More than 12,000 children were killed and injured in armed conflicts last year a record number with Afghanistan, the Palestinians, Syria and Yemen topping the casualty list, according to a new U.N. report.
The deaths and injuries were among more than 24,000 “grave violations” against children verified by the United Nations including the recruitment and use of youngsters by combatants, sexual violence, abductions, and attacks on schools and hospitals, it said.
According to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres‘ annual report to the Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict obtained Monday by The Associated Press, violations by armed groups remained steady but there was “an alarming increase” in the number of violations by government and international forces compared to 2017.
The secretary-general’s eagerly awaited blacklist of countries that committed grave violations against children during conflicts remained virtually unchanged from last year, angering several human rights groups.
Human Rights Watch and the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, an international advocacy group, pointed to the Saudi-led coalition remaining on the list of parties that have put in place measures to protect children, citing a rise in child casualties by government and coalition forces in Yemen.
“The Saudi-led coalition since 2015 has committed appalling violations against children in Yemen without any evidence that it’s trying to improve its record,” said Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch. “By including them once again in the ‘not so bad’ category of serious reformers, the secretary-general makes a mockery of the whole exercise.”
Watchlist program director Adrianne Lapar said that praising “empty promises” by the coalition, also led by the United Arab Emirates, “undermines the deadly repercussions of war on children and ignores the facts on the ground.”
She also asked why conflicts in Cameroon and Ukraine are “conspicuously missing from the report.”
Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the scale and severity of the grave violations committed against children in 2018, notably the record high number of casualties as a result of killing and maiming and the increase in the number of violations attributed to international forces.”
According to the report, verified cases of deaths and injuries were the highest since the Security Council authorized monitoring and reporting in 2005.
Afghanistan topped the list with 3,062 child casualties in 2018 and children accounted for 28 per cent of all civilian casualties, the report said, while in Syria, air strikes, barrel bombs and cluster munitions killed and injured 1,854 youngsters and in Yemen, 1,689 children bore the brunt of ground fighting and other offensives.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.N. said that in 2018 it verified the highest number of Palestinian children killed 59 and injured 2,756 since 2014. During the same period, six Israeli children were injured.
More than 12,000 children died in violent conflicts worldwide in 2018 : UN
