UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Children suffered the highest number of “grave violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians and in Congo and Somalia putting most young people at risk, the United Nations children’s agency said Wednesday.
UNICEF also said it was particularly concerned about their fate in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been blacklisted by the UN.
“Grave violations” include the recruitment and use of children by combatants, killings and injuries, sexual violence, kidnappings, and attacks on schools and hospitals.
Omar Abdi, deputy executive director of UNICEF, told the UN Security Council that more than 27,000 grave violations, up from 24,000 the previous year, is the highest number verified by the UN since the its monitoring reports began in 2005. The number of conflict situations “of concern” was also the highest – at 26.
Since the report, Abdi said, serious conflict has erupted in Sudan where more than a million children have been displaced by violent conflict and the UN has received reports of hundreds dead and injured. He also said that UNICEF expects an increase in the number of Palestinian children affected due to the recent escalation in violence.
The government and parties to conflict are failing to meet their commitments to protect children, and “meaningful and unambiguous action” is needed, the UNICEF official said.
In his annual report to the council late last month, Secretary General Antonio Guterres listed Russian forces on the annual UN blacklist of countries that violate the rights of children in conflict for killing boys and girls and attacked 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 his supporters hoped – saying the UN welcomed of its “identification of practical measures, including those proposed by the UN” to protect children.
The UN special envoy for children in armed conflict, Virginia Gamba, told the council that the 27,180 grave violations in 2022 were committed against 18,890 children and included 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 assaulted.
The United Nations also verified attacks on 1,163 schools and 647 hospitals, a 112% increase from 2021, she said.
While armed groups were responsible for 50% of grave violations, Gamba pointed to governments as the main perpetrators of killing and maiming of children and attacks on schools and hospitals.
Gamba said, for example, that last year three girls were gang-raped in South Sudan “during five days of terror”, many boys were killed by an explosive device in a school in Afghanistan, a girl from 14-year-old in Myanmar was abducted and burned to death and an 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.