What's In Blue

Posted Fri 30 Sep 2011
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Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict

It seems the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict will meet at 3 pm to adopt conclusions on the Secretary-General’s first report on children and armed conflict in Iraq. It appears that the Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict in Sudan will be introduced during this afternoon’s meeting and the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, is likely to also update on the situation in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei since February. (The Sudan report covered the period from January 2009 to February 2011.)

In addition, Coomaraswamy is likely to provide an update report on the implementation of the Nepalese action plans to halt the recruitment and use of children, patterns of killing and maiming, and rape and other forms of sexual violence against children in armed conflict.

The Iraq conclusions were put under silence procedure by Germany, the chair of the Working Group, on 28 September till 1 pm yesterday. It seems that there had been some differences between the US and Russia including on how to characterise the violence in Iraq but there now appears to be agreement on appropriate language and at the time of writing silence had not been broken.

So far this year, the Working Group has adopted conclusions on Somalia and the DRC in March and on Afghanistan and Chad in May. Following the adoption of the Iraq conclusions today, the Working Group hopes to consider the Sudan report and adopt conclusions on both Sudan and South Sudan at the end of November. (The Sudan report was written before South Sudan became independent and was therefore presented as a single report with separate sections on Sudan, South Sudan, Darfur and the three areas of South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei.)

Resolution 1998, which was adopted on 12 July 2011, invited the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict to brief the Council on the modalities of the inclusion of parties into the annexesof the Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict. This briefing is likely to take place before the end of the year.

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