

“I really appreciate all that has been done in support of refugee children like us. Because of ECW’s work we have been able to receive education for almost two years now in a safe environment,” Chuol told IPS.

Education for children in a crisis

A three-year Education Cannot Wait (ECW) initiative was announced in February 2020, which aims to help provide education to 746,000 children, addressing the specific challenges holding back access to the quality education of children and adolescents in communities left furthest behind due to violence, drought, displacement, and other crises. ECW is the world’s first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises.

A year after launching the $165 million initiative, ECW’s funding has helped provide education to 140,000 pre-primary, primary and secondary refugee school children — 38 percent of whom are girls — in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions through the construction and rehabilitation of school infrastructure, provision of grants, supply of teaching, learning and play material, and training and recruitment of teachers.

This April, ECW also announced an additional $1 million in emergency education grant financing to benefit 20,000 children and youth impacted by the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the country’s Tigray region, where an estimated 1.4 million girls and boys are deprived of their right to an education.

Thousands of schools have been closed due to violence in Tigray with many being occupied by displaced families. This comes after nine months during which 26 million students were forced out of school because of COVID-19 restrictions.
 
The 12-month ECW grant will be implemented by UNICEF, in collaboration with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education, Save the Children and local civil societies, targeting 2,000 pre-primary, 12,000 primary and 6,000 secondary school learners, as well as 250 teaching personnel. Overall, 52 percent of beneficiaries are girls and 10 percent are children with disabilities.

“Without the safety and protection of continued education during the crisis, girls face increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence, early pregnancies, child marriage and other atrocities. Boys are exposed to being recruited into armed groups and some are forced into child labor. Without immediate support, they risk never returning to school, and their future will be lost,” said Yasmine Sherif, ECW Director.

Refugee children from South Sudan in Ethiopia’s Gambella region. UNICEF Ethiopia says that continuing education has been crucial in the lives of crisis-affected children. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Education eases the trauma of refugee children

Chuol believes the continuous learning that girls and boys like her are getting has helped many refugee children like her cope with the trauma they have experienced.

“ECW’s work had changed not just me and other refugee children, but the entire refugee community.

“It has enabled child refugees to forget about what happened to them in their home countries, to put the trauma of their experiences behind them and gain some skills,” says Chuol.

Shumye Molla, acting head of the education programme at UNICEF Ethiopia, told IPS why continuing education has been crucial in the lives of crisis-affected children.

“Many children are happy to be in school and learning. Moreover, school provides an environment for them to play, socialise and develop life skills to improve livelihoods. For uprooted children, education provides them with the knowledge and skills to unlock their potential for a better future,” Molla told IPS.

She added that where uprooted children share education services like schools, sports and play activities, “education provides a unique opportunity for them to forge social relationships with children from host communities, which enhances coexistence and integration.”

“Schools and other learning institutions serve as entry points for other services including nutrition and health, which support holistic growth and development for uprooted children. In a nutshell, education offers a safe haven for crisis-affected children,” Molla said.

Providing targeted support for girls

ECW’s funding provides targeted support for the most vulnerable children, including girls and children with disabilities. 

Based on their social norms, some refugee communities do not value girls’ education. Despite interventions by other protection practitioners, refugee and displaced girls are still subject to female genital mutilation, child marriage and early pregnancy. In addition, households still prioritise boys’ education over girls’, and hold back girls at home to attend to domestic chores.

ECW’s support is making a difference in helping to protect girls and increase their school attendance.

“Adolescent girls’ have particularly been appreciative of the additional latrines and menstrual hygiene management rooms constructed in their schools through ECW funding. The privacy these facilities provide has boosted their dignity and confidence and encouraged them to attend school more regularly,” said Molla.

ECW’s support to refugee girls extends well beyond the classroom, with partners implementing social mobilisation drives, educating communities and education practitioners on the importance of sending and supporting girls to remain in school and perform better.

The fund says that because of these interventions, girls’ enrolment increased by an incredible 21,422 girls – from 82,040 in 2016-17 to 103,462 in 2019-20 – in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions.

Pioneering integration of refugee education into national systems

ECW works with local partners, including the Ministry of Education and the government agency for refugee protection and intervention, the Administration for Refugee & Returnee Affairs (ARRA), to further develop the delivery of education to refugee children in Ethiopia within the framework of an inclusive national education system.

This includes extending national systems into refugee education including inspection and supervision, refugee teacher training and provision of grants, as well as helping the Ministry of Education collect, analyse, and publish refugee education data alongside host community schools to help in planning refugee children’s schooling.

ECW’s partners say that the group’s investments in the country have been vital in helping improve refugee children’s education opportunities.

“What ECW is doing is absolutely unique. Usually, when families are displaced in an emergency situation, it is health and food that is provided as aid priorities, and education is always last. But ECW, in all situations, no matter what, tries to provide education to give kids hope,” Alemsalam Fekadu, senior education programme manager at Save the Children in Ethiopia, told IPS.

He added that projects his organisation was working on with ECW, such as distributing sanitary products to internally displaced girls at schools, were “simple, but have incredible impact.”

“These kinds of things make a massive difference. They not only help keep girls’ school attendance up, as many of them would have missed school otherwise, but they also raise the girls’ self-esteem enormously,” said Fekadu.

It’s a success because children are eager to learn

But perhaps the clearest example of the success the ECW programme has had is in the positive experiences of the refugee children and youth who have been helped.

Twenty-year-old Wie Chut also fled his home in South Sudan and, like Chuol, lives in the Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp.

Chut believes he has received a better education here in the camp than he did at home in South Sudan.

“There, we did not get any real materials, we just went to school. Here, we get educational materials and learn more and develop skills and a positive attitude.

“We want to keep learning because education is powerful for the human mind and pushes children forward,” he told IPS.

Chuol agrees: “I see that most of the students are eager to learn as well as improve their academic performance and are committed to creating a better future for themselves.”

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Masha Khromchenko stands in the kindergarten classroom that took a direct hit from a shell in the Luhansk region, Ukraine. The UN Security Council has demanded an end to attacks on schools worldwide. Credit: UNICEF/Christopher Morris

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

The horrendous killings of children in military conflicts and civil wars – both by national armed forces and militant groups – have triggered widespread condemnation by human rights organizations worldwide.

But a “list of shame” singling out some of these perpetrators have been politicized leaving out some of these countries under fire, including Afghanistan, Israel (in the killings in occupied territories), Somalia and Yemen (where the killings are blamed on the aerial attacks by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).

According to Human Rights Watch, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been repeatedly criticized for letting national armed forces and non-state armed groups off the hook for grave violations against children in war.

The list, first requested by the UN Security Council in 2001, is described as the “linchpin” for UN efforts to protect children in war.

The numbers, however, are staggering, according to a new report released by the Eminent Persons Group, including Lt-General (Ret) Romeo Dallaire, the former UN force commander during Rwanda’s genocide; Yanghee Lee, former chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Benyam Dawit Mezmur, a child rights expert; and Allan Rock, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

The group, which released its report last week, has numerous examples of armed forces or groups (typically government forces) that have been omitted or removed from the “list of shame” — notably the Saudi and UAE-led coalition, Israeli forces, Afghan forces, and Myanmar’s military, Tatmadaw

Afghan security forces have reportedly killed or injured more than 4,000 children since 2014 but have not been listed.

In 2014, Israeli forces killed 557 Palestinian children and injured 4,249, largely during fighting in Gaza. But Israeli forces were not on the list of shame– even though the number of children killed was the third highest in the world that year.

In Somalia, the armed group Al-Shabab has been repeatedly listed for sexual violence against children, but the Somali National Army has not been listed, despite comparable numbers of cases.

In 2020, Guterres “delisted” the coalition led by Saudi and United Arab Emirates for killing and maiming children in Yemen, as well as Myanmar’s army for recruiting and using child soldiers.

Yet each was responsible for hundreds of violations the previous year, according to the report.

Jo Becker, Advocacy Director, Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS that Guterres has been reluctant to hold all perpetrators to account since he first took office about four years ago.

Asked whether Guterres is paying politics in a year he is seeking re-election, Becker said: “So his failure to list all perpetrators is definitely not just an issue of this being an “election year.”

She said the UN Security Council first requested the annual list, and over the past two decades, has carefully created the UN’s framework for children and armed conflict.

As the architects of the agenda, they should insist that the Secretary-General ensure it functions as it was intended, and that he list all perpetrators, without exception, Becker declared.

But without an accurate list, the UN’s children and armed conflict framework is seriously undermined. The experts urged the secretary-general to change his approach and list all perpetrators “without fear or favor.”

Without such action, they warn, children will be put at even greater risk, said HRW. “The secretary-general should take the experts’ recommendations to heart and put the protection of children first”.

Mouin Rabbani, Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Co-Editor, Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS it doesn’t take more than a passing glance at the list of perpetrators included in, and excluded from the list, to understand that these assessments are not the product of a rigorous examination of the evidence, and thus do not represent the conclusions of an appropriately professional process.

“It seems to me indisputable that political factors are in play. In part this consists of the traditional deference to the powerful and their clients, which is compensated for with sanctimonious outrage – which would otherwise be justified – against the weak and marginalized”.

In part, he argued, it reflects electoral considerations, with Guterres gearing up for election to a second term. And in part it reflects financial concerns, with the UN continuing to suffer a budget crunch and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia being once again given a pass.

While there is much discontent with the glaring omissions in the list, which no one has failed to notice, it seems unlikely that the General Assembly will act to rectify, since it is composed of governments and many of them are subject to similar pressures and inducements, said Rabbani.

Asked for a response to the report from the eminent group of experts, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on March 17: “First of all, I have to say we appreciate the views expressed”.

“We have worked… diligently with many partners, including NGOs, and everyone is working towards the same goal: improving the protection of children and wiping out the scourge of children being forced as combatants and, of course, as victims of conflict.’

He pointed out that the Secretary General’s report is one critical tool that is meant to generate action. “I think, year after year, the report and the associated work of all our colleagues on the ground and in New York is to change behaviours in the most difficult circumstances. Our goal is to end and prevent grave violations against children. Each year, we report on progress and setbacks”.

There’s a lot of focus on the list per se, but I think it’s also critical to read the full narrative in the reports every year, which lays out in detail how children are impacted by the conflict and the work that is being done to better protect boys and girls, notably through Plans of Action.

“And I think we have seen, over the years, improvements in some areas with Plans of Action being signed by different combatants. There’s always going to be discussion among people of the conclusions of the report, the methodology, the observations, the recommendations”.

“We stand by them, and we’re always happy to engage with relevant partners in how to improve the system,” he added.

  

A child is weighed at a 'posyandu' (community-level health post) in Sidorejo village, Central Java province, Indonesia. Credit: UNICEF/UNI350112/Ijazah

By Joanne Bosworth and Jennifer Asman
NEW YORK, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

2020 has not turned out as planned. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact populations around the world, governments have been forced to take a fresh look at their spending and how to meet additional costs of pandemic response as they expect a fall in revenue. Budget information has become even more critical.

Critical knowledge

When it comes to children, it is important to have a detailed view of spending in key areas like health, education, social protection and water and sanitation. Without this, it is difficult to know what services are supported or how money has been spent.

Although total spending on health has increased in many countries as part of the COVID-19 response, in many cases, funding for essential basic services like routine immunization has been cut, increasing the risk to children’s lives.

Access to quality budget information has enabled UNICEF to keep advocating for and supporting governments by avoiding cuts to essential investments in children’s futures. Here are a few examples:

Myanmar: When the Government of Myanmar was developing a supplementary budget for its COVID-19 response, UNICEF used the budget information on health, education and social protection presented to parliament, to make the case for protecting and expanding spending on critical programmes.

By reviewing proposed allocations and prioritizing immunization, social welfare and safe and healthy school environments, we developed an analysis that was instrumental in increasing the government’s budget in all three sectors by $176 million by mid-year.

Tunisia: After the collapse of global oil prices, the Tunisian government reduced fuel subsidies. Using information on funding for these subsidies, UNICEF demonstrated that child grants would bring greater benefit to poor children. In line with this analysis, the government also launched temporary cash transfers for at least 623,000 families with children.

Somaliland: Through the UN Joint Programme on Local Governance and Decentralized Service Delivery, UNICEF supports the use of “community scorecards” in Somaliland to monitor decentralized services such as water and sanitation, and the maintenance of community health and education infrastructure.

Communities provide real time SMS feedback to elected officials, strengthening oversight, which in turn can help inform better budget planning.

Suaafi Mahamed Abdi, 15, cleans his hands at an EU-funded, UNICEF-supported water point in Tog-wajaale, Somaliland. The clean and sustainable water system is the town’s first ever and provides clean water for 70,000 people. Credit: UNICEF/UN0300832/Knowles-Coursin

The economic fallout of COVID-19

As the pandemic continues, the impact on children is increasingly evident. As a result of disrupted schooling, according to the World Bank, children stand to lose the equivalent of $872 of their future earnings per year— a global loss of over $10 trillion.

Progress on infant mortality will be set back by between five and 15 years; and deaths from malaria are predicted to go back to pre-2000 levels with children-under-5 accounting for 70% of them. An additional 150 million children could be pushed into poverty.

We need urgent efforts to ensure children are protected from this long-term economic impact. This means ensuring vital social spending, and that funds are used effectively to help children and their families cope with and adapt to these new economic conditions.

Challenges in budget transparency have existed since before the pandemic. The 2019 Open Budget Survey examined sector budget transparency in education and health budgets in 28 countries.

While almost half of those countries provided complete information on spending objectives and how much funding was allocated to specific programmes, most provided partial information. A majority provided no information on how spending was distributed across different districts or provinces.

Essential to recovery

As the Myanmar, Tunisia and Somaliland examples show, improved budget transparency is not only central to an inclusive recovery but also encourages governments and partners to come together to identify more effective ways to achieve policy outcomes.

It is vital to monitoring spending, improving efficiency and ensuring resources are used effectively. This is particularly important now that many governments are making adjustments to spending plans or using emergency provisions where new programmes need not go through normal budget processes or controls. Making detailed, accurate and easy-to-understand spending plans transparent means citizens can monitor progress and highlight problems early on.

Building a resilient future

We are living in unprecedented times where every national and local government is forced to adapt and learn. Clear data on budgets, reprioritization and implementation of budgets will help us understand the impact of spending decisions on children’s lives.

UNICEF continues to work with governments and partners including the International Budget Partnership: to promote more open and transparent budgets, build this knowledge into longer term recovery programmes and improve the resilience of systems and services for the future.

Excerpt:

Trafficking survivor Devendra Kumar Mulayam, who hails from Shahapur in the Chandouli district of Uttar Pradesh, had to begin working at age 12 to help pay off the two loans his father had taken out. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
PUNE, India, Sep 22 2020 (IPS)

One of the worst fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the closure of industries in India, which caused thousands of migrant labourers to return home to villages in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal. In a region where the poorest have always been subjected to bonded labour, child labour and slave trafficking, it has meant revisiting the past.

“Uttar Pradesh has seen 35 lakh [3.5 million] workers return home. Azamgarh district alone has seen 1.65 lakh [165,000] returnees. Of these, only 10,000 people could be given employment under MNREGA [Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act],” activist and Rural Organisation for Social Advancement chief functionary, Mushtaque Ahmed, told IPS

• MNREGA guarantees 100 days of wage employment to a rural household where the adults are willing to undertake unskilled labour.

