According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF,) millions of children are tragically subjected to violence, murdered, injured, abducted, raped and forced into adults’ wars all around the world.
Their schools and homes are destroyed by conflicts, and they don’t have access to enough food, water or health care.
According to Anthoney Lake, the Executive Director of UNICEF, tens of thousands of children are forced into to armed forces and groups, often requiring them to carry out horrific acts of violence towards other human beings.
Thankfully, last year at least 10,000 children were released from these armed forces and were able to receive support upon returning to their home communities.
But according to a statement made by Lake on the 19th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1612 in New York, children’s involvement in armed violence has not gone away and is taking a darker turn in countries such as Iraq, Nigeria and Syria.
“Violence involving children in conflicts has taken a darker turn,” said the statement.
“Reports from Iraq, Nigeria and Syria have shown that how children are being used by adults as perpetrators of extreme violence, children who have been forced to observe and participate in executions, encouraged to believe that violence is normal, their young and impressionable minds exposed to senseless brutality, in total disregard of the sanctity of childhood.
“Every child in a conflict who is killed or forced to kill, or who has witnessed the brutality of war, is a victim – an innocent, who has borne the cost of conflict, not of his or her making.
“We should be outraged that such suffering continues and that more is not being done to end these horrors and to hold those responsible to account.”
–
Source: GNA