07/27/2005

On July 26, by unanimous vote, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that provides concrete proposals to protect children affected by armed conflict. Refugees International urges the UN to do all that is necessary to implement the new resolution and take extra steps to help child soldiers reintegrate into their communities.

The resolution establishes procedures to monitor and report on the killing, maiming, rape and abduction of children in conflicts, the recruitment of child soldiers and attacks on schools and hospitals. More importantly, the UN acknowledged that it must do more than simply report on violations of children’s rights and established a special Working Group to ensure that concrete action is taken to protect children. The Working Group will consider taking measures --- such as travel restrictions, arms embargoes, and bans on military assistance --- against governments or insurgent forces that have not made sufficient progress in halting the recruitment of child soldiers or other violations.

Thirteen million children are currently displaced by conflict and vulnerable to rape, abduction, trafficking and recruitment as child soldiers. Refugees International has seen firsthand the devastating effect of conflict on children in countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Uganda, and welcomes these much-needed proposals to monitor violations against children and hold governments and insurgent forces accountable for these violations.

However, Refugees International encourages the UN and the international community to fully implement all aspects of the resolution. First and foremost, RI will be watching closely to ensure that the UN moves beyond “consideration” and actively pursues punitive actions against those who target children in conflict. RI also urges donor countries to provide adequate funding so that monitoring programs are well coordinated and an effective system for protecting the security and rights of children is created. And it is essential that civil society groups and local leaders on the ground be involved in all monitoring programs. Schools and churches must be consulted as they are often the organizations that most frequently work with and provide services for children in local communities.

In addition, while the UN’s resolution is critical to preventing egregious abuses against children, programs are also desperately needed for child soldiers who have already been disarmed and seek to be reunited with their families and re-enter schools. Child soldiers are forced to witness and in many cases commit horrific atrocities including hurting and even killing their own family members or friends. After experiencing these atrocities, demobilized children and young adults are in desperate need of programs that can help them reintegrate into society. However, many of these programs are poorly organized and under-funded.

For example, the conflict in the Ituri region of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is characterized by large numbers of child soldiers. More than 30% of the estimated 15,000 disarmed combatants are children. After being disarmed by the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, humanitarian agencies in Ituri have supported programs that reintegrate the children into society and have provided services to them until their families could be traced and reunited with them. However, Refugees International found in its April mission to the region that the reintegration phase of the disarmament program has not been fully implemented. With instability still plaguing the Ituri region, humanitarian agencies working in other areas of the country are reluctant to expand their work to Ituri and much needed funds to scale up reintegration projects that will keep former combatants from returning to arms have been delayed.

Support to community organizations and their leaders that will receive the former child combatants is particularly urgent in order to strengthen reconciliation mechanisms and enhance acceptance of the former child combatants. Therefore it is essential that the UN and non governmental operational agencies work with donors so that programs like these receive sufficient attention and funding.