Of late, as the country has progressed into a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, and some workers — who comprised the bulk of the skilled labour in industrial belts — have returned to work.

Bonded labour – formally illegal but still continues

Bonded labour formally ended in India with the passing of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.

• The  Act seeks to end forced labour in all its forms, and is supported by other legislation, namely the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Contract Labour ( Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970, and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen ( Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service ) Act, 1979.

But in the underdeveloped districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where feudal lords exploited the lower castes and had them work for free on their lands in the past, it continues to exist in invisible forms, drawing sustenance from within the casteist social structure that has confined Dalits and Mahadalits to illiteracy and grinding poverty. 

The Mahadalits, are especially vulnerable, with their abjectly low literacy of 9 percent, as compared to the Dalit literacy level of 28 percent. First-generation learners for the most part, the Dalits and Mahadalits are generally unable to access government schemes that guarantee a better future. Often, the inability to pay back a small loan of Rs 5,000 ($68) or Rs 2,000 ($27) sees entire families being bound into slave or bonded labour in brick kilns, or farms owned by the person they are indebted to for generations.

Children also at risk

At times, families are forced to pledge a minor child to work for an unscrupulous trafficker, according to the Freedom Fund. 

The health infrastructure in eastern Uttar Pradesh and in Bihar districts along the Nepal border has always been wanting.

While the COVID-19 pandemic may have worsened the situation but matters become compounded as many villages in Bihar faced the fury of unprecedented floods last month, which saw almost 8.4 million people affected.  Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres in Bihar have collapsed, with the unprecedented floods straining them to the hilt.

• The ICDS  is a nationwide government programme under which children under six and their mothers are cared for through nutrition, education, immunisation, health checkup and referral services. The programme has managed to stem anaemia and other health problems mothers face in underprivileged, rural communities all over India.

Children are more at risk because of the current circumstances than previously.

Human trafficking for slave or bonded labour may either see a child being sent to a place thousands of kilometres away from home, or across the border into Nepal. Within India, the modus operandi involves sending children from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Bengal to a southern state where unfamiliarity with the local language prevents the child labourer from escaping or negotiating a way out and returning home.

With so few options, parents are sometimes lured with a lump sum of Rs 5,000 ($68) to Rs. 10,000 ($136) paid in advance, as Manav Sansadhan Evam Mahila Vikas Sansthan ( MSEMVS) executive director Dr. Bhanuja Sharan Lal told IPS. MSEMVS is an NGO that focuses on the eradication of child labour.

No option but to make children work

But the stories many of the survivors have to relate are harsh.

Wage labourer Umesh Mari from Mayurba village in Sitamarhi district in Bihar, had to take a loan of Rs 300,000 ($4,080) for his wife’s medical treatment.

Since Sitamarhi lacks healthcare facilities needed for serious medical problems, the family had to admit her to a hospital in the adjoining district of Muzaffarpur.

Unable to repay the loan, the family, comprising of four children and son-in-law, had no option but to look for additional, better-paying jobs.

It is how 13-year-old Ramavatar and his brother-in-law Kesari were recruited for a tile fitting job across the border, in Malangwa in neighbouring Nepal. The job promised a wage of Rs 300 ($4) per day. Once there, they found that the conditions entailed working from 9 am until 7 pm with just a half-hour break. It was bonded labour.

There was little food, and erratic or no payment for months. The recent COVID-19 lockdown helped Ramavtar escape and return to his village, as IPS found. However, the family remains worried on account of their unpaid loan. Chances are, Ramavatar may find it hard to resist the trafficking mafiosi, and may have to return to an enslaved existence in bonded labour in another factory once again.

Take the case of Devendra Kumar Mulayam, who hails from Shahapur in the Chandouli district of Uttar Pradesh. The second among five siblings of a landless Dalit family, Mulayam  told IPS how the family became desperate for a source of income following two loans that his father had to take — one was for the marriage of his elder sister marriage and second following an accident that resulted in this elder sister sustaining a sever head injury, which occurred after her wedding.

As the eldest son in the family, 12-year-old Mulayam had to drop out of school and start looking for a job, while his younger siblings had to forgo their education.

Courtesy of a recruiter, Mulayam soon found his way to a textile factory in Coimbatore, where he was hired as a loader, at Rs 150 ($2) per day in 2010.

He was made to work for 12-15 hours each day, and the payments were erratic. Worse still, he had to pay for his own treatment wherever he was injured during work. 

Mulayam and his fellow-workers remained closely guarded and were never allowed to move away from either their workplace or living quarters.

Any breach of “discipline” or error at work invited severe beatings. In 2011, when things became unbearable, Mulayam and 18 other fellow workers decided to protest. Theirs was one of the worst forms of bonded labour.

Recounting the horror, Mulayam told IPS, “We were heavily assaulted, and thrown out. Scared of being rounded up by the police and sent back to the clutches of our tormentors, we kept hiding in the forested tracts adjoining the town, for five days. Thankfully, I could manage to tell my family members back home of my plight. They sought the help of a local NGO, which managed to secure my release and arrange for my  return.”

Despite the pandemic, children are still being bonded.

“We recently rescued nine children from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh who were trafficked to a panipuri [an Indian snack]   factory in Telangana after their parents were paid an advance of Rs 10,000 each.  Once there, they were made to work from 2 am every morning to 4 pm in the evening. They were only given their meals, and had to work for free. Similar circumstances had driven eight children from Azamgarh (in Uttar Pradesh) to a textile factory in Gujarat where they were used as slave labour,” Lal told IPS.

• This is the first in a two-part series on bonded labour in India. Next week IPS will look at the government initiatives and impediments  in overcoming the problem.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

According to the United Nations, school closures resulting from the pandemic have affected 1.6 billion learners across more than 190 countries. It is estimated that some 23.8 million more children would drop out of school and an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the coronavirus pandemic. Education Cannot Wait has appealed for more funding to provide an education for 30 million refugees, 40 million displaced children, and 75 million children in conflict zones - of whom 39 million are girls. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
BONN, Germany/UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2020 (IPS)

Aryan is a 15-year-old girl from Afghanistan who lives with her family in a shelter in an undisclosed country in Europe. She doesn’t go to school. But she is hugely creative. And it shows in how she occupies her time during the day — writing poetry and making bracelets and earrings that she hopes to sell online one day.

Her mom is creative too. Though her creativity stems more from necessity and a need to care for her family. At the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns when Aryan’s mother couldn’t find a supply of protective masks for her family to wear, she made them out of socks.

Aryan likens the COVID-19 lockdowns to a war, one without the dropping of bombs.

But she says life is more difficult for those without a place to live, with no home and no shelter.

She thinks specifically of what is happening on the border of Greece and Turkey. In the refugee camps, particularly Moria, which is located on the Greek island of Lesbos.

“How crowded and cold it is there, how can people be so blind to forget the children, how their toys can become infected from dirty water and from garbage all around,” she says.

Not just a health crisis but an education crisis also

Aryan is sadly just one of the world’s 40 million displaced children. Her story is just a chapter of the larger story faced not only by refugee children but also the 75 million children living in conflict zones. Children whose lives have become more complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations, school closures resulting from the pandemic have affected 1.6 billion learners across more than 190 countries.

“We are facing an economic and a health crisis, which has now become an education crisis. And the people who are hardest hit are the 30 million refugees, the 40 million displaced children, the 75 million children in conflict zones. And we know from the reports that we’ve just heard … despite all our efforts the situation is just getting worse and not better and we have to do more,” former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown said yesterday Sept. 17.

Brown was speaking at a webinar on the sidelines of the 75th Session of the U.N. General Assembly hosted by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) — a multilateral global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises — titled “The Future of Education is Here for Those Left Furthest Behind”. He was joined by education advocates, leaders and politicians, as well as teachers from around the world. 

Seeing young children from Moira, forcibly on the move, must be catalyst for supporting their education

Brown, chair of the ECW high-level steering group and also the U.N. special envoy for global education, brought attention to the current situation in Moria, which was devastated on Sept. 8 by a fire.

According to Human Rights Watch, the destruction in the largest refugee camp in Europe left some 13,000 refugees and asylum seekers without shelter and services.

Greek authorities have been attempting to move people to a new camp, while Germany has offered to give shelter to some of the refugees and asylum seekers.

But Brown had raised the tragic situation of the camp two years ago.

“I highlighted the tragic situation of three young teenagers who couldn’t get [an] education or any resources at the Moria camp in Greece. Young people who were driven to try suicide themselves. Losing hope, desolate, they tried to take their own lives. And I appealed for more funds to help the refugees there and in the other camps nearby,” he recalled.

“A few weeks ago, when I was trying with others to get money into this camp for help with education, we had one of the worst fires we have seen. Today we are seeing hundreds of people moving from that area into other camps in the area but worried about their future,” Brown said.

He said that if there was anything to persuade people to do more and commit to the education of children in conflict it was seeing young children from Moira, forcibly on the move “having to find a new camp for themselves but still in need of the education and the help and the support that we haven’t been able to give so far,” Brown said, emphasising that this was the mission and task at ECW and to ensure that millions of people and displaced refugees have a better future.

ECW has reached 2.6 million children, raised an additional $23.6 million

Brown said that its inception a few years ago, ECW has created several million places for young people to receive an education when they are either displaced or in refugee situations. He also stressed that ECW has been the catalyst for other organisations to come together and do more.

Working with 75 partner organisations globally, ECW has so far provided $662.3 million for supporting education in emergencies.

In August, ECW launched its 2019 annual results report tiled Stronger Together in Crisis, showing that in 2019 alone the fund provided education to 2.6 million vulnerable children, raising $252.8 million from private and public donors. In total, since its inspection ECW has raised $600 million.

Thursday’s event, which hosted a new donation feature in partnership with Zoom and online fundraising platform Pledgeling, raised an additional $23.6 million to support vulnerable children and youth, particularly those affected by conflict, forced displacement and protected crises. The aid will focus on the most marginalised, including girls, refugees and children with disabilities, ECW said in a statement. Within the first few minutes of the meeting 4 donors had already pledged over $12,000.

But Brown pointed out that ECW will require $300 million in the coming year to provide the service needed for children.

ECW director, Yasmine Sherif, said despite the gains made over the years, “education is still not here for a large part of children and youth affected by conflict and crisis and forced displacement”.

She said ECW wanted to make education a reality for all the 75 million children in conflict zones, more than half of whom — some 39 million — are girls.

She also pointed out that the type of education delivered was also very important “to make sure that we deliver quality education, an education that is relevant”.

She explained that it was important that the curriculum thought what was relevant and important to learn in the 21st century but also addressed the specific needs of children or young people who had grown up in a country of violence or had been uprooted from their homes and forced to flee.

“There needs to be a holistic approach and to look at all the needs and the potential that they have because of what they have gone through,” Sherif said.

The global crisis in education – the stakes are far higher with COVID-19

A staunch supporter of ECW, and U.K. Minister for Overseas Territories and Sustainable Development at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Baroness Liz Sugg said that while there was already a global crisis before the pandemic, the stakes are “far, far higher” now.  

“Where conflicts rage, access education is not just crucial for the future of each individual child but for the reintegration, for economic development, and for building that sustainable peace we really want to see,” Sugg, who is also the U.K. Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, said.

She added that just because every country is facing economic instability at the moment, is not an excuse for inaction on education. 

16-year-old Catherine from South Sudan said that the most difficult part of the COVID-19 pandemic was not being able to attend school. “Before, I was out of school for one and a half years because I am an orphan,” she explained.

Catherine’s concerns about being able to attend school again are valid. According to a recent U.N. policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 on education, countries with low human development are facing the brunt of school lockdowns, with more than 85 percent of their students effectively out of school by the second quarter of 2020. It was also estimated that some 23.8 million more children would drop out of school and an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the coronavirus pandemic. Women and girls will ultimately bear the brunt of the worst impacts of the pandemic.

Ministers from Burkina Faso, Somalia and Ethiopia also highlighted the plight of many of their refugee children. 

Abdullahi Godah Barre, Minister of Education and Higher Education in Somalia, said 68 percent of the country’s children were out of school. 

Ethiopia’s Minister of Education Dr. Eng. Getahun Mekuriya discussed how, with one of the largest refugee populations in Africa, the country is addressing the current crisis. In the refugee camps, Mekuriya said, there is heightened food insecurity, inability to pay rent, among other issues — further exacerbated by the pandemic, which in turn has grave effects on education. 

The Ethiopian government has created a distant learning plan which is helping children to learn through television, radio and other digital platforms. 

“An estimated 5.1 million primary and secondary school children received this service,” Mekuriya said, adding that technology access and connectivity still remains a challenge for many in the community. 

U.N. Education chief calls for reimagining of education

Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, which hosts the ECW secretariat, called for a reimagining education — “of changing our way of thinking, of rewriting our story”.

“We really have to refresh our thinking about what education can be,” she said.

She shared her recommendations on what the steps forward ought to focus on:

• Quality: to ensure young people are taught fundamental skills, entrepreneurial skills to have as tools if they don’t have the chance to go higher education.
• Universality: “All children need this,” she said, “it doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban or rural world. We’ve got to come up with hybrid solutions.”
  
• Promoting humanitarian cases: “Humanitarian spots are harder,” she said, “Those who are living in and fleeing from conflict are hard to find, hard to settle — it can be hard to get them to a learning space.”
  
• Safety: Schools are also safe spaces for children, and she said it’s crucial to help them create that space for themselves
  

Despite the concerns and the high number of students the crisis is affecting, leaders were hopeful. Dag-Inge Ulstein, Norway’s Minister for International Development, said there is light ahead on the road. 

“The story about how humanity handled COVID-19 is being written now, and education will have a central place in the conclusion,” he said. “Let it not become the story of a lost generation, nor of a community that abandoned its promise to leave no one behind when push came to shove.” 

Brown echoed these sentiments. “I know that everybody will share the same aim, let us build a better future for this generation of young people. Let them have the education they need. They are more talented and with more potential than the underfunded education systems we’re providing them with at the moment. Let’s make sure that we can see the talent of a new generation realised and fulfilled,” Brown said.

But until then, life for Aryan remains a nomadic one.

Today, Aryan is sitting outside the shelter her family have been staying at. Her backpack full with her belongings.

She has found out that the family have to move. “This is how the situation of most refugees are running like this. Having their backpack, their suitcase, moving around, from place to another place,” she says in a video she has made for GlobalGirl Media — a digital journalism training and platform dedicated to providing content by, for and about girls and young women, globally.

“I can describe my situation like kicking the ball, and its very difficult. It’s very difficult.”

Security Council Members Hold Open Videoconference in Connection with Syria. Courtesy: United Nations/Loey Felipe

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2020 (IPS)

Children in Syria are facing the brutal brunt of the ongoing civil war in the country, now rendered further paralysed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and United States sanctions.

At the Sept. 15 launch of the report investigating human rights violations in Syria by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, experts warned that in addition to the already ongoing conflict, “newer forms of violence” was on the rise.

“While well documented violence such as arbitrary detention, disappearances, torture, and deaths in custody continue to be utilised by these actors, newer forms of violence including targeted killings, looting, appropriation of property are increasing in numbers and carry sectarian undertones,” Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, said yesterday.

