U.N. expands list of those that target children in war

The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday on "Children and Armed Conflict," adding groups that attack schools and hospitals to a "name and shame" list published annually by the secretary-general. It expands the current list in the secretary-general's annual report, which had already included groups that recruit children into armed forces, kill or maim children, or commit sexual violence.

Some of the groups and nations on the list have implications for U.S. policy.

The U.N.'s "name and shame" list includes groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where children were used by the Taliban on both sides of the border to carry out suicide attacks and plant explosives and, although the Karzai government's policy is to not recruit children under 18 into the national security forces, children continue to be found in the ranks of both the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Security Forces. The Afghan government is trying to address the issue and signed an agreement to try to de-list Afghanistan from the secretary-general's list of countries that violate children's rights.

The idea of the resolution is to highlight the problem and shame groups - something that will aid the U.S. in reconstruction, for example, in Iraq where children were used by Al-Qaida in Iraq to plant explosives and to actively engage in attacks against security forces and civilians. The U.N. also reported that Al-Qaida in Iraq operates a youth wing for children under the age of 14 called "Birds of Paradise" to carry out suicide bombings.

Tony Lake, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund and former President Clinton's national security advisor, said. "These horrific attacks are not only a violation of international and humanitarian law, they are a violation of our common humanity."

Germany had sponsored the new resolution and brought its foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, to chair the session.

"Not only do they kill and wound girls and boys, but they leave children without access to treatment," said the special representative of the secretary-general for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, in the Security Council.

Why the resolution was needed is more sobering: Attacks against children and hospitals are on the rise, including assassinations, sexual violence, abductions, forced military recruitment.

"Sinister new tactics have emerged - from abducting children from schools for training as suicide bombers to mass poisoning of classes," according to the 2010 report of UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which was prepared as background to the debate on the Resolution.

"Beyond naming and shaming we have a further tool we can consider employing to safeguard schools and hospitals in conflict," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in the lead-up to the passage of the resolution.

The road to the "name and shame" list has been a long one. In 1999, the Security Council passed the first resolution on impact of armed conflict on children and passed six additional resolutions related specifically to children and armed conflict during the following six years. And the road was not without bumps. India raised questions about the current resolution leading to last minute changes after consensus was reached on Friday.

But to support the effort, the secretary-general appointed two special representatives: Coomaraswamy and Marta Santos Pais, the special representative on violence against children; the Security Council established a monitoring and reporting mechanism and created a dedicated Working Group of the Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict and then expanded the work to include annexes of the annual report of the secretary-general on Children and Armed Conflict, known as the "list of shame." Some results have been evident, including thousands of children who have been released from armed forces and armed groups.

A related non-government group, Watchlist on Children in Armed Conflict (a network of international non-governmental organizations) brought grassroots representatives from Nepal, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia and Burma/Myanmar to speak about the reporting and challenges.

But much more work is needed: the 2011 report said an increasing number of parties to armed conflicts around the world continue to deliberately attack schools.

"The facts are alarming. Between 1998 and 2008, an estimated 2 million children were killed in conflicts, with 6 million left disabled. Around 300,000 children are being exploited as soldiers." Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, said in a meeting last month leading up the Security Council resolution. "Sexual violence is becoming systemic and across the world, classrooms and the kids sitting in them are increasingly seen as legitimate targets."

The secretary-general said that initiatives by the U.N., governments, civil society and non-governmental organizations to place groups on previous lists (for violations such as the recruitment and use of children in conflict) have yielded positive results.

Under the newly-passed resolution, parties named in the Secretary-General's reports on children and armed conflict are obliged to prepare concrete time-bound action plans to halt recruitment of children.

For a full list of those named in the resolution, click here.