Meeting the challenge: protecting children’s rights in conflict
June 2014
From 10-12 June, the international community will gather in London, sharing best practices and designing solutions to put an end to sexual violence in conflict. The 3-day Global Summit, hosted by UK Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs William Hague and co-chaired by the Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie, will include 175 public events organised by NGOs.
The Bond Child Rights Working Group, which Child to Child co-chairs, will present a panel discussion to focus on the issue of sexual violence against children in conflict. Children are an inherently vulnerable group often overlooked by women’s rights organisations.
Our Chair Gerison Lansdown, will be among the speakers. Gerison will set out why it is important to focus on children’s rights in the fight against sexual violence in conflict. Also speaking will be one of Child to Child’s partners – Roméo Dallaire, celebrated humanitarian and founder of the Child Soldiers Initiative, with which Child to Child has been working for the last 18 months.
Words cannot do justice to the abhorrence and brutality of sexual violence against children. And yet, in conflict situations, this crime is startlingly common, affecting both girls and boys.
Subjected to extreme trauma, these children are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections and their developing bodies often left with serious injuries which they may never fully recover from. The damage may leave them incontinent, infertile and suffering lifelong pain. The ongoing emotional, physiological and psychological damage they suffer can keep them trapped in cycles of poverty and deprivation.
It is estimated that 200 million children suffer sexual violence every year globally and experience tells us that in conflict, the number is likely to be much higher. Yet, these children often suffer in silence – they do not come forward because they often have no one to. Those who report fear stigma, shame, reprisal attacks and even imprisonment in doing so.
We do know that children are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse in conflict. In emergencies, child protection systems (where they even exist) are weakened and disrupted. Children are left at increased risk of violence and abuse both in their homes and communities, and if they become displaced or separated from their families.
The specific vulnerabilities and capabilities of children, both boys and girls, must be consistently factored into and prioritised as a critical part of humanitarian prevention and response programmes, peacekeeping and diplomacy efforts.
Our recommendations
As signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, State Parties must recognise the need for child rights expertise in any humanitarian intervention in order to prevent further abuse and make funding available to embed child rights principles in national plans to prevent sexual violence.
These resources and expertise should be focussed on the following areas of intervention:
- Working with communities to build children’s resilience to all forms of violence, by recognising children’s unique vulnerabilities and capabilities.
- Scaling up efforts to build effective child protection systems across health, education, legal and social sectors.
- Working with communities to positively influence social norms to prevent sexual violence and support child-survivors in speaking out.
- Increasing children’s access to justice and ability to report crimes of a sexual nature and hold abusers to account.
The panellists
Chair: Martin Bell OBE, former war reporter and independent politician, Ambassador for UNICEF UK and Patron of Hope and Homes for Children
Gerison Landsdown, international children’s rights consultant, advocate, lecturer and Chair of Child to Child
Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, retired lieutenant-general, Senator, and celebrated humanitarian
David Bull, Executive Director, UNICEF UK
Sheema Sen Gupta, Somalia Chief of Child Protection Programme, UNICEF
Professor Carolyn Hamilton, Professor Emeritus, University of Essex, international child rights lawyer, barrister and Director of the Coram Children’s Legal Centre