Children and Armed Conflict
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The 2008 Cross-Cutting Report on Children and Armed Conflict demonstrated that for more than a decade the issue of children and armed conflict was firmly entrenched as a significant thematic issue on the agenda of the Security Council. Since the late 1990s the Council had been paying close attention to the issue of children in war zones. Between 1999 and 2005 the Council adopted six resolutions, each one containing more concrete provisions to protect children. Its resolution 1612 of July 2005 was groundbreaking. It authorised the establishment of a monitoring and reporting mechanism at the field level and created the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. Resolution 1612 provided the Council with new practical tools to potentially influence the impact of the country-specific work of the Council. This report focuses on developments in 2008 and again seeks to answer the question whether, in practice, in the work of the Council in country-specific situations on its agenda, it is incorporating the discussions, principles and norms developed at the thematic level. Our 2008 report examined relevant data from 2003 to 2007 in resolutions, presidential statements, visiting missions, Secretary-General’s reports, peace agreements and peacekeeping mandates. In this report we again look at the data from those same areas for 2008 and compare the results with those of our report of last year and give an updated assessment of the impact of the monitoring and reporting mechanism and the Council’s Working Group on the mainstreaming of the issue of children and armed conflict into the Council’s overall work.
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The Council will discuss children and armed conflict in an open debate on 29 April. The foreign minister of Mexico, Patricia Espinoza, is expected to preside. Members will focus on the Secretary-General’s progress report on the implementation of resolution 1612, which in 2005 established the monitoring and reporting mechanism and set up the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict.
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The Council is expected to hold an open debate on 17 July where it will discuss the annual report of the chair of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict and progress on protecting children in armed conflict since the last debate in February 2008.
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The impact of recent conflicts on children has been horrific around the globe. More than two million children have been killed in war zones over the past two decades. Another six million have been maimed or permanently disabled, and more than a quarter of a million youths have been exploited as child soldiers in at least 30 countries. Many of today’s soldiers were recruited as children, without schooling or knowledge of the society around them. Thousands of girls are subject to sexual exploitation, including rape, violence, abductions and prostitution. No region of the world is immune. Over the last decade, the issue of children and armed conflict has been raised with increasing frequency in the Security Council. In 2005, the Security Council adopted resolution 1612, which authorised the establishment of a monitoring and reporting mechanism at the field level. It also created a Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. Since then, the issue has been firmly on the Council’s agenda. The issue of children and armed conflict is now taken up in the Council on a systematic basis as a thematic issue. Moreover, the Council has developed tools capable of potentially influencing the country-specific work of the Council. The challenge is ensuring that the thematic work is actually reflected in practice, in a cross-cutting way, in the work of the Council. This report attempts to gauge whether children and armed conflict has become such a cross-cutting issue by examining the degree to which the issue has been incorporated into the Council’s work on country-specific issues.
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The Council is expected to discuss the Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict in an open debate on 12 February. The Foreign Minister of Panama is expected to preside and the Foreign Minister of France seems likely to attend.
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The Council will consider the issue of children and armed conflict in a range of meetings in the remainder of the month. The Council is scheduled to meet on 23 July to consider the Annual Report of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict set up under resolution 1612.
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The Council is expected to receive recommendations from its Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict regarding children affected by conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The chairman of the Working Group is expected to convey the Working Group's recommendations, including suggestions for possible Council action, and to brief the Council in informal consultations.
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The Council is expected to discuss the report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict as well as the results of an independent review of the monitoring and reporting mechanism. Although children and armed conflict has traditionally been discussed in open debates with active participation by non-Council members, there is a move this year to discuss the reports in a different format. Some sensitivity about the future use of the monitoring and reporting mechanism is expected.
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The Council will consider this month the recommendations of its Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict regarding children affected by armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is expected to refer specific cases to the Sanctions Committee on the DRC for consideration of targeted sanctions.
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In July the Council is expected to have an open debate on children and armed conflict, chaired by the French foreign minister. It will consider a report from the chair of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict and be briefed by the Secretary-General's Special Representative on the issue and a representative from UNICEF.
