U.N.: "Grave Abuses" Against Afghan Youth
Government and armed groups in Afghanistan are perpetrating "grave abuses" against children by recruiting them to fight and, in the case of the Taliban, to be suicide bombers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report Monday.
Children are also the victims of ground attacks, aerial bombardments, or land mines.
In his first report to the U.N. Security Council on children and armed conflict in Afghanistan, Ban also called for greater attention to the problem of sexual abuse against children, especially boys, by members of the armed forces and armed groups.
The U.N. chief also raised "the worrisome increase" in the number of child victims of attacks against schools and communities, and "the ever increasing number of children inadvertently killed during engagements by international and Afghan forces."
He urged Afghan and international forces to improve their rules of engagement to include special measures protecting children.
Ban said monitoring violations against children has been difficult because of the deteriorating security situation and the difficulty of obtaining and checking victim and eyewitness accounts. He added that much of the available data is not broken down by age and sex.
"The report focuses on grave violations perpetrated against children in Afghanistan and identifies parties to the conflict, both state and non-state actors, who commit grave abuses against children," Ban said. "In particular, the report highlights the fact that children have been recruited and utilized by state and non-state armed groups..."
The report covers the period from July 1, 2007 to August 15, 2008, and documents what it calls violations perpetrated against children, including being recruited and used by both the government and insurgent groups, and notes how the Taliban continues to train and use children as suicide bombers.
Sometimes children have been caught in limbo: a 15-year-old boy lured by the Taliban into participating in a suicide attack surrendered to police; he has now been detained for more than five months without appropriate judicial follow-up.
Children have been used by all parties during the 30 years of armed conflict in Afghanistan, said the report, which noted that the Afghan government completed its demobilization of under-age soldiers (numbering nearly 7,500 in 2003),but that there has been no monitoring of children vulnerable to recruitment - and not all demobilized juveniles were disarmed.
Reports of under-age recruitment by armed groups persist from all regions, but growing insecurity has made it difficult for independent monitors to access many areas. There are also reports (unverified) that children are serving within the ranks of the Afghan National Auxiliary Police, being sent ahead of military operations in the southern part of the country, while there are documented cases of 16-year-olds working for the Afghan National Police conducting regular policing tasks (i.e., patrols, guard and checkpoint duty).
Also covered:
The detention of children accused of associating with armed groups. Between October 2007 and July 2008 at least 28 children (the youngest 12 years old) were arrested on charges related to national security, a violation of the Afghan juvenile code. Most children reported no access to legal assistance, and some reported being subjected to threats and ill-treatment during interrogation. The National Directorate of Security has allowed only "sporadic" access to its detention facilities for monitoring bodies.
Earlier this year, the United States reported to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child that, since 2002, U.S. forces had detained 90 juveniles in Afghanistan, and as April 2008, there were approximately 10 juveniles being held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility as unlawful enemy combatants. Several juveniles arrested in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo Bay have been released, but two remain facing criminal charges (although the U.S. stated there are no longer any juveniles there).
The "worrisome" increase in the number of child victims in ground attacks and aerial bombardments. Among the 1,722 civilian death recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) between August 2007 and July 2008, many involved children, including:
Landmines and unexploded ordinance. Approximately 280 square miles of land are covered with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines and explosive remnants of current and previous conflicts. During the reporting period, 81children were killed and 332 sustained injuries from unexploded ordnance, anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines, as well as improvised explosive devices, booby traps, cluster ammunition and fuses.
Attacks on schools and hospitals. UNICEF recorded 722 incidents from 2004 to July 2008, with the incidents escalating between July 2007 and June 2008. The burning of schools (for which the Taliban are purportedly responsible) is the most frequent type of incident, and the most sexist: while girls' schools represent only 14.8 percent of the total number of schools in Afghanistan, they are affected by half of the violence perpetrated. In Jawzan, the principal of a primary girls' school was shot dead in October 2007 and, in Kunduz two teachers were killed in May 2008.
WHO and UNICEF have recorded operations carried out by insurgents against health centers, as well as threats, killings and injury of staff, looting of facilities, forced closures, and intimidation of organizations supporting health programs. Because of the deteriorating security situation, Afghan health officials have shut down some 36 health facilities in the south and east, depriving hundreds of thousands of children of basic health services, as well as hampering polio eradication efforts (15 new cases have been reported in Badghis this year).
The problem of sexual violence against children. Reports of the abuse of children (especially boys) by members of the armed forces and armed groups, include: