CHAIRMAN: DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: DR. KHALID MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

Qatar

Five times more children than fighters being killed in conflicts: Report

Published: 24 Nov 2020 - 08:46 am | Last Updated: 01 Nov 2021 - 03:17 am
Peninsula

The Peninsula

Doha: On the occasion of UN World Children’s Day, at a special joint symposium hosted by Unicef and the World Health Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Save the Children launched a new report revealing shocking new data on children living on the front-lines of conflict. 

In 2019, the number of children living in high-intensity conflict zones increased to 160 million from 157 million in 2018, while the total number of children living near conflict increased by 9 million. The report, ‘Killed and Maimed: A Generation of Violations Against Children in Conflict’, presents the full extent of the situation facing these children in armed conflict. 

CEO of Save the Children, an active WISH partner, Inger Ashing, spoke at a symposium on the report’s main findings, which shows that five times more children than fighters are being killed in conflicts, and that the number of grave violations against children has almost tripled since 2010. The six grave acts include killing and maiming; recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups; rape and sexual violence; attacks on schools and hospitals; abduction; and denial of humanitarian access. 

Save the Children has identified three dimensions to the crisis. Firstly, that states and armed actors are failing to uphold standards in conflict – both their own conduct and the expectations they demand of others.  

In the past decade, over 93,000 children have been killed or maimed in conflict, primarily caused by explosive weapons, with wide area effects in populated areas. In an effort to strengthen the disarmament effort, Ireland is leading a diplomatic process to draft a new political declaration that recognizes the humanitarian harm of these weapons. The success of this initiative will be vital in producing a strong commitment to protecting children in the next decade.

“Never in history has there been such awareness of children’s rights, nor more knowledge of how to prevent harm and support children to recover from conflict,” said Ashing during the launch of the report. “However, this awareness has yet to translate into sustainable collective action.” 

Last year, WISH worked with Save the Children and the Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences to produce the first Arabic-language version of the Pediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

The manual is proving to be essential for medics working in conflict and post-conflict settings as they try to repair the damage done to children severely injured after stepping on landmines or being injured by bombs.