The report monitored human rights conditions in the war-torn country between Jan. 11 and Jul. 1, 2020. It paints a grave picture especially about the condition of children, in addition to other human rights crises in the country.

Children are both victims to being recruited by the Syrian National Army (SNA), as well as sexual abuse, which is used as a means to inflict torture on other men, the report found.

It documented at least two occasions when members of the SNA forced male detainees to witness the rape of a minor in an attempt to “humiliate, extract confessions and instil fear” within them.

“On the first day, the minor was threatened with being raped in front of the men, but the rape did not proceed,” read the report. “The following day, the same minor was gang-raped, as the male detainees were beaten and forced to watch in an act that amounts to torture.”

“Women and young girls are being targeted more and more, [with] reports of rape and detention have risen quite a bit,” Hanny Megally, a member of the commission.

The SNA is also recruiting children to deploy them in conflict outside of the country, the report found.

Meanwhile, children recruited by the Syrian Democratic Forces/Kurdish People’s Protection Units would end up in detention centres on accusations of espionage and/or for being affiliated with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. According to testimony from adult detainees, the children were held in the same cells as adults, and it’s not clear if they had been charged with anything.

Children are also suffering alongside the rest of the country from grave food insecurity, according to the report.

About 9.3 million are currently facing food insecurity in the country, exacerbated further by the pandemic as well as U.S. sanctions.

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates about six million children have been born since the war began, whose only idea of life has been the conflict. 

Beyond these grave effects on children, other civilians remain at continuous threat of arbitrary detention, with risks of dying while in detention.

Megally said that the overall nature of attacks on civilians has also experienced change: there are now more assassinations, more people being kidnapped for extortions and ransom, and more people being attacked to silence their criticism. 

In a response to an inquiry by the media, Megally added that measures such as checkpoints, which are set up to restrict movements in order to contain the pandemic, were “often being used to detain and harass people who are trying to move for legitimate reasons.”

The report calls for leaders to immediately address issues of gender-based sexual violence, to have a “large-scale prisoner release”, and for all stakeholders — local and international — to “ensure and facilitate unfettered access for independent humanitarian, protection and human rights organisations in every part of the country, including to places of confinement or detention” in order to address the food insecurity concerns in the country.

Pinheiro further reiterated that in order to address this worsening crisis, it’s imperative that sectoral sanctions are waived to ensure that there’s movement of food and medical supplies, and that children and prisoners be released.

A 2009 study found that almost 250,000 children worked in auto repair stores, brick klins, as domestic labourers, and as carpet weavers and sozni embroiderers in Jammu and Kashmir. Laureates and global human rights activists have renewed their call for world leaders to double their efforts in protecting children from child labour and child trafficking during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Sep 11 2020 (IPS)

Addressing delegates at the end of the virtual 3rd Fair Share for Children Summit, 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi told global citizens that “business as usual” in dealing with COVID-19 is not going to be tolerated.

“We’re not going to accept the miseries of child labour and trafficking to continue to be normal,” he said.

The two-day summit, which concluded yesterday Sep. 10, saw laureates and global human rights activists renew their call for world leaders to double their efforts in protecting children during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Several Nobel laureates and heads states and government as well as heads of United Nations agencies spoke, including the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

“My dear children, we’re here to tell you one thing; we’re not going to fail you,” Satyarthi said, assuring the children of the world of their commitment.

“We’re not going to leave you. We’ll stand by you and fight for you,” he said during his concluding remarks. He demanded that the fair share for children must become the new normal.

Satyarthi, who is the founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children which hosted the summit,  further demanded that governments should establish social safety nets for the poor because they are the ones most impacted by the pandemic and that, once the COVID-19 vaccine is available, it should be accessible to everyone in the world.

Satyarthi pinned his hope on the youth whom he applauded for showing leadership during the Summit through their participation and speaking in support of children’s rights.

“Your authority, energy, vision and leadership are definitely a ray of hope in these difficult times,” she said.

He further called on the youth to continue campaigning for children should because the world cannot afford to lose an entire generation.

“Protection of children is not only affordable, but it is also achievable,” concluded Satyarthi.

1996 Nobel Peace Laureate and former president of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta called on global leaders to “unite and act now” against child labour and slavery.

“If we fail, we’re accomplices, we’re guilty of betraying children,” he said.

Ramos-Horta said destitute children are the most impacted by COVID-19 because they do not have access to clean water, three meals a day and no longer go to school.

Rula Ghani, the First Lady of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, called upon adults to be responsible not only for their own children but for every child throughout the world. She said it is everyone’s responsibility to nurture every child they can reach because each one has a potential for greatness and distinction.

Ghani decried the fact that wars and conflicts are tearing apart the very fabric of society in such a way that the sense of security, the comfort of belonging to a caring group and certainty of a bright future are fast becoming a luxury of a few.

“In a world where the social compact between society and its members no longer carries any meaning, where even medical emergencies such as COVID-19 can wreak havoc because of the absence of thoughtful coordination and prevalence of political interest, it is high time to stop and reflect,” she said.

While the world is battling with the worst global crisis since World War II and the most significant economic challenge since the great depression, it is also facing the biggest political crisis where presidents do not know how to tell the truth, observed Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Professor at Columbia University. Sachs, who is also the director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, said the world is also dealing with the abuses by political leaders who do not care and are not transparent.

“The humanitarian crisis is deepening dramatically, and we don’t even know the extent of it because it is moving faster than our data can keep up,” he said. “We know that hunger is rising, destitution is rising, and desperation is rising.”

Sachs recommended turning to the multi-level institutions in the short term, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which he said has done an excellent job of providing emergency assistance.

He called on the IMF, World Bank and other international financial institutions to provide far more resources, without the usual conditionalities. This will help avert a hunger crisis, the massive rise of deaths because of the diversion of health and medical personnel and greater levels of deprivation.

“The IMF has emergency financing facilities that have provided more than US$ 80 billion since the start of the crisis, but we need vastly more than that,” said Sachs.

Peter Kwasi Kodjie, secretary-general of the All-Africa Students Union, also called for more financial resources to be directed to children. While pleading with leaders to accept the reality of COVID-19 as the new normal, he said it cannot be the new normal for the many children who go to bed hungry because they no longer go to school. He noted that many children face the risk of not returning to school.

“Young people of the world are asking for a fair share of the money to be allocated to children who are marginalised to avoid disaster,” said Kodjie.

José Ángel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), also called on countries to ensure that children get a fair share of the global response to the pandemic.

“You can count on the OECD to help countries to put children at the centre of their social policies,” said Gurria. 

This was the first Laureates and Leaders for Children Summit to be held virtually owing to the pandemic.

At least 50 million children are on the move in the world today and millions more are affected by migration. Now more than ever, a rescue package is needed for these refugee children. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

Forced to flee wars and disasters, sometimes without family, and struggling to survive in the worst of circumstances, children on the move have long led very precarious lives. Be they refugees, internally displaced or asylum seekers, vulnerable and marginalised, they lose years of childhood. They are exposed to the worst forms of abuse, such as commercial exploitation and violence. Today, their situation is dire as they remain at the very bottom of the list to receive emergency measures to protect them from the impacts of COVID-19. 

Still, there is a deafening silence on the nature of a rescue package for the ultra-vulnerable child population.

Speaking on the second and final day of the Fair Share of Children Summit held virtually, Nobel laureates, leading international figures, heads of states and governments as well as heads of United Nations agencies, who include the Dalai Lama, 2014 Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee,  and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven have dispelled all doubt that without this package, the fallout of COVID-19 will be borne by the world’s most marginalised children.

Seme Ludanga Faustino has lived experiences of being a refugee. The co-founder of I CAN South Sudan, a registered refugee-led organisation, stated that the closure of schools and many other child-friendly spaces would be most devastating for displaced children as this is where they learn to cope and heal from traumatic experiences.

“These are children who need structured engagement the most. Even worse, many of them are now separated from their caregivers, who are often fellow refugees. One way to help these children is to support their caregivers to support this child population,” he advised.                                                  

With U.N Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates indicating that 50 million children are on the move in the world today and millions more affected by migration, now more than ever, a rescue package is needed for the world’s most marginalised and impoverished children.

Similarly, a newly launched report by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation titled “A Fair Share For Children: Preventing the loss of a generation to COVID-19” paints a disturbing picture of the harms and vulnerabilities facing children on the move. The number of children on the move has increased every year for at least a decade, and it is more likely now that the numbers will only grow during and post COVID-19.

The report further indicates that as of the end of March this year, the G20 countries alone had already committed over $5 trillion towards protecting the global economy. Since additional commitments from high-income countries have brought the figure to $8 trillion – a large chunk of this money will be used to protect businesses.

Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, stated that real change would begin when resources are directed where they are most needed.

Notably, there is still minimal movement at the national and international levels to address the non-health impacts of COVID-19 on the most marginalised citizens. The report further states that to date, “little is being actively spent on targeted interventions to support the almost 20 percent of children living on two dollars or less per day.”

Against this backdrop, a session, dubbed “Increased Vulnerability of Children on the Move”, examined the increased challenges and risks faced by children on the move due to COVID-19 such as the impact of new legislation imposed due to the pandemic, and explore ways to protect this deeply marginalised child population.

Session moderator Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, emphasised on the need to explore solutions.

Josie Naughton, CEO, Help Refugees, spoke of the need for political will as it is a sure way to the change that is needed for vulnerable child population.

Abraham Keita, a youth activist and 2015 International Children’s Peace Prize Winner, was born during Liberia’s brutal civil war and his father, a driver for a humanitarian organisation was killed in an ambush when he was only five years old.

He grew up in the densely populated informal settlements of West Point, Liberia in extreme poverty and great difficulties. But as those closest to the numbers are often the ones closest to the solutions, he said that beyond statistics are real lives. Keita emphasised that appealing for political will is not enough and that people must appeal to the moral conscience.

The “A Fair Share for Children” report reveals that by mid-April, 167 countries had closed their borders, and at least 57 states made no exception for people seeking asylum.

This is despite ongoing “168 armed conflicts, 15 wars and 23 limited wars. One in 10 children are living in zones of conflict,” said Philip Jennings, co-president, International Peace Bureau, 1910 Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation.

“We have this peace deficit which COVID-19 only makes worse the conditions of children on the move. I want world leaders and laureates to talk about peace. We need a global ceasefire. Sustainable peace has to be the message from us to the children,” he said.

The U.N. Refugee Agency’s most recent Global Trends report indicates that as of the of 2019, the number of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and asylum-seekers was at an all-time high with an estimated 79.5 million people, of which 13 million children were refugees.

Equally alarming, 400,000 asylum applications were made by children unaccompanied by any family member. Overall, at least 18 million children were internally displaced by conflicts or disasters.

The “A Fair Share for Children” report warns that as refugee camps are neither designed nor equipped for pandemics such as COVID-19, simple protective measures such as hand washing and social distancing are next to impossible to achieve. The report states that the maximum standards for a typical camp “call for a maximum of 120 people to one water tap and 3.5 square meters of living space per person. Most, if not all, refugee camps are operating beyond this capacity.”

Child rights experts now say that the world is sitting on a catastrophe, as these children will experience even deeper exclusion from any kind of social protection measures or safety nets.

Speakers at the summit, including Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, decried the fact that even before the pandemic, fundamental public services including education, healthcare, hygiene and sanitation, nutrition and child protection not to mention resettlement and asylum services, were already lacking for this extremely vulnerable child population.

He said that poverty had gotten even worse, there is a decline in migrant remittances and that many refugees who had temporary jobs, lost them.

“Extreme poverty is considered an act of violence, so right now, there is violence and injustice committed against children on the move in particular. More government support is needed and direct financial support not just for NGOs but for small businesses, including those owned by refugees. Countries must stop separating families and turning down asylum seekers,” he said today.

Marianna Vardinoyannis, U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Goodwill Ambassador and 2020 U.N. Nelson Mandela Prize Laureate urged participants and governments to open their eyes to the suffering of children on the move.

“There is so much that we do not see that defines the traumatic lives of these children. As we built better post COVID, education must be a priority for displaced children. Without an education, the children will lack the tools they need to rebuild their lives,” she cautioned.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2018, 400 million primary school-age children were already facing poor access to quality education leading to a lack of basic reading skills. Young people have added their voice in calling on world leaders to allocate at least 20 percent of the COVID-19 stimulus package to the marginalised children and youth. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

Young people have added their voice in calling on world leaders to allocate at least 20 percent of the COVID-19 stimulus package to the marginalised children and youth.

Addressing delegates at the on the final day of the third Fair Share for Children Summit chairperson of the Commonwealth Students’ Association, Dr. Maisha Reza said if 20 percent of the $5 trillion announced by G20 countries in March were allocated to children, it would fully fund the United Nation COVID-19 appeals and save over 70 million lives.

“How humanity responds collectively to the crisis today will determine the future that we build for our children and the future of our people and planet,” said Reza.

The summit, facilitated by the Laureates for Leaders and Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation – both of which were founded by 2014 Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi – brought together several laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams, international leaders and heads of United Nations agencies.

Reza challenged world leaders to take responsibility for their actions. They should not blame the pandemic for the global challenges of unemployment, hunger, crime and violence, among others. Instead, she said, COVID-19 amplified the already existing gaps and cracks that were already unresolved and overlooked.

Quoting from recently released A Fair Share for Children Report, Reza said before the pandemic in 2018, 400 million primary school-age children were already facing poor access to quality education leading to a lack of basic reading skills. Moreover, 258 children out-of-school in 2018.

The report further states that as a direct consequence of national lockdowns, school closures were implemented in more than 190 countries.

To date, more than 160 countries have continued to lock children out of school. At the peak of the pandemic 1.6 billion – about 91.3 percent of all enrolled students – were out of school or university, with the vast majority being under 18.

“It is not just COVID-19 that is exacerbated global inequality, but the world’s unjust response to COVID-19 will deepen inequality for a generation,” she said.

Dr. Maisha Reza said if 20 percent of the $5 trillion announced by G20 countries in March were allocated to children, it would fully fund the United Nations COVID-19 appeals and save over 70 million lives.

Reza criticised leaders for focusing more on multinational companies while leaving the marginalised and vulnerable to fend for themselves, adding that millions of children will pay the price with their lives unless action is taken.

She said the youth and students have to choose between fulfilling their economic potential and between contributing to their families’ sustenance.

“This is an extremely unfair choice that they have to make for the poor decisions of world leaders,” she said.

She further invited the youth to make use of alliances through student organisations, NGOs and international platforms such as the summit while using social media to hold their leaders accountable.

While urging governments to invest in education and children, Ulrich Knudsen, Deputy Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), warned that it would be a mistake not to give companies life support during the pandemic.

“It’s in the interest of everyone in society that we also give life support to companies,” he said in response to a question that governments seem to be prioritising corporates over marginalised citizens.

“If we don’t do that, the economy will break, and we’ll have even more inequality that hurts the vulnerable, be they youth, children women.”

He said after this crisis, there would be competing pressures on government budgets. Because they are spending so much now and that the funds have to be paid back governments will be faced with competing priorities such as the elderly, climate change and paying back loans.

“But there are unquestionable benefits of keeping schools open,” he said.

While applauding the youth in taking the lead to ensure that their voices are heard, Knudsen urged governments to create a conducive political environment for these issues.

“At OECD, we have youth- and child-sensitive policymaking. We need governments’ approach to issues that affect children and youth differently than others. We cannot expect that policies made for adults will not have adverse side effects for children and youth,” he said. 

The digital divide and economic inequalities came under sharp focus during the discussion. Knudsen said the significant disparities when it comes to access to technology had resulted in the vulnerable being left behind when doing e-learning or remote learning.

“If you don’t have access to a computer, you’re completely lost during a crisis like this one. There’s the economic inequality, and then there’s the digital divide, we need to address both,” he said.

Adding his voice about the digital divide was Edvardas Vabuolas from the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU). He said it is a well-established fact that many children are not accessing education during the pandemic because of lack of access to the internet and gadgets such as computers.

Dr Rigoberta Menchú Tum, 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate agreed, adding that it was time to talk about technology because, during the pandemic, fewer children had access to education. She further called for an education system that is multi- and bilingual.

“Budgets have to be devoted to education,” she said, through an interpreter.

She noted that some countries used the curfews as an excuse to become dictatorial states. 

Tum further called people in public office to use the lens of diversity during the post-COVID era so not to leave anyone behind in the future.

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi says that $1 trillion can solve many of the problems the world’s most marginalised communities are facing.

Satyarthi spoke to IPS in an exclusive interview on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children, which is founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

This fair share, the Laureates and Leaders for Children say, translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity and amounts to $1 trillion.

Watch as Satyarthi outlines just what the money will be spent on.

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe. Courtesy: Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi warns of the danger that over one million children could die, not because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis facing their families.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe.

He candidly noted that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised by governments and policies and that the political will and urgency of action was simply not there to offer them protection.

Satyarthi is undoubtedly one of the greatest child rights’ crusaders of our time. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) – India’s largest movement for the protection of children and centred around ending bonded and labour and human trafficking, Satyarthi has been relentlessly working to protect the rights of children for over four decades. Save Childhood Movement has rescued almost 100,000 children from servitude and bonded labour, re-integrating them into society and aiding them in resuming their education.

IPS interviews Satyarthi on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children – also founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

The pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe, and it is not just a moral obligation but also a practical step to protect these children, Satyarthi says.

He also elaborates what could be a fair share of the global pandemic recovery package for the children and how this could be managed. Excerpts follow:

IPS: Where does the world stand today in ensuring child rights? Which are the areas where we have clear progress, and where are we still failing?

Kailash Satyarthi (KS): I would be very blunt to say that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised in the policies and fund allocations and spending on them. Protection of children needs a lot of political will and a lot of urgency and action which was not there. But I would agree that we have been making progress, slowly but surely, we are trying to protect our children in different areas. There is clear evidence that the number of child labourers has decreased over the last 20 years or so, the number of out-of-school children has also dropped considerably. Similarly, we made progress in the field of malnutrition. So, there were many areas we made progress. But as I said before, we require a tremendous amount of political will and action to protect our children.

IPS: How has the COVID pandemic endangered lives of children across the world?

KS: Well, before the pandemic, we had several problems in relation to safety, education, health and freedom of children. And since these children belong to the most marginalised sector of society – they are children of unorganised workers, peasants, farmers, they are children of indigenous peoples and children belonging to refugee communities. So, they were already suffering, injustice was there, inequality was there, but COVID-19 has exacerbated that inequality and injustice, and we see the worst effect is on children.

Though there is no direct infection or disease, the indirect effect is alarming, and that has to be addressed now. It is very clear that if we do not take urgent action now, then we risk losing the entire generation. It is evident and eminent from all sources that the number of child labourers, the number of child marriages, school dropouts, the number of child slaves, even children engaged in petty crimes – these will increase.

So, we have to underline these factors which are impacting the lives of children and their families, of course. And we have to be extremely vigilant and active about it. So, that sense of moral responsibility and political responsibility should be generated and educated.

I also think that this crisis is the crisis of civilisations. We were thinking that since everybody is facing the same problem, the pandemic would be an equaliser. But instead of being an equaliser, it has become a divider. Divisive forces are quite active in society, and equality and injustice are growing in the children. So, first of all, as an individual and a concerned citizen, one should generate compassion.

Two Tamil refugee children play in Mannar in northern Sri Lanka. The COVID-19 pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

IPS: The government stimulus package is expected to provide employment and help in economic recovery. Is it feasible to use this specifically for child development and child protection?

KS: It is not only feasible, it is necessary. We cannot protect humanity and ethos of equality and justice until and unless we address the problems of the most marginalised children and people of the world.

I am quite supportive of the government stimulus package, which is $9 trillion so far. I will give you an example – the stimulus is prioritised to bail out their own companies. Most of the developed countries are putting up stimulus to bail out their own economy, their banks, financial institutions and companies. In the United States, some companies have all-time high stock market situations.

On the other hand, we have a danger that over a million children will die – not because of COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis, their parents are facing. So, this is injustice. How can you justify this? You need a stimulation package to bailout [the] economy, but you need a stimulation package to ensure that our children are protected. So, this is not just a moral question but also a very practical issue.

This is why in May earlier this year, I joined 88 Nobel Laureates and global leaders to sign a joint statement demanding that 20 percent of the COVID-19 response be allocated to the most marginalised children and their families. This is the minimum fair share for children.

IPS:  The theme of the summit is #FairShare4Children. What would be considered a fair share of the estimated $9 trillion set aside globally to mitigate the effects of the pandemic? Where are the most critical areas? And how should it be managed?

KS: Even if you only look at the $5 trillion packages announced in the first few weeks of the pandemic, 20 precent of that is $1 trillion – enough funding to fund all the COVID-19 U.N. appeals, cancel two years of debt for low-income countries, provide the external funding required for two years of the Sustainable Development Goals on Education and Water and Sanitation and a full ten years of the external funding for the health-related SDGs.

Within the estimated $9 trillion of governments’ aid, this would mean $1 trillion (for children). This funding would mitigate the increase child hunger and food insecurity, tackle the increase in child labour and slavery, the denial of education and the heightened vulnerability of children on the move such as child refugees and displaced children. These are the areas of immediate criticality. 

Some key demands to this end include – for one, the declaration of COVID vaccines as a global common good so that it is made available for free for the most marginalised communities. Secondly, the creation of a Global Social Protection Fund to provide a financial safety net to the poorest communities in lower and lower-middle income countries. Thirdly, all governments should cancel the debt of poor countries to allow them to redirect funds towards social protection. Lastly, governments should establish legislation to ensure due diligence and transparency for business and ensure its strict compliance to prevent the engagement of child labour and slavery in the global supply chains.

If we can prevent the devastating impact of COVID-19 on these areas in the present, if we can reduce the inequality in the world’s COVID-19 response, if we ensure the most vulnerable receive their Fair Share to we can then be in a position to salvage the future of our children.

Excerpt:

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, says the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families. Courtesy: Marcel Crozet / ILO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of millions of people worldwide, accounted for over 869,000 deaths, destabilised the global economy and triggered a marked rise in poverty and hunger in the developing world.

But the fallout from one of the most devastating consequences of the spreading virus is on the lives of a growing new generation: children.

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, rightly points out that the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families, who are the least equipped to protect themselves in times of global crisis.

“However, despite unprecedented government spending to protect national interests and the global economy,” he warns, “little has been allocated to protect the 1 in 5 children who live on $2 per day or less.”

Without urgent action now, he said, “we risk losing an entire generation”.

An upcoming summit – officially called the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit, scheduled to take place remotely on Sept. 9-10 – will focus on the plight of children, and more importantly, call for increased spending on marginalised families ravaged by the pandemic

Several Nobel laureates, along with world leaders and heads of UN agencies, are listed as speakers, including the Dalai Lama, Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

Kailash says if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

Kul Gautam, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic has commanded unprecedented attention and action throughout the world in recent months.

While some leaders have tried to capitalise it for their own political gain, there has also been an outpouring of support and solidarity for international cooperation to tackle it, he noted. 

Though subjected to unfair and unfounded criticism by leaders like United States President Donald Trump, he argued, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. system are playing a valuable coordinating role and providing much needed technical and material support, particularly for developing countries

“While the elderly and those with pre-existing health complications are the most susceptible to COVID-19, as always, women and children often become extra-vulnerable not only from the virus but also from their exposure to domestic abuse, gender-based violence and lack of effective social safety nets in most societies.”

“Millions of children being deprived of schooling and confined at home for a prolonged period threatens their future,” declared Gautam.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, points out the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. 

“We must ensure that the most marginalised children and communities have their fair share of the relief funds and services.  We must unite in this effort to protect the most vulnerable among us,” she warns.

Mohammad Rafique, along with other refugee children, gathered at the Rohingya market of Kutupalong camp to sell vegetables he brought earlier from a local market in this photo dated Mar. 11, 2020. This was two weeks before Bangladesh went into a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. the pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, says the pandemic’s public health emergency is set to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children, including those in detention.

Calling for government action, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, said: “We need the governments of the world to come together to announce a rescue package for the most marginalised children and their families.”

The ongoing crisis could increase the number of children living in monetary poor households by up to 117 million by the end of the 2020, according to the latest analysis from UNICEF and Save the Children. 

“Immediate loss of income often means families are less able to afford basics, including food and water, are less likely to access health care or education, and are more at risk of violence, exploitation and abuse”.

The children’s agency also pointed out that 188 countries have imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth. The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom.

“More than two-thirds of countries have introduced a national distance learning platform, but among low-income countries the share is only 30 percent. Before this crisis, almost one third of the world’s young people were already digitally excluded”.

UNICEF also said the COVID-19 crisis could lead to the first rise in child labour after 20 years of progress. Child labour decreased by 94 million since 2000, but that gain is now at risk.

“Among other impacts, COVID-19 could result in a rise in poverty and therefore to an increase in child labour as households use every available means to survive. A one percentage point rise in poverty could lead to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries.”

Gautam, who was Director of Planning and responsible for drafting the Plan of Action at the 1990 first-ever World Summit for Children, told IPS: “So far, the international response and focus of national action to combat COVID-19 has not given enough attention to the multi-dimensional plight of children, especially in poor countries and communities”.

He said there is also an imminent risk that “Vaccine nationalism” in the rich countries will lead to life-saving treatments being over-priced and hoarded by the rich leaving the world’s most vulnerable people, especially children, waiting in the cold.

In this context, the initiative by a group of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children calling for a fair share of the resources mobilised for COVID-19 to be devoted to the wellbeing of children is most timely and welcome, he said. 

“Children have only one chance to grow, and if they do not get the priority for protection from this devastating pandemic, they will be doomed for life. This simple truth is often forgotten or neglected by political leaders and decision-makers driven by short-term political calculations.”

Hence the importance of the voice of Nobel Peace Prize laureates with their moral authority and non-partisan credibility, he added.

A joint statement released here by Nobel Laureates and world leaders, said: “ We, the Laureates and Leaders for Children, call upon the world’s Heads of Government to demonstrate wise leadership and to urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised. Decisions made by our leaders, actions taken by us and the discourses that ensue in the next few weeks will be crucial.”

“They are going to shape the future of polity, economy, culture and morality. Development priorities will be recalibrated, individual freedom, privacy and human rights will be redefined. We must take this opportunity to transform traditional diplomacy and politics into compassionate politics. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in our world.”

While this virus does not differentiate between nationalities, religions or cultures, said the statement, it is most adversely impacting those who are already marginalised – the poor, women and girls, daily wage earners, migrant labourers, indigenous peoples, victims of trafficking and slavery, child labourers, people on the move (refugees, internally displaced and others), the homeless, differently abled people, among others.

The virus, restrictions placed on the majority of the world’s population, and the aftermath will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable amongst us

Elaborating further on the potential dangers of “Vaccine nationalism,” Gautam singled out the  example of “Vaccine nationalism” — i.e the U.S. refusal to join the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (Covax) – an international effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.  

The result of this US boycott of a joint effort by 170 countries coordinated by WHO, Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is that it could potentially lead to hoarding of the vaccine and higher prices for doses, he said.

“The ultimate victims of such “vaccine nationalism” are likely to be children in poor countries – who might be the last on the line to get the vaccine, contrary to the call for vulnerable “Children First” priority that organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children and others have been promoting for decades.” 

“I hope that the  Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit will raise their voice against the risk of any such “vaccine nationalism,” Gautam declared.

The Laureates and Leaders for Children, founded in 2016 by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative. According to the international Labour Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, one in five children in Africa are involved in child labour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Regina Njagi’s four children, aged between 11 and 17, have not benefitted from online learning since the COVID-19 led to the closure of all schools in Kenya, earlier in March. With the closure, Njagi lost her job as a teacher at a local private school.

“As a widow, these are desperate times for me. I exhausted my savings by paying school fees for my two children in high school, just three weeks before the closure. How many times can I borrow food from relatives and neighbours? Everyone I know is struggling so the children must work. Otherwise, they will starve,” Njagi tells IPS.

Nobel laureates galvanise action for world’s vulnerable children

Njagi is not alone in having to send her children to work for the families’ survival. The impact of the pandemic on children will be a focus of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit on Sept. 9 and 10. Several Nobel laureates and heads states and directors of United Nations agencies are listed as speakers, including Nobel laureates the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

To globalise compassion and galvanise action for the world’s most vulnerable children, the Laureates and Leaders for Children founded in 2016 by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

The Nobel laureates fear that despite pledges of unprecedented sums of money to support world economies, this may not reach children.

“As a result, COVID-19 could turn the clock back a decade or more on progress made on child labour, education, and health for hundreds of millions of children,” the Laureates say in a joint statement.

Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has personally rescued tens of thousands of children from slavery and will be one of the speakers at the Fair Share for Children Summit.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and concerns escalate that even more children have been placed in harm’s way, the Laureates and Leaders for Children is calling upon the world’s heads of government to demonstrate wise leadership and urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised with a special focus on children.

“One trillion dollars would fund all outstanding United Nations and charity COVID-19 appeals, cancel two years of all debt repayments from low-income countries, and fund two years of  the global gap to meet the SDGs on health, water and sanitation, and education,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

Education is a particularly vital step as quality education is the most powerful way to “end exclusion and change the future for marginalised children. There would still be enough left to fund social protection safety nets which are crucial in the fight against child labour. More than 10 million lives would be saved, a positive response by humanity to the tragedy of COVID-19,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

No school but work during the pandemic

But from May to July this year, all four of Njagi’s children were unable to attend school as they were employed on a daily wage to pick coffee at plantations in the Mbo-i-Kamiti area, Kiambu County, Central Kenya.

The children are currently engaged in this year’s second coffee picking season which has just begun and will last through October. Njagi says her children will then participate in the final and major coffee picking season from October through December.

Picking coffee is a difficult job, and her children must leave for the plantation, some two kilometres away from their home in Kagongo village, by six o’clock in the morning.

After harvesting the coffee, each worker, child or adult, is expected to load their harvest onto waiting trucks which transport the day’s pickings to the local coffee factory.

All workers must do everything possible to get onto the truck with their coffee or else they will walk to the factory, at least a kilometre away. 

“At the factory, each person places their coffee on a weighing scale, and each worker is paid their daily wage based on the weight. I advised my children to combine their harvest because if the weight is too low, they might not get paid,” she adds.

Children across the world at risk

The World Bank estimates that globally the pandemic will push 40 to 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with UNICEF, warns that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries. 

Child rights experts, such as Nairobi-based Juliah Omondi, are increasingly concerned that Njagi’s household is far from the exception. For millions of households across Africa, child labour is now a lifeline, and vulnerable children must adapt or starve.

Omondi is a member of the G10 (groups of 10 civil society organisations) local movement that agitates for the rights of women and children. She tells IPS that in “many African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Eritrea and Nigeria, international labour standards on the minimum age protection are ignored in the informal sector”.

In Nigeria, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2019, 50.8 percent of Nigeria’s children were working full time. Omondi adds that the situation is dire in Africa’s poorest countries, including Mali, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.

COVID-19 likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children

Danson Mwangangi, a regional socio-economic expert and independent consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda, says that the pandemic has provoked economic severe and labour market shocks and that children are bearing the brunt.

While the number of working children has fallen by 94 million since the 2000s, the plight of Njagi’s children confirms fears by the ILO that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children and roll back progress towards the eradication of child labour.  

“Ongoing crisis will make it exceptionally difficult for the United Nations to realise its commitment to end child labour in the next five years. For the first time in 20 years, we are going to see a spike in the number of child labourers,” Mwangangi warns.

The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable children clearly visible

ILO pre-pandemic statistics indicate that approximately 152 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in 10 children, worldwide work. Of these, 73 million are in hazardous work. Nearly half of all children in labour are from the African continent and are aged between five and 11 years. 

According to ILO, 85 percent of child labourers in Africa are in the agriculture sector; another 11 percent are in the services sector, with the remaining four percent in industry.

“We are beginning to see the fallout. More child marriages, more girls being employed as domestic workers and, unfortunately, domestic work for children in Africa has been normalised,” Omondi says.

Mwangangi agrees. He says that while statistics by child agencies, like the U.N. Children’s Fund, show that one in five children in Africa is in child labour, there is a general understanding that this does not include underage domestic workers such as house girls and farm boys.

Unfortunately, child labour is not the only problem facing marginalised and vulnerable children in Africa.  When Save the Children released a report in July entitled “Little Invisible Slaves”, it became apparent that COVID-19 has created more children vulnerable to trafficking and revealed that the world lacks much-needed child protection infrastructure.  

The report says that COVID-19 “changed the pattern of sexual exploitation, which is now operating less on the streets and more indoors or online”.

Omondi speaks of fears that millions of children are trapped in houses with their abusers and that it has becoming that much more difficult to reach them.

Save the Children estimates that of the 108,000 cases of human trafficking reported in 164 countries in 2019, at least 23 percent involved children.

Worse still, one in 20 child victims of sexual exploitation worldwide is under eight years old. Overall, Africa accounts for eight percent of child sex trafficking in the world.

According to the United States Department of State, 19 percent of world’s enslaved population is trafficked in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same breath, nearly half of all countries in Africa including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana have been flagged as notable sources, transit points and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. 

In Kenya, for instance, one of six such victims are children, this is according to the Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, Laureates and Leaders for Children caution that the inequalities the world’s children face, combined with the “impact of COVID-19 will reverberate for years to come”. But, they say,  “none will feel it as painfully as the world’s most marginalised children”.

the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)

The current coronavirus pandemic is having a profound affect on children in conflict zones — with girls especially being at higher risk of violence and sexual health concerns.

“For adolescent girls specifically, these disruptions can have profound consequences, including increased rates of pregnancy and child, early, and forced marriage,” Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy at the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), told IPS. 

Kowalski shared her concerns this week after an open debate on children and armed conflict at the United Nations, where experts shared the progress made in the efforts to pull children out of conflict-ridden circumstances, as well as how the current pandemic has made the issue more complex.

Virginia Gamba, special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, said her team had documented 25,000 grave violations against children. 

Henrietta Fore, executive director of U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said at the Jun. 23 briefing that although the organisation had rescued almost 37,000 children in the past three years, there remains massive concerns about the number of children still in dire situations. 

She cited the U.N.’s monitoring and reporting mechanism statistics over the last 15 years that reflect this reality.

UNICEF documented a total of 250,000 cases of grave violations against children in armed conflict, including:

• the recruitment and use of over 77,000 children;
• killing and maiming of over 100,000 children;
• rape and sexual violence against over 15,000 children;
• abduction of over 25, 000 children; and
• nearly 17,000 attacks on schools and hospitals. 

The numbers reflect a grave — and timely – reality. On May 12, terrorists blew up a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 24 people, including two infants. Médecins Sans Frontières‎ (MSF) has since pulled out from the hospital citing security concerns.  

This only deepens the problem for marginalised populations such as women and children. Fore said children in conflict zones who are now further caught in the pandemic are at a “double disadvantage”, given that they’re likely finding themselves at “increased risk of violence, abuse, child marriage and recruitment to armed groups”.

A general increase in conflict

Experts say there has been a general increase in organised violence in various parts of the world under the pandemic. Sam Jones, communications manager at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a data collection and crisis mapping project, told IPS that they’ve documented state repression and consequential violence in some places under the pandemic, while in some other cases, “warring parties have used the pandemic as an opportunity to escalate campaigns or push the advantage”.

Jones’ concern was reflected in Fore’s speech on Jun. 23, where she pointed out that when states manipulate this kind of crisis, it’s the children who are hardest hit. 

“Far too often, parties in conflict are using the pandemic and the need to reach and support children…for political advantage,” she said. “Children are not pawns or bargaining chips – this must stop.” 

Certain areas have seen what Jones said is the largest increase in organised violence since the pandemic broke out around the world: Libya, Yemen, India, Mali and Uganda. 

For all the countries, except Uganda, it was a mere intensification of already existing violence; in Uganda, the violence came in the form of government restrictions. 

“By mid-April, ACLED had already recorded more than 1,000 total fatalities from conflict in Mali. Over the first three months of the year, we recorded nearly 300 civilian fatalities specifically, a 90 percent increase compared to the previous quarter,” he said. 

“At best, violence has continued despite the pandemic, while at worst both armed groups and state forces could be using it as an opportunity to ramp up activity and target civilians,” he added. 

How conflict affects children and girls

The crisis in Mali is especially of importance as human rights advocates released a statement of concern just a day after the briefing, about Mali’s failure to curb female genital mutilation (FGM). 

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raised alarms about the report released by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which stated more than 75 percent of girls under the age of 14 had gone through the practice as of 2015. 

Among other findings, the committee found that government has “failed to guarantee victims of female genital mutilation access to adequate and affordable health care, including sexual and reproductive health care”. 

Concerns raised by experts such as Fore and Kowalski, when put next to the data about the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of FGM in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation.  

The committee report found that the women and girls in Mali already had limited access to sexual and reproductive health.

Meanwhile, Fore pointed out that the pandemic has exacerbated the lack of access for women and girls in countries that were already struggled to provide access. This raises the questions about how, on top of being a country in conflict, the pandemic is further exacerbating the health of girls who suffered FGM in Mali.

Fore said the current pandemic further adds layers to the crisis surrounding children in armed conflict.

“As the pandemic spreads, healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed by conflict, services have been suspended, children are missing out of basic medical care including vaccination, and water; sanitary systems have been damaged or destroyed altogether making it impossible for children to wash their hands,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Kowalski of IWHC raised concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull funding from the World Health Organisation, and what that means for girls caught in conflict. 

“In addition, in most countries affected by COVID-19 we are experiencing increases in gender-based violence, reduced access to contraception, abortion, and other reproductive health services, and a decrease in the quality of maternal health care — all which are intensified for women and girls in conflict,” she said. 

Gamba, after sharing the statistics of children suffering in conflict, ended her speech on an important note. 

“Behind these figures are boys and girls with stolen childhoods and shattered dreams, and there are families and communities torn apart by violence and suffering,” she said. “The only thing children and communities have in common today is their hope for peace, a better life and a better future. We must rise to meet that expectation.”

By Nina Suomalainen
GENEVA, Feb 11 2020 (IPS)

There has been a disturbing increase in violence perpetrated against children in conflicts worldwide, coupled with almost total impunity.

A crucial step towards stemming this deplorable trend is to strengthen accountability for child rights violations and to deter would-be perpetrators. This requires specialized child rights investigations, established and backed by the international community.

Child victims and survivors of human rights violations have unique needs and face different challenges than adult populations in achieving access to justice.

At Justice Rapid Response – a facility of more than 700 experts ready to be deployed to investigate international crimes – we have been building up our roster to include child rights experts to help bolster the ability of international justice mechanisms to address these needs.

A recent report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, focusing on child rights violations, highlights the need for investigations that deliver accountability.

The report documents the devastating consequences of the conflict in Syria on children. They have been killed and maimed, and subjected to myriad violations by warring parties since 2011. Rape and sexual violence have been used repeatedly against men, women, boys and girls as a tool to punish, humiliate and instill fear.

While there have been significant advances in the development of international legal instruments and standards to uphold child rights, much still needs to be done to ensure these obligations are enforced.

But as the conflict rages on in Syria, recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry risk falling on deaf ears.

Nina Suomalainen

The Commission, in its report, urges all parties in the conflict to respect the special protection to which children are entitled under international humanitarian and human rights law, and to ensure accountability for violations that have already occurred.

It also makes a series of recommendations on increasing the support for children who have suffered abuses.

In the context of Syria, there are limited avenues for bringing justice to the conflict’s victims. And even when those do exist, there are several barriers blocking children from participating safely in justice processes.

Child rights expertise was, however, central to the Commission of Inquiry’s documentation, analysis and reporting of crimes against children and its subsequent child-specific recommendations. This is helping to lay the foundations for evidence that can be used by future international justice mechanisms.

The findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria reveal part of a global crisis of child rights violations in conflict. According to a Save the Children report released last year, more than 420 million children worldwide – nearly one in five children – were living in ‘conflict zones’ or ‘conflict-affected areas’ in 2017, an increase of nearly 30 million children over the previous year.

The number of children living in conflict-affected areas has increased drastically since the end of the Cold War, states the report, due to increased incidence of armed violence in more urban settings, as well as numerous long-running conflicts.

Children are known to suffer disproportionately from the effects of conflict, yet there are still massive gaps in the availability of child-specific data to paint a clearer picture of their plight.

Fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry – established by the Human Rights Council or General Assembly to investigate human rights violations – rarely include a specific focus on child rights violations in their mandate or team composition.

As a result, grave violations involving children can occur untracked. This makes it challenging to respond in time to protect child victims and survivors, and harder still to hold perpetrators to account.

Exposing patterns of crimes involving children paves the way to accountability. However, the process of documenting and investigating these crimes presents unique challenges to avoid inflicting further trauma or harm to children.

Frequently deep-rooted gender biases against women and girls can also further impede the effectiveness and sensitivity of investigative and judicial authorities.

The limited international capacity for investigating conflict-related violence must not continue to block justice for child victims. Impunity for crimes involving children is a grim prospect for humanity. It not only has a destructive effect on individual child victims, but it also fuels grievances that inflame and perpetuate conflicts across generations.

In Syria, the situation is so dire that humanitarian organizations have trouble keeping count of the exact number of child casualties amid the chaos. While it is too late to bring back lives and years of childhoods lost, together we still have a chance to salve a collective and festering wound by bringing some amount of justice for child survivors.

The international community must not miss this opportunity.

Excerpt:

Former child solider Mulume Bujiriri* (front left) from the Democratic Republic of Congo. A new report on Children and Armed Conflict states that children allegedly associated with terrorist organisations should be treated as victims of terrorism, not accomplices and noted that often governments “criminalised” children instead of offering them the proper support. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2020 (IPS)

Counter-terrorism efforts adopted by governments around the world in response to threats of terrorism are affecting children negatively in numerous ways, a report by Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (Watchlist) claimed last week. 

The policy note claimed a lot of these counter-terrorism measures “lack adequate safeguards for children” and lose sight of how they’re detrimental to children against the bigger picture of fighting terror threats. 

It further listed six ways in which children are affected through counter-terrorism efforts by states: treatment of children alleged to have terrorist affiliations; inability of governments to maintain internationally recognised juvenile justice standards; erosion of “principle of distinction”; being huddled in the definition of “foreign terrorist fighters”; denial of access to humanitarian needs brought upon by measures such as sanctions; and the Screening, Prosecution, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (SPRR) measures being loosely applied. 

Children allegedly associated with terrorist organisations should be treated as victims of terrorism, not accomplices, the report read, adding that too often governments instead “criminalise” children without providing them proper support. 

“Children have been tortured, subjected to ill-treatment, and unlawfully and/or arbitrarily detained on national security-related charges for their actual or alleged association with these groups,” read the report. 

Experts echo this sentiment.

“Children may also be vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation by these armed groups,” Brigid Kennedy Pfister, Senior Child Protection Specialist at United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told IPS. “From north-east Nigeria to Somalia, Iraq and Syria to Yemen and beyond, children who have been recruited and exploited by armed groups in any kind of conflict are first and foremost victims whose rights have been violated.”

According to a 2019 U.N. report on terrorist exploitation of the youth, children can get recruited by terrorist units for a variety of reasons, such as their location and its proximity to a terrorist group, financial instability, societal perceptions or political marginalisation, and exposure to extremist propaganda — factors children have little control over. 

“We know that armed groups use duress, coercion, manipulation and violence to force or persuade children to join them, while some children may have lived in areas controlled by these armed groups have no meaningful choice but to associate with them,” saysPfister. 

That is why it’s crucial that children are provided with care instead of further marginalisation if they are preyed upon by terrorist groups.

“All children in these situations, must be treated primarily as victims of human rights violations. Children affected by armed conflict should be supported with evidence-based services that aid their recovery and support their reintegration into communities,” says Pfister of UNICEF, adding that the children should instead be provided support to “reintegrate into their communities and recover.”  

Meanwhile, it’s also important to ensure that international laws and procedures are followed in the event that children are detained. 

As the Watchlist report claims, special provisions designed for children in the justice system, as dictated by International Humanitarian Law (IHL), must be followed. 

Pfister, of UNICEF, agrees. “Detention of children should only be a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible time,” she says. “Children should not be investigated or prosecuted for alleged crimes committed by their family members or for association with designated terrorist groups or other armed groups. Children should be provided with psychosocial services, legal assistance and support to reintegrate into their families and communities.”

While children are vulnerable to falling prey to terrorist ideology or recruiting due to a number of reasons, it’s not that the population is devoid of concerns about terrorism. According to a UNICEF survey conducted across 14 countries in 2017, violence and terrorism are concerns on children’s radars — as issues that they would be impacted by as well as issues their peers will suffer from. The survey included children from the ages of 9 to 18, according to Pfister, who shared the data with IPS.

“Children across all 14 countries surveyed were equally concerned about terrorism with 65 percent of all children surveyed worrying a lot about this issue,” she said. 

As such, heavy concerns remain regarding children’s well-being in conflict-prone areas. There are numerous ways in which they can be affected, says Pfister, echoing the findings of the Witness report. 

“Children are disproportionately victims of armed conflict, including conflicts with armed groups that target and terrify civilians,” she told IPS. “Children may be caught up in attacks themselves, or lose their parents, family members or caregivers. Their homes, schools or the hospitals and health clinics they rely on may come under attack.”

