More child soldiers in West and Central Africa, UN report says

On Tuesday, a report released by the U.N. Children’s Fund said West and Central African children are the most vulnerable to armed groups. The United Nations is urging aid groups to increase their documentation and prevention of violence against children.

|
Jerome Delay/AP/File
Adama Drabo, 16, who was arrested on suspicion of working for Islamic militant group MUJAO, sits in the police station in Sevare, Mali, Jan. 25, 2013. In West and Central Africa, armed groups recruiting and violating children has increased over the past five years.

Trapped in conflicts, the children of West and Central Africa are the most recruited by armed groups in the world and also have the highest number of victims of sexual violence, says a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Children’s Fund.

For five years, the region has seen increased conflicts in which more than 21,000 children have been recruited by government forces and armed groups, says the report. In addition, more than 2,200 children in the region have been victims of sexual violence since 2016.

More than 3,500 children have been abducted, making it the region with the second-highest abductions in the world.

“The numbers and trends are extremely worrying for current and future generations of children,” Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa, told The Associated Press.

“Not only have grave violations against children perpetrated by parties to the conflicts not stopped across West and Central Africa, but we have even seen a spike over the past five years, with a 50% increase in the total number of verified grave violations,” she said.

Since 2005, when the U.N. established a system to monitor and report on serious violations against children, such as recruitment, abduction, rape, and attacks on schools and hospitals, 1 out of 4 violations globally was committed in West and Central Africa.

In conflict-affected countries such as Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, violence has had devastating humanitarian consequences for children and communities, with the pandemic exacerbating the situation, said the U.N.

More than 57 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance, a number that’s doubled since last year as a result of conflict and the virus.

While some countries have been a concern for nearly a decade or more, there are three new areas of concern: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and the countries surrounding Lake Chad, according to the U.N.’s annual report on children and armed conflict.

Conflict in the four countries straddling the Lake Chad basin – Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria – has displaced some 3 million people and in Burkina Faso, where a jihadist insurgency has killed thousands, child recruitment rose at least five-fold this year, up from four documented cases in all of last year, according to information seen by the AP in an unpublished report by international aid and conflict experts.

During a deadly attack in June in the country’s Sahel region where at least 160 people were killed, children were seen alongside jihadists, chanting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic) as they burned homes.

Children associated with armed groups are often exposed to “unbearable levels of violence” and their recruitment can be preceded and followed by other violations such as abduction, sexual violence, and the killing and maiming of children, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba told The Associated Press.

The U.N. is calling for parties to the conflict to prevent and end violations against children and for perpetrators to be held accountable. It urges aid groups to increase the documentation of violations and to work to prevent and respond to them. UNICEF says that it needs more than $92 million to protect children in emergencies across West and Central Africa, more than half of which is not yet funded.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to More child soldiers in West and Central Africa, UN report says
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2021/1123/More-child-soldiers-in-West-and-Central-Africa-UN-report-says
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe