World News | UN records highest number of ‘grave violations’ against children in conflict

United Nations, July 6 (AP) – UNICEF says children will suffer the highest number of “serious violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with conflicts between Israel and Palestine and Congo and Somalia making the most of the conflict. Most teens are at risk. agency said.

UNICEF is also particularly concerned about the plight of Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, and Russia has been blacklisted by the United Nations.

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“Grave violations” include recruitment and use of children by fighters, killing and injuring, sexual violence, abductions and attacks on schools and hospitals.

There were more than 27,000 serious human rights violations, up from 24,000 last year and the highest number the UN has verified since it began monitoring reports in 2005, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi told the UN Security Council on Wednesday. “Attention” is also the highest – at 26.

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Abdi said that since the release of the report, serious conflicts have erupted in Sudan, with more than 1 million children displaced by violence and reports received by the United Nations claiming hundreds of deaths and injuries. He also said UNICEF expected an increase in the number of Palestinian children affected due to the recent escalation in violence.

The UNICEF official said the government and all parties to the conflict had failed to deliver on their commitments to protect children and needed “meaningful and clear action”.

In his annual report to the Security Council late last month, Secretary-General António Guterres added the Russian military to the UN’s annual blacklist of countries that have killed boys and girls in the conflict and attacked Ukrainian schools and hospitals, violating children’s rights list.

But the UN secretary-general did not blacklist Israel for grave violations against 1,139 Palestinian children, including the killing of 54 last year, as supporters had hoped, and said the UN welcomed its “certainty including measures proposed by the UN” to Practical measures to protect children.

UN Special Envoy for Children in Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba told the Security Council that 18,890 children were involved in 27,180 grave violations in 2022, of whom 8,620 were killed or injured and 7,622 were recruited or recruited by governments or armed groups. During the conflict, 3,985 people were abducted, 1,165 almost all girls, raped, forced into marriage or subjected to sexual slavery or assault.

The UN also verified attacks on 1,163 schools and 647 hospitals, a 112% increase from 2021, she said.

While armed groups were responsible for 50 percent of the grave violations, Gamba stressed that the government was the main perpetrator of killing and maiming children, as well as attacks on schools and hospitals.

Gamba cited the gang-rape of three girls last year in South Sudan “during five days of terror,” the killing of boys in a school in Afghanistan by an explosive device, the abduction and burning of a 14-year-old girl in Myanmar, and the kidnapping and burning of a 14-year-old girl in Ukraine. An air strike resulted in the amputation of a girl’s leg.

“We must do more to prevent and protect our children from the ravages of armed conflict,” she said. (Associated Press)

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