Currently UNICEF operates in 14 countries providing services to children on their path out of armed forces and armed groups, says Pfister, and working with governments to advocate for children to be identified as victims so that their families receive support to rehabilitate them. 

Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Yasmine Sherif, Director Education Cannot Wait, UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. Credit: ECW/Kent Page

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

As massive protests escalated worldwide last month, millions of children walked out of schools to demonstrate against the lackadaisical response – primarily from world leaders –to the ongoing climate emergency resulting in floods, droughts, typhoons, heat waves and wildfires devastating human lives.

Gordon Brown, a former British Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy for Global Education, rightly pointed out a harsh reality: there are also millions of children who, ironically, have no schools to walk out from.

The figures are staggering: there are 260 million who don’t go to schools, mostly because there are none, while the education of an estimated 75 million children and youth have been disrupted by humanitarian crises.

One of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4) is aimed at ensuring that everyone—”no matter who they are, or where they live” – can access quality education by the targeted date of 2030.

But achieving that formidable goal has been undertaken by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) described as the first global, multi-lateral fund dedicated to education in emergencies.

Launched in 2016, and hosted by the UN children’s agency UNICEF, ECW has provided educational opportunities, in its first two years of operation, to over1.5 million children and youth caught up in the widespread humanitarian crises.

And ECW has invested in 32 countries, including Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Nigeria, State of Palestine, Somalia, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe, providing schools and quality education in crisis settings.

But still, it has a long way to go because, at the current rate of progress, about 225 million young people will not be in school by 2030.

At a high-level UN summit meeting in September, ECW got a big boost, when world leaders pledged a record $216 million for children’s education.

Asked how confident she was that the ECW can help meet SDG4 – particularly when the UN remains skeptical of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, ECW Director Yasmine Sherif said: ‘I have hope that we can narrow the gap for the SDG4 target and at Education Cannot Wait, we are all highly motivated to contribute’.

However, she said, this will require increased, bold financial investments and funding in SDG4, especially for the 75 million children and youth left furthest behind in countries of conflicts, disasters and displacement.

ECW has put in place a business model that in a short period of time has proven to work and accelerate SDG4, said Sherif, a human rights lawyer with 30 years of experience in international affairs, including 20 years in management & leadership, and graduated with an LLM from Stockholm University in 1987 and joined the United Nations in 1988.

It is a model that translates the UN reform agenda and the New Way of Working into joint programming with governments, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), enjoys strong strategic buy-in from donor partners who are increasingly investing in ECW as a catalytic and speedy funding mechanism, while also rolling out the Grand Bargain commitments, including the localization agenda, cash-assistance and significantly contributes to strengthened humanitarian-development coherence, she declared.

“In other words, the political will is there, organizational partners are committed to working together, and ECW’s investments are crisis-sensitive and rapid, while also focused on quality. Together with our partners, we move with humanitarian speed to achieve development depth. The determining factor will thus be financing.”

She pointed out that quality, inclusive education costs money and those costs are significantly higher in situations of armed conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters, where the education sector is often partially or wholly destroyed, where access is a major challenge and where insecurity, the constant threat of violence and an ever-changing environment requires extraordinary precautions and measures.

“That is why these children and youth are left furthest behind in the first place, and we intend to reach them. But it largely depends on increased, urgent financing. ECW is calling on world leaders, private sector and philanthropic organizations to mobilize $1.8 billion by 2021 to reach children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises with education”.

Over the longer term, research from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in 2016 estimated that up to 2030, US$8.5 billion will be needed annually from the international aid community to provide a basic education package for the estimated 75 million children affected by crises, that is, US$113 per child, said Sherif who has served in New York, Geneva and in crisis-affected countries in Africa, Asia, Balkans and the Middle East.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: In terms of access to children in conflict situations, what crisis has been the most difficult? Yemen? Afghanistan? Syria? How do you monitor these situations? Or are most children in these war-ravaged countries left out of your mandate — perhaps due to security and/or lack of access reasons?

SHERIF: Education Cannot Wait was established at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 with a mandate to reach 75 million children and youth left behind due to emergencies and protracted crises. Our mandate is precisely that: to reach them.

The more exposed they are, the more insecurity that envelopes them, the more deprivation and injustice they suffer, the stronger is our incentive and responsibility to ensure they can claim their right to quality education. Yes, access is very difficult during an active armed conflict. Yet, we must together with partners find solutions to overcome the challenges and obstacles. The ultimate solution is of course a political one: peace.

So far, Education Cannot Wait and our in-country partners – including host-governments, UN agencies, civil society, private sector – and importantly, local organizations, communities, teachers and parents – have reached over 1.5 million girls and boys in the past 24 months and the numbers keep rising.

For a variety of reasons, not least insecurity and access, Yemen is a herculean challenge for delivering on a development sector like education. Still, we have been able to deliver partial education support to an additional 1.3 million children and youth who were consequently able to take end-of-cycle exams and receive food rations. As this type of assistance is different from the assistance provided in other countries, ECW beneficiaries in Yemen are featured separately.

IPS: Besides conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters hindering SDG4, isn’t the lack of education also remotely linked to widespread poverty in developing nations? Is there a co-relation between the two?

SHERIF: Absolutely. In fact, it is not question of a lack of education being remotely linked to poverty, there is in fact a direct correlation. It is all interrelated: education and poverty; education of girls and gender-inequalities; education and the rule by force as opposed to the rule of law.

Indeed, quality and inclusive education – SDG4 – is the very foundation of all the other SDGs. How is it possible to build a socio-economically viable society if the citizens and refugees in that society cannot read or write, cannot think critically, have no teachers, no lawyers, no doctors.

Education is a sound economic investment: for each dollar invested in education, more that $5 is returned in additional gross earnings in low-income countries. Education empowers the most marginalized: a child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of five.

Education is key to promoting peace, tolerance and mutual respect: it reduces the likelihood of violence and conflict by 37% when girls and boys have equal access to education.

IPS: Are Western nations the only major donors for ECW? Are there any political and economic heavy weights such as China, Saudi Arabia and India who are donors or potential donors?

SHERIF: There are currently 18 strategic financial donor partners to Education Cannot Wait and each year new partners join up with our movement. These include governments, private sector and philanthropic organizations from various regions including North America, Europe, Oceania and the Middle East.

As a vote of confidence in the progress we are achieving, several early partners have already recommitted new funding. As the global, multilateral fund for education in emergencies and protected crisis hosted by the United Nations with its 193 UN Member States, we believe that increasing investments in Education Cannot Wait will continue to encourage more strategic donor partners in the larger UN family – whether they are from the north or the south, east or west.

We are all one humanity, and we have a collective responsibility to ensure that all children and youth in conflicts, natural disasters and displacement can exercise their human right of a quality education.

IPS: On fundraising and educational goals, is there any coordination between ECW and the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFED)? if not, how different are they?

SHERIF: We have a shared understanding of the colossal needs to address the challenges of education worldwide and ECW and IFFED are very complementary. So, coordination and cooperation come very easily.

The most optimal coordination always occurs where there is a shared vision and a clear division of labor. ECW and IFFED have two different business models and each targets different sides of the same coin, which allows us to maximize collective impact in each context. The same complementarity pertains to GPE, which also has a different business model and focus.

All approaches are needed and by complementing each other’s efforts, we can achieve real results for children. No one can do it alone. In the field of service, it is all about working together, complementarity and collaboration.

IPS: Can the funds you raise be described as un-earmarked core resources, or are some of them earmarked by donors as to where you should spend them– and on which humanitarian crisis? In short, do you have a free hand or are they funds with strings attached?

SHERIF: More than half of the funding ECW has is unearmarked, though we do also have some earmarked funds. We have a shared understanding among our strategic donor partners based on a comprehensive financial analysis, humanitarian and development needs assessments.

There are no political strings that hamper the operations and we work on the basis of combined humanitarian principles (humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence) and development principles (national ownership, capacity development and sustainability).

ECW adheres to organizational standards of accountability, transparency and risk-mitigation, and our donors are proactive and strategic partners in all of this. So, from these important principles and perspectives, while we do not have a free hand to do whatever we want, thankfully, we are free to effectively and speedily serve those left furthest behind. And, that is the greatest freedom of all.

If you want to learn more about Education Cannot Wait and its efforts to get children and youth caught in armed conflicts, forced displacement, natural disasters and protracted crises, please follow ECW on Twitter at: @EduCannotWait and visit their website here: https://www.educationcannotwait.org/”

Fanta Mohamet, 14, writes on the blackboard at the school she attends in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for refugees in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

By IPS Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The day members of the armed extremist group Boko Haram came to their home in Nigeria to search for her father, a police officer, was the day everything changed.

The fate of her sister is unknown but each year thousands of girls are abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

There are 1,500 other displaced people who live in the settlement in Zamaï – more than three fifths of whom are children. And while life remains difficult, Fanta has something many other children of violence in the region do not, she is able to continue her education despite the prevailing insecurity.

According to new report released Aug. 23 by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), nearly two million children in West and Central Africa are being robbed of an education due to violence and insecurity in and around their schools.

“Ideological opposition to what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of the disputes that ravage the region. As a result, schoolchildren, teachers, administrators and the education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. And region-wide, such attacks are on the rise,” UNICEF noted.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are experiencing a surge in threats and attacks against students, teachers and schools.

Areas where schools are primarily affected by conflict. Courtesy: UNICEF

The report also noted:

• Nearly half of the schools closed across the region are located in northwest and southwest Cameroon; 4,437 schools there closed as of June 2019, pushing more than 609,000 children out of school.

• More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on schools globally in 2019 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.

• Between April 2017 and June 2019, the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures due to violence, from 512 to 3,005.

• And CAR saw a 21 percent increase in verified attacks on schools between 2017 and 2019.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Muzoon Almellehan travelled to Mali earlier this week and witnessed first hand the impact on children’s education.

“Deliberate attacks and unabating threats against education – the very foundation of peace and prosperity have cast a dark shadow on children, families, and communities across the region,” said Gornitzka. “I visited a displacement camp in Mopti, central Mali, where I met young children at a UNICEF-supported safe learning space. It was evident to me how vital education is for them and for their families.”

UNICEF has supported the setup of 169 community learning centres in Mali, which provide safe spaces for children to learn.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), a coalition of international human rights and education organisations from across the world, noted that in the past five years the coalition had documented more than 14,000 attacks in 34 countries and that there was a systematic pattern of attacks on education. “Armed forces and armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in educational settings, or along school routes, in at least 17 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the same period.”  

In May, GCPEA released a 76-page report on the effects that the 2016-2017 attacks by armed groups on hundreds of schools in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo had on children.

Based on over 55 interviews with female students, as well as principals, and teachers from schools that were attacked in the region, the report described how members of armed groups raped female students and school staff during the attacks or when girls were fleeing such attacks. Girls were also abducted from schools to “purportedly to join the militia, but instead raped or forced them to “marry” militia members”.

“Being out of school, even for relatively short periods, increases the risk of early marriage for girls,” GCPEA had said.

UNICEF raised this also as a concern for children affected by the conflict in West and Central Africa.

“Out-of-school children also face a present filled with dangers. Compared to their peers who are in school, they are at a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups. Girls face an elevated risk of gender-based violence and are forced into child marriage more often, with ensuing early pregnancies and childbirth that threaten their lives and health,” the UNICEF Child Alert titled Education Under Threat in West and Central Africa, noted.

Fanta Mohamet, 14, on her way home from school in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for displaced people in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UNICEF has long been sounding the alarm about the attacks on schools, students and educators, stating that these are attacks on children’s right to an education and on their futures.

The agency and its partners called on governments, armed forces, other parties to take action to stop attacks and threats against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central Africa – and to support quality learning in the region.

The U.N. body also called on States to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration. The declaration provides States the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict.

“With more than 40 million 6- to 14-year-old children missing out on their right to education in West and Central Africa, it is crucial that governments and their partners work to diversify available options for quality education,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa Marie-Pierre Poirier. “Culturally suitable models with innovative, inclusive and flexible approaches, which meet quality learning standards, can help reach many children, especially in situation of conflict.”

UNICEF is working with governments across West and Central Africa to offer alternative teaching and learning tools, which includes the first-of-its-kind Radio Education in Emergencies programme. Other interventions also include psychosocial support, the distribution of exercise books, pencils and pens to children to facilitate their learning.

“Education is important. If a girl marries young, it’s dangerous. If her husband doesn’t care for her, with an education she can take care of herself,” Fanta said.

United Nations staff hold signs with photos of children stating they are not targets. The U.N. has struck a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to stop using child soldiers and to release all youngsters from their ranks. Courtesy: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have struck a deal with the United Nations to stop using child soldiers across swathes of eastern Syria under their control and to release all youngsters from their ranks, the U.N. announced Monday.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the SDF, an alliance of armed groups that includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), signed an accord over the weekend to halt recruitment of children under 18 years and to punish any officers who break the new rules.

The YPG has been identified as a recruiter of child soldiers in the U.N.’s annual “list of shame” since 2014. In its most recent annual study, the world body confirmed 224 cases of minors being recruited by the group in 2017.

“It is an important day for the protection of children in Syria and it marks the beginning of a process as it demonstrates a significant commitment by the SDF to ensure that no child is recruited and used by any entity operating under its umbrella,” said the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba.

The deal was the result of months of talks between the U.N. and the SDF, which must now identify any boys and girls among its force and send them back to their families. The group must also discipline officers who break the new rules.

Conditions for children in Syria are among the “direst” on her agenda, Gamba said. In 2017, she confirmed at least 6,000 violations had been committed against youngsters by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Worse still, the patchwork of rebels, terrorists and other armed militias fighting in Syria’s chaotic civil war committed more than 15,000 violations against children — ranging from recruitment to rapes, killings, maimings and the bombing of schools.

In addition to the YPG, the U.N. has named and shamed Syrian government forces, the rebel Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State (IS), the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group, Jaish al-Islam and Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of al-Qaeda’s former affiliate the al-Nusra Front.

After releasing all child soldiers and fulfilling the terms of its deal with the U.N. — known as an “action plan” — an armed group can be removed from the U.N.’s list of shame, as has happened with militias in Congo, Chad and Ivory Coast in recent years.

“Action plans represent an opportunity for parties to change their attitude and behaviour so that grave violations against children stop and are prevented to durably improve the protection of children affected by armed conflict,” Gamba said.

The SDF controls the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates river after driving back IS in a series of advances from 2015 that culminated in March with the group’s defeat at its last holdout in Baghouz, near the Iraqi border.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been problematic, as Turkey views the Kurdish-led force as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a domestic independence group that Ankara sees as a terrorist organisation.

Children are among the victims of a recent spike in fighting in Syria’s Idlib Province, the last remaining bastion for anti-government rebels and where a shaky truce brokered by Russia and Turkey appears to be falling apart.

Thousands of pregnant women, vulnerable infants and young children are among the estimated 330,000 people fleeing conflict in the northwestern area, the Christian aid group World Vision said in a statement Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine the trauma, distress and physical toll that the flight from air strikes and bombs has on families in Idlib. And it’s even worse for pregnant women and those with babies and young children,” said Mays Nawayseh, a World Vision aid worker.

The war in Syria, now in its 9th year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions since it started with the violent repression of anti-government protests in March 2011.

