Global Courant
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Children have experienced the highest number of “serious violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians and in Congo and Somalia putting the most young people at risk, the UN said children’s organization. Wednesday.
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UNICEF also expressed particular concern about their plight in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been placed on the UN blacklist.
“Serious violations” include the recruitment and use of children by combatants, killings and injuries, sexual assaults, kidnappings, and attacks on schools and hospitals.
Omar Abdi, deputy executive director of UNICEF, told the UN Security Council that the more than 27,000 serious violations, up from 24,000 last year, are the highest number verified by the UN since monitoring reports began in 2005. the highest – at 26.
Since the report, Abdi said, serious conflict has erupted in Sudan, where more than 1 million children have been displaced by violent conflict and the UN has received reports that hundreds have been killed and injured. He also said UNICEF expects an increase in Palestinian children affected by recent escalations of violence.
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Governments and parties to conflict are failing to deliver on their commitments to protect children, and “meaningful and unequivocal action” is needed, the UNICEF official said.
In his annual report to the council late last month, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres placed Russian troops on the UN’s annual blacklist of countries violating the rights of children in conflict for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals. in Ukraine.
But the UN chief did not blacklist Israel for grave violations against 1,139 Palestinian children, including 54 murders last year — as supporters had hoped — and said the UN welcomed its “identification of practical measures including those proposed by the UN.” to protect children. .
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The UN Special Envoy for Children in Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, told the council that the 27,180 serious violations in 2022 were committed against 18,890 children, including 8,620 who were killed or injured, 7,622 who were recruited or used by governments or armed groups in conflicts, 3,985 who were abducted, 1,165, almost all girls, who were raped, forced into marriage or sexual slavery or sexually abused.
The United Nations has also verified attacks on 1,163 schools and 647 hospitals, an increase of 112% from 2021, she said.
While armed groups were responsible for 50% of serious violations, Gamba stressed that governments were the main perpetrators of the killing and mutilation of children and of attacks on schools and hospitals.
For example, Gamba said that last year three girls in South Sudan were raped “during five days of terror”, many boys were killed by an explosive device at a school in Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl in Myanmar was kidnapped and burned alive, and a airstrike in Ukraine left a girl with amputated limbs.
“We must do more to prevent and protect our children from the ravages of armed conflict,” she said.