By Oscar Arias Sanchez
SAN JOSE, Aug 23 2015 (IPS)

Twenty-eight years ago this month, an indigenous woman stood in the plaza in Guatemala City, watching as the presidents of Central America walked out into the street after signing the Peace Accords that would end the civil wars in our region. When I reached her, she took both my hands in hers and said, “Thank you, Mr. President, for my child who is in the mountains fighting, and for the child I carry in my womb.”

Oscar Arias

I don’t need to tell you that I have wondered about that woman’s children ever since. I never met them, but those children of conflict are never far from my thoughts. Those children, and others like them, were the audience of the peace treaty I had drafted. They were its true authors, its reason for being. Theirs were the human lives behind every letter we put onto the page, every word we negotiated.

For the presidents who signed the treaty, achieving peace was the most important challenge of our lives. For those children, it was life or death.

But our victory for peace in 1987 did not fully safeguard those children, or millions more like them, because the weapons that had poured into our region during our conflicts did not disappear when the white flag was raised.

For years after arms suppliers channelled weapons to armies or paramilitary forces during the 1980s, those weapons were found in the hands of the gangs that roamed the countryside of Nicaragua, or of teenage boys on the streets of San Salvador and Tegucigalpa. Other weapons were shipped to guerrilla or paramilitary groups, as well as drug cartels in Colombia, ready to destroy yet more lives.“Throughout modern history, we have, in effect, told the children of the world that while we will regulate the international trade in food and textiles and any other product under the sun, we are not interested in regulating the international trade in deadly weapons”

We had walked into a new era of peace, but the weapons of the past were shackles at our feet.

As I watched this happen in my region, I also learned that the international trade in arms, free from any regulations whatsoever, was feeding unnecessary violence like this all over the world.

Throughout modern history, we have, in effect, told the children of the world that while we will regulate the international trade in food and textiles and any other product under the sun, we are not interested in regulating the international trade in deadly weapons, even when those weapons are being sold to dictators or other violators of human rights, or placed directly into the hands of child soldiers.

So, in 1997, I began my call for a treaty to regulate the trade of arms. I was quickly joined by fellow Nobel Peace laureates, and then by friends and allies all over the world. On Christmas Eve 2014, the International Arms Trade Treaty finally took effect. And now, in Cancún, Mexico, between Aug. 24 and 27, the first-ever Conference of Parties to the Treaty is being held so that its implementation can move forward.

I never thought I would see this day; I am delighted that I have. I am also filled with new determination to make sure that the treaty lives up to its potential.

For the treaty is a powerful tool, but it will only protect our children if we give it teeth. It will only protect our children if we implement it fully. It will only protect our children if we ensure that consensus is not used as an excuse for inaction.

I urge the 72 nations that have ratified the treaty to define an alternative to consensus so that one party cannot paralyse implementation. The perfect is the enemy of the good – and in this case, with human lives depending on our swift resolution of pending issues, inaction would be anything but perfect. It would be a travesty.

We must also continue to raise our voices in the face of tremendous opposition from groups that continue to oppose the treaty, arguing that it infringes upon national sovereignty. Quite the opposite is true: no sane definition of national sovereignty includes the right to sell arms for the violation of human rights in other countries. A nation willing to carry out such an act is not defending itself, but rather infringing upon the sovereignty of other nations that only want to live in peace.

We must also avoid using the danger and terrorism in the world today as an excuse for lack of regulation. Cicero’s famous phrase “silent enimleges inter armas” – among arms, laws are silent – has often been used to support the mind-set that the law does not apply during times of war.

But it is at times of war that the law must speak most bravely. When weapons are circulating freely into the worst possible hands, the law must speak. When the lives of the innocent are placed in danger by an absence of regulation, the law must speak.

And we must speak, today – in favour of this crucial treaty, and its swift and effective implementation. If we do, then when today’s children of conflict look to us for guidance and leadership, we will no longer look away in shame. We will be able to tell them, at long last, that we are standing watch for them. We are on guard. Someone is finally ready to take action. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

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

Aid from the UK is supporting a network of orthopaedic centres across Afghanistan to assist those affected by mobility disabilities, including hundreds of mine victims. Credit: DFID – UK Department for International Development/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 2015 (IPS)

No one will deny that when a child – any child – is killed, it is a tragedy. Imagine, then, the extent of the tragedy in Afghanistan where, in just four years, 2,302 children have lost their lives as a result of ongoing fighting in this country of 30 million people.

According to his latest report on children and armed conflict in Afghanistan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon states that more kids were killed or maimed in 2014 than in any previous year under review.

During the reporting period from Sep. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2014, an additional 5,047 young people were badly injured, leaving many crippled for life.

Ground engagements were reportedly the number one cause of child casualties, leaving 331 children dead and 920 injured in 2014; these figures represent a doubling of the number from the previous year.

Armed groups’ use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in populated areas resulted in 664 casualties, while suicide attacks took the lives of 214 children – an increase in 80 percent compared to 2013.

The report also stated that “explosive remnants of war killed or maimed 328 children”, while international military airstrikes left 38 kids either dead or injured – including eight from drone strikes alone.

The biggest culprits appear to have been the Taliban and the Hizb-e-Islami, followed closely by the Afghan National Securities Forces, who were responsible for 126 killings and 270 injuries.

Five kids were killed and 52 injured in cross-border shelling from Pakistan. The U.N. was unable to verify the cause of death in 163 cases, and chalks up a further 505 injuries to “crossfire”, without being able to attribute responsibility to any particular group.

“These tragically high casualty numbers show that children are bearing the brunt of the conflict, and unfortunately this trend continues with the deterioration of the security environment into 2015,” Leila Zerrougui, the Secretary-General’s special representative for children and armed conflict said in a press release last week.

Various actors, primarily the Taliban and similar armed groups, forcibly recruited an estimated 68 children into their ranks. In an even more troubling trend, kids continue to carry out suicide attacks for the Taliban and perform a range of dangerous or potentially life threatening tasks like planting IEDs or acting as spies.

Detention and torture of children is also a major cause of concern for rights activists, with the ministry of justice reporting 258 boys held in juvenile detention centres on charges relating to national security, including “association with armed groups”.

Between February 2013 and December 2014, the U.N. interviewed 105 child detainees, 44 of who claimed they had experienced ill-treatment or torture.

Another aspect of the conflict that directly impacts children here is the systematic and sustained attack on schools throughout the country.

U.N. researchers verified 163 incidents, including the placement of explosive devices within school premises, attacks on schools used as polling stations, threats against protected personnel or teachers, and the targeting of girls’ education by way of intimidation, propaganda, or physical attacks.

The U.N. believes that 469 Afghan schools are closed as a result of the shaky security situation, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Taliban fighters reportedly active in most provinces around the country.

Children are also at risk of sexual assault – in the review period, eight boys and six girls were victims of sexual violence, with four of the verified cases traced back to the national police and one to a “pro-government militia commander.”

Furthermore, “Twenty-four boys and two girls were abducted in 17 separate incidents, resulting in the killing of at least four boys by the Taliban, the rape of two girls by the local police, and the rape of a boy by a pro-Government militia,” according to the U.N.

As a new government attempts to gain control over the situation, U.N. experts are hopeful that the deadly tide can be reversed.

“I look forward to working with the Government of Afghanistan even more intensively in the months ahead as we move towards fully implementing the country’s Action Plan for ending recruitment and use of children,” Zerrougui said at the report’s launch this past Thursday.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Palestinian children, no matter how young, are often victims of mistreatment in Israeli police and military detention facilities. Photo credit: UNICEF/El Baba

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council demanding that action be taken against Israel over the abuse of Palestinian children after they have been arrested by Israeli security forces.

“Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers,”  wrote Mansour. “These crimes committed against our children are intolerable and unacceptable.”

"Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers” – Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations
The letter, sent on May 1, followed the detention of a nine-year-old boy, Ahmad Zaatari from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem, who had been detained on the night of Apr. 28 for approximately eight hours by Israel police after they alleged that he and his brother, 12-year-old Muhammad Zaatari, had thrown stones at an Israeli bus.

Allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children while in Israeli police and military detention facilities in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are not new.

“The ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the process,” said the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a 2013 report titled Children in Israeli Military Detention, which recommended that 38 changes be made after consulting with Israeli authorities.

However, in February 2015, UNICEF released an update reviewing progress made in implementing the report’s 38 recommendations during the intervening period, which found that “reports of alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014.”

In an April 2015 report on ‘Children in Israeli Military Detention’, rights group Military Court Watch (MCW), which monitors the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, said that “at least 87 percent of UNICEF’s recommendations lack effective implementation and the ill treatment of children who come in contact with this system still remains ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised’.”

Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a Palestinian human rights organisation specifically focused on child rights has been reported as saying that “Palestinian children are treated as mercilessly as adults. Most troubling are brutal beatings, other forms of torture and prolonged isolation in solitary confinement.”

According to DCIP, unlike Jews, Palestinian parents cannot accompany their children when interrogated, and there are cases of children even younger than 12 arriving at interrogation centres shackled, blindfolded and sleep-deprived.

Most experience physical abuse amounting to torture before, during and after interrogation, and “almost all children confess regardless of guilt to stop further abuse,” said DCIP, adding that the children are often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew which they cannot read or understand.

“Similarities in the situation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank exist because of the inevitable tensions that arise due to the prolonged military occupation,” Gerard Horton from MCW told IPS.

“You can tinker with the system as much as you like but unless the underlying causes are addressed the situation will remain the same.

“Most Palestinian children are arrested near Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If you insert 500,000 settlers into occupied territory and the security forces’ job is to protect them, this inevitably results in the local population being terrorised,” added Horton.

Meanwhile, Israel was harshly criticised in a report of the board of inquiry regarding incidents during last year’s Gaza war released by U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon on Apr. 27.

The board of inquiry concluded that Israel was responsible for the death of 44 Palestinians, and the injuring of 227 others, when they carried out seven attacks on six U.N. sites in Gaza where Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

Ban condemned the shelling attacks with “the utmost gravity” and said that “those who looked to them [U.N. shelters] for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied.”

According to Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations provided the Israelis with the exact locations of the U.N. facilities where the civilians were sheltering.

“The U.N. inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordinates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people, in all seven cases investigated by the Board of Inquiry when our schools were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, the hit was attributable to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces],” said Gunness.

However, the U.N. Secretary General also criticised Palestinian groups for putting some of the U.N. schools at risk by hiding weapons in some of them.

“I am dismayed that Palestinian militant groups would put United Nations schools at risk by using them to hide their arms. However, the three schools at which weaponry was found were empty at the time and were not being used as shelters,” said Ban.

Israeli diplomats put pressure on the United Nations not to release its findings into the war until the Israeli authorities had conducted their own investigation into alleged human rights violations. In September last year, Israel opened investigations into five criminal cases, including looting.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during the Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Edited by Phil Harris    

A group of Nigerian refugees rests in the Cameroon town of Mora, in the Far North Region, after fleeing armed attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on Sep. 13, 2014. Credit: UNHCR / D. Mbaoirem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Far North Region, Jan 14 2015 (IPS)

“I’d quit my job before going to work in a place like that.” That is how a primary school teacher responded when IPS asked him why he had not accepted a job in Cameroon’s Far North region.

James Ngoran is not the only teacher who has refused to move to the embattled area bordering Nigeria where Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on the isolated region.“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. " -- Mahamat Abba

“Many teachers posted or transferred to the Far North Region simply don’t take up their posts. They are all afraid for their lives,” Wilson Ngam, an official of the Far North Regional Delegation for Basic Education, tells IPS. He said over 200 trained teachers refused to take up their posts in the region in 2014.

Raids by the Boko Haram insurgents in the Far North Region have created a cycle of fear and uncertainty, making teachers posted here balk at their responsibility, and forcing those on the ground to bribe their way out of “the zone of death.”

Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened Cameroon in a video message on YouTube, warning that the same fate would befall the country as neighbouring Nigeria. He addressed his message directly to Cameroonian President Paul Biya after repeated fighting between militants and troops in the Far North.

Shekau was reported killed in September by Cameroonian troops – a report that later turned out to be untrue.

As the Nigerian sect intensifies attacks on Cameroonian territory, government has been forced to close numerous schools. According to Mounouna Fotso, a senior official in the Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education, over 130 schools have already been shut down.

Most of the schools are found in the Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava and Logone and Chari Divisions-all areas which share a long border with Nigeria, and where the terrorists have continued to launch attacks.

“Government had to temporarily close the schools and relocate the students and teachers. The lives of thousands of students and pupils have been on the line as Boko Haram continues to attack. We can’t put the lives of children at risk,” Fotso said.

“We are losing students each time there is an attack on a village even if it is several kilometres from here,” Christophe Barbah, a schoolmaster in the Far North Region’s Kolofata area, said in a press interview.

The closure of schools and the psychological trauma experienced by teachers and students raises concerns that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education will be missed in Cameroon’s Far North Region.

Although both government and civil society agree that universal primary education could attained by the end of this year in the country’s south, the 49 percent school enrolment rate in the Far North Region, compared to the national average of 83 percent, according to UNICEF, means a lot of work still needs to be done here.

Mahamat Abba, a resident of Fotocol whose four children used to attend one of the three government schools there, has fled with his entire family to Kouseri on the border with Chad.

“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. But starting life afresh here is a nightmare, having abandoned everything,” he told IPS.

Alhadji Abakoura, a resident of Amchidé, adds that the area has virtually become a ghost town. “The town had six primary schools and a nursery school. They have all been closed down.”

Overcrowded schools

As students, teachers and parents relocate to safer grounds, pressure is mounting on schools, which have to absorb the additional students with no additional funds.

According to UNICEF figures for Cameroon, school participation for boys topped 90 percent in 2013, while girls lagged behind at 85 percent or less. However, participation has been much lower in the extreme northern region.

According to the Institut National de la Statistique du Cameroon, literacy is below 40 percent in the Far North, 40 to 50 percent in the North, and 60-70 percent in the central north state of Adamawa. The Millennium Development Goal is full primary schooling for both sexes by 2015.

“Many of us are forced to follow lectures from classroom windows since there is practically very limited sitting space inside,” Ahmadou Saidou, a student of Government Secondary School Maroua, tells IPS. He had escaped from Amchidé where a September attack killed two students and a teacher.

Ahmadou said the benches on which three students once sat are now used by double that number.

“It’s an issue of great concern,” Mahamat Ahamat, the regional delegate for basic education, tells IPS.

“In normal circumstances, each classroom should contain a maximum of 60 students. But we are now in a situation where a single classroom hosts over one hundred and thirty students,” he said. “We are redeploying teachers who flee risk zones…we are getting them over to schools where students are fleeing to.

“These attacks are really slowing things down,’ Mahamat said.

Government response to the crisis

The Nigerian-based sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on Cameroon in recent years, killing both civilians and military personnel and kidnapping nationals and expatriates in exchange for ransoms.

To respond to the crisis, Cameroon has come up with military and legal reforms. A new military region was set up in the country’s Far North Region. According to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, “The creation of the 4th Military Region is meant to bring the military closer to the theatre of threats, and to boost the operational means in both human and material resources.”

Military equipment has been supplied by the U.S., Germany and Israel, according to press reports.

Mebe Ngo’oo said Cameroon will recruit 20,000 soldiers over the next two years to step up the fight against the terrorists. Besides the military option, Cameroon has also come up with a legal framework to streamline the fight against terrorism. An anti-terrorism law was passed by Parliament in December, punishing all those guilty of terrorist acts by death.

But opposition political leaders, civil society activists and church leaders have criticised it as anti-democratic and fear it is actually intended to curtail civil liberties.

Edited by Lisa Vives

Primary school children like the ones pictured here in Zimbabwe's capital Harare often drop out of school, casting doubts on this Southern African nation's capacity to achieve universal primary education for all by December 2015. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Dec 24 2014 (IPS)

Zimbabwe boasts of one of the highest rates of literacy across Africa but, but without free primary education, achieving universal primary education here may remain a pipe dream, educationists say.

It would also defeat Zimbabwe’s quest to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the deadline of 2015.

One of the MDGs requires countries the world over to achieve universal primary education by the end of 2015 and reintroduce free primary education. But more than 34 years after gaining independence from Britain, educationists say Zimbabwe is far from attaining universal primary education for all.

“Hordes of pupils enrolled in schools after independence at a time the Zimbabwean government made education free at primary school level,” Thabo Hlalo, a retired educationist from Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province, told IPS.“Without free primary education, school attendance has become intermittent, meaning that achieving universal primary education in line with the U.N. MDGs may remain imaginary for Zimbabwe” – Thabo Hlalo, retired educationist from Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province

”But now without free primary education, school attendance has become intermittent, meaning that achieving universal primary education in line with the U.N. MDGs may remain imaginary for Zimbabwe.”

At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean government abolished all primary school tuition fees, but they have now crept in and crept up. Parents not only contend with fees that they cannot afford but also with expensive essentials like notebooks and uniforms.

Early this year, Zimbabwe reportedly approached the United Kingdom for funds to help cover fees for an estimated one million pupils who would otherwise be forced out of school. The cash-strapped government said it was unable to finance its Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM), a scheme meant for poor children.

The U.K. government provided 10 million dollars from its Department for International Development but warned it may be the last contribution.

The school fees have been defended by Zimbabwe’s Education Minister Lazarus Dokora, who has gone on record as saying that parents who default on the fees should be taken to court.

Dokora’s “warning” comes despite the fact that at least 95 percent of Zimbabweans voted in a referendum in March last year to adopt a new Constitution expressly granting free primary education to all. Specifically, Section75 (1) (a) of the Zimbabwean Constitution provides for the right to state-funded basic education.

Despite this constitutional provision, it is still a sad story for many children like 9-year-old Tobias Chikota from Harare’s Caledonia informal settlement located about 30km south-east of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

“I dropped out of school early this year because my unemployed parents couldn’t afford to pay my school feels,” Chikota, who at the time was in Primary Four, told IPS.

While it is a requirement for nations to ensure a predictable and adequate state budget allocation to education under the MDGs, civil society activists here say the Zimbabwean government seems way off the mark in terms of prioritising education.

“Despite the impending deadline for the attainment of the MDGs, our government has not been and remains inconsistent in its budgetary structures in practically directing money towards education, which may make the attainment of universal primary education for all difficult, if not impossible, by 2015,” Catherine Mukwapati, a civil society activist and director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network, a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government allocated 919 million dollars to the country’s education sector in its 2015 national budget announcement, but for Mukwapati these were “mere void commitments made on paper, hardly followed by action as customary with our government.

Through UNICEF’s Education Transition Fund (ETF), the Zimbabwean government distributed 13 million textbooks to 5,575 schools countrywide in 2010, resulting in each pupil in primary schools countrywide receiving a set of four basic textbooks.

In spite of this gesture, a 2012 report by Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education found that the country’s rural teachers are overwhelmed with work, operating at a ratio of one teacher to 60 pupils, far over the government-pegged teacher-pupil ratio of one to 40.

According to Save the Children, for over 3.2 million children enrolled in primary and secondary schools in Zimbabwe, there are only about 102,000 teachers.

A UNICEF report on the Status of Women’s and Children’s Rights in Zimbabwe released in 2012 says that at least 197,000 pupils drop out of primary schools each year, a situation that development experts here say hinders Zimbabwe from achieving universal primary education for all in line with the MDGs.

“School dropouts owing to lack of school fees, mostly at primary level, are peaking up annually and, therefore, talking about Zimbabwe achieving primary education for all by 2015 is a non-starter,” independent development expert Evans Dube told IPS.

And for many parents like 43-year-old Tambudzai Chihota, a widow whose six children are out of school due to non-payment of school fees, the promise of universal primary education means little.

“My children didn’t go beyond Grade [Primary] Five here because I had no money to pay their school fees and the universal primary education you talk about may not be my business as long as my children are still without access to further education,” Chihota told IPS.

The crisis facing the education system here has also been worsened by the flight of about 20,000 teachers from the country between 2007 and 2009 at the peak of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis.

Besides extremely low salaries, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), a teachers’ trade union organisation in Zimbabwe, says that morale is low among teachers, negatively affecting the quality of the country’s education.

An average teacher earns 400 dollars a month, well below the poverty datum line of 511 dollars a month for an average family of five in this Southern African nation.

“Universal education may be far from being achieved here by 2015 due to poor teachers’ salaries, causing a deterioration of the quality of education,” Raymond Majongwe, Secretary General of PTUZ, told IPS.

With just over 12 months left before the deadline for achievement of the MDGs, it appears unlikely that Zimbabwe will meet the target of universal primary education for all.

(Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris)

Children in Aleppo forced underground to go to school, October 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
ALEPPO, Nov 6 2014 (IPS)

Winter has not yet hit this nearly besieged city, but children are already attending classes in winter coats and stocking hats.

Cold, damp underground education facilities are less exposed to regime barrel bombs and airstrikes but necessitate greater bundling to prevent common seasonal viruses from taking hold in a city from which most doctors have fled or been killed.

Only one perilous route leads out of the city and northwards to the Turkish border and better medical care, if required.A few of the children in the co-ed primary school seem shell-shocked, but many smile and laugh readily on the crowded wooden benches stuffed into the cramped, cold spaces.

On the way to an underground school IPS visited in late October, the children must necessarily pass by shop fronts blown out by airstrikes, a few remaining signs advertising what used to be clothing, hairdressers’ or wedding apparel shops with the ‘idolatrous’ images spray-painted black by the Islamic State (IS) when they briefly controlled the area, before being pushed out by rebel groups.

The jihadist group is still battling to retake terrain in the area, with the closest frontline against them being in Marea, an estimated 30 kilometres away from opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo.

They must also witness the destruction wrought by the regime, which is trying to impose a total siege on opposition areas and which would need to take only a few kilometres more of terrain to do so.

Even if they only live a block away, the children are forced to walk by buildings entirely defaced by barrel bombs, floors hanging down precariously above the heads of fruit, vegetable and sweets street vendors. A pink toilet and part of a couch are still visibly wedged between the upper, mutilated and dangling levels of one such building on their way.

A few of the children in the co-ed primary school seem shell-shocked, but many smile and laugh readily on the crowded wooden benches stuffed into the cramped, cold spaces. Two boys at the front of one of the rooms sway back and forth with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing boisterously.

Some of the rough walls have been painted sky blue or festooned with holiday-type decorations to ‘’brighten the children’s spirits’’, one of teachers says. A few comic-strip posters have been pasted in the corridor.

Children singing in underground school in Aleppo, October 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

The classes run from 9 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon during the week, one of the instructors – Zakra, a former fifth-year university student in engineering – told IPS.

Zakra, who now teaches mathematics, English and science at the school, said that she gets paid about 50 dollars a month. All of the school’s 15 teachers are women wearing all-covering black garments. Some cover their faces as well, some do not. IPS was told not to photograph them in any case, because many still have family members in regime areas.

‘’The school opened last year,’’ Zakra said, ‘’but then stopped between October 2013 and July 2014, as the barrel-bombing campaign made it too dangerous for parents to send their children to school,’’ even to underground ones.

The young teacher said that she plans on leaving at some point to continue her studies in Turkey but was not sure when, primarily due to economic reasons.

Older students are mostly left to their own devices, because this school and others like it only provide for those ages 6 to 13.

The head of the education department of the Aleppo City Council – who goes by the name of Mahmoud Al-Qudsi – told IPS that some 115 schools were still operating in the area, but that most of them were former ground-level flats, basements or other structures.

Only about 20 original school buildings were still operating, he said, from some 750 in the area prior to the uprising.

Syrian government forces have targeted educational and medical facilities in opposition areas throughout the conflict, and efforts are made to keep the locations secret.

Those preparing for the baccalaureate – the Syrian secondary school diploma – study at home, he said. They then come to centres on established dates to actually take the exams in late June and early July. Word is spread of where they will be held via the Aleppo Today television channel, which broadcasts out of Gaziantep, and posters are put up around the city to announce the times and places.

Turkey, Libya and France currently recognise the baccalaureate exams, Qudsi noted, but ‘’French universities only accepted five of our students last year.’’

Most of the curriculum remains that approved by the regime, but ‘nationalistic’ parts praising the Assad family have been cut and religion classes now teach that ‘’fighting against the Assad regime is a religious duty.’’

‘’We also want to change the curricula, but we can’t right now. We want it to be a Syrian-chosen one – one designed and wanted by all Syrians – but we can’t do that now, given the situation,’’ said Qudsi, ‘’and we obviously don’t have the money to print new books.’’

Most of the low salaries the teachers receive are necessarily funded by various international and private associations because the city council just does not have the funds, he noted.

The council, ‘’was only able to pay the equivalent of 70 dollars each for the entire academic year but the teachers were happy about it nonetheless, since it shows that we appreciate what they are doing.’’

Qudsi was also adamant that even the most fundamentalist parents had not interfered with their teaching.  ‘’We are all in this together. Their children attend our schools, too.’’

The barrel bombs stopped entirely for a number of days earlier this autumn after rebel forces closed in on the Aleppo air defence factories where the crude bombs made of scrap metal and explosives are assembled by regime forces. The bombing has since resumed following regime gains.

On arriving at the scene of one such attack in late October, IPS saw a body pulled from the rubble by the civil defence forces before they rushed with flashlights around the block to get to the other side of the collapsed building, where three young children had been trapped underneath the rubble. All were later found dead.

Families were crowded on the steps outside of other buildings down the street, and flashlight beams illuminated the faces of clutches of frightened children, an adult or two nearby in the dust raised by the concrete slabs brought down in the impact.

The schools at least give the children a chance to focus on something other than the destruction and death surrounding them, Qudsi told IPS, and ‘’are the only chance of Syria having any future at all.’

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Ali Khalil and his son, Diar, pose by the coffins they have just arranged for burial. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
SEREKANIYE, Syria, Nov 3 2014 (IPS)

The walls of the Association for the Martyrs of Serekaniye are covered with the portraits of those fallen in combat in this northern Syrian town. Ali Khalil has buried everyone and each of them with the help of Diar, his 13-year-old son.

Inside this building west of Serekaniye, 680 kilometres northeast of Damascus, Khalil invites IPS to hear some of the stories behind the myriad of pictures. The first one is that of his brother, Abid.

“He dreamed of being a journalist but he was hit by a sniper in November 2012. He was the first one I buried, and I have done the same with the rest ever since,” recalls this former merchant in his late thirties, before resuming his account.

“These three arrived completely charred; this one was beheaded, the same as those two further up” … Khalil points with his finger at just half a dozen among more than a hundred portraits staring at infinity.“5.5 million children have been directly affected by the war [in Syria], one in ten has become a refugee in a neighbouring country and around 8,000 of the latter crossed the border without their parents” – UNICEF

It was precisely the death of his brother which led him to set up this committee to support the families of the deceased. He is one of the ten members in charge.

“Other than arranging the burial, we assist families with money, food or blankets for the winter,” explains Khalil. The aid, he adds, comes from the Kurdish provisional government in northern Syria

After the uprising of 2011 against the Syrian government, the country’s Kurds opted for a neutrality that has forced them into clashes with both government and opposition forces.

In July 2012 they took over the areas where they form a majority, in Syria’s north. Today they rule over three enclaves in the north: Afrin, Jazeera and Kobani, the latter being known worldwide for the brutal and still on-going six-week siege at the hands of the Islamic State.

Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG (Kurdish acronym for People’s Protection Units), the militia defending the territory, told IPS that after Kobani, the battle in Serekaniye has been the bloodiest front for the Kurds in Syria.

A burial in Serekaniye for fighters fallen in combat against ISIS. Credit: Qadir Agid

Mahmud Rashid, 37, also volunteers at the martyrs´ house. He has two sisters and nine brothers, “all of them fighting, including a 60-year-old one.” He adds, however, that one of them, Brahim, fell into the hands of the Islamic State five months ago, and that they have had no news from him ever since.

“His wife showed up four days ago to get help. We handed her clothes for her seven children, blankets and 10,000 Syrian pounds [about 48 euros],” Rashid told IPS.

“I will be a soldier”

The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the truck carrying the last two coffins commissioned by the association. After they are taken into the room, Khalil and his son start to wrap them in the regular red cloth, to which they will add the yellow banner of the YPG and a crown of plastic flowers.

They proceed with the precision conferred by a two-year routine so it barely takes them more than ten minutes. Shrouding the bodies, Khalil explains, is “much more laborious.” But he´s not alone.

“Diar helps me with everything and does whatever is needed. We are hand in glove,” the volunteer explains proudly, posing his hand over his son’s shoulders. Khalil has another son, Rojdar, who is 11 but cannot join them because he suffers from chronic hepatitis and never leaves the house.

In a report on the impact of three years of war on the health of Syria’s children released this year, Save the Children warns of the serious deterioration of sanitary conditions in the country. According to Save the Children, 60 percent of hospitals in the country have been destroyed and the production of drugs has decreased by 70 percent.

To these figures has to be added the fact that half of the doctors in the country have left. Of the 2,500 that a city like Aleppo needs, only 36 remain, says Save the Children. With representation in 120 countries, it is calling for “urgent action” so that children receive basic vaccination.

Meanwhile, it is far from easy to get a word from Diar. “Why don´t you want to talk now,” Khalil asks his son. “Tell him how much you loved your uncle; tell him you would spend the day together at the Internet café.”

Diar admits he has not much to do other than helping his father. “A majority of the children have left the city and the few remaining don´t dare to leave home because of the fighting,” explains the boy, without looking up from the ground.

For those who left, reality is far from bearable either. As noted by UNICEF in its 2014 report titled Under Siege: The devastating impact on children of three years of conflict in Syria, 5.5 million children have been directly affected by the war, one in ten has become a refugee in a neighbouring country and around 8,000 of the latter crossed the border without their parents.

Other than the most visible effects, the psychological sequels are equally devastating: “Many Syrian children are in pure survival mode”, says UNICEF child protection specialist Jane MacPhail, who spends her days working with child refugees in Jordan. “They have seen the most terrible things and forget normal social and emotional responses.”

“Tell the journalist what you used to say during the days when the shelling lasted day and night: ‘You can throw as many bombs as you want but we will never leave’,” Khalil insists with his son, while the boy concentrates on carefully centring the crown of flowers on the second coffin.

Diar stands up only to say that he will join the ranks of the YPG as soon as he is 18. The war in Syria may be over after five years but that does not seem to matter to him.

“I will be a soldier,” Diar repeats, with his eyes still fixed on the ground. Until then, he says, he will help his father.

(Edited by Phil Harris)