Mothers tend to their children at a cholera treatment centre in Baidoa, Somalia, March 9, 2017. PHOTO | NYT
In wars around the globe, thousands of children were front-line
targets, used as human shields and recruited to fight this year on “a
shocking scale,” Unicef said Thursday.
The UN agency warned against normalising the brutality, a sentiment it has echoed in reports year after year.
New York Times
correspondents have followed the plight of children caught up in war,
as well as those suffering from the fallout of these conflicts.
AFRICA
Renewed fighting in the Central African Republic
Fighting
flared anew in the Central African Republic, forcing more than 150,000
people from their homes, the most since conflict in the country peaked
three years ago. Children have been killed, raped, abducted or recruited
by armed groups, Unicef said.
Separately, Ugandan troops, on a mission to catch Joseph Kony,
the leader of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, are facing
accusations of rape, sexual slavery and exploitation of young girls.
Schools offer little sanctuary in Congo
Conflict
in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo began in
mid-2016, after the government refused to recognise the appointment of a
new traditional chief. Unicef estimates the fighting that has erupted
since that time has forced 850,000 children to flee their homes.
Several
hundred children were killed in combat or held hostage by armed groups
as human shields, a UN agency reported this year. More than 600 schools
have been attacked, and hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of
starvation because farmers have missed two planting seasons in a row,
according to aid groups.
The fighting also has a
political backdrop: Among President Joseph Kabila’s strongest foes is
Moise Katumbi, a businessman from Kasai who has made no secret of his
presidential ambitions. Kabila’s second term as president of DR Congo
expired at the end of 2016, but his government has twice punted the
presidential poll, now scheduled for 2018.
Surviving suicide missions for Boko Haram
The
story of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in 2014
ricocheted around the world. Some were freed in a prisoner swap, but the
group’s atrocities against children did not end with the release, and
the victims embarked on a slow process of healing.
In northeast Nigeria and Cameroon, Boko Haram forced at least 135 children to act as suicide bombers this year, Unicef said.
Child soldiers in South Sudan
South
Sudan, one of the world’s youngest countries, is mired in conflict.
What began as a feud between the country’s two top politicians erupted
four years ago into an outright war, often fought along ethnic lines. It
is ripping the country apart.
Unicef said more than
19,000 children had been recruited to fight and over 2,300 children had
been killed or injured since the conflict began.
The
conflict has displaced 4 million South Sudanese — roughly one-third of
the country’s population. More than half are children.
Rise in child recruitment in Somalia
Nearly
200 children were brought into armed groups every month this year in
Somalia, according to Unicef. That figure fits a trend that began in
2015, documented earlier by the UN Secretary-General’s Office, of an
increase in the use of children by armed groups.
Some
are recruited with promises of school fees or jobs; others are kidnapped
and pressed into service. The vast majority of child soldiers are
forced into the ranks of al-Shabaab, which is allied with al-Qaida,
although 15 per cent of known child soldiers are serving in the Somali
national army, according to the report.
MIDDLE EAST
Two paths for Yemen’s children
Saudi
Arabia and its allies have bombed Yemen for more than two years, hoping
to oust Iranian-aligned rebels who seized power. The conflict has left
the country in ruins and impoverished, and has starved its population.
Many
desperate families see two ways out for their children: selling them
off as brides or allowing their recruitment as soldiers.
Unicef said the fighting had left more than 5,000 children dead or injured, and 11 million in need for humanitarian assistance.
Indiscriminate violence in Afghanistan
At
least 700 children were killed in the first nine months of the year in
Afghanistan, Unicef said. As violence in civilian populated areas of the
country intensified, children were often caught in the crossfire.
Indiscriminate improvised explosive devices were the biggest cause of casualties among children in Afghanistan.
Human shields in Iraq
Times
correspondents analysed reports, which surfaced in March, that claimed
scores of civilians — many of them children — had been killed by US
airstrikes in Mosul, Iraq. A US-led coalition had been fighting to take
back Iraq’s second-largest city from Islamic State fighters.
After the Iraqi government declared victory over the Islamic State in Mosul in July, a photographer for The Times came
across abandoned and traumatised children suspected of being used as
human shields by ISIS fighters. Many of them had lost their families in
the violence and were taken to camps for the displaced.
Lost childhood in war-torn Syria
As
the Syrian civil war entered its sixth year in March, Unicef announced
that 2016 had been the worst year for Syrian children, reporting that at
least 652 died as a result of bombardment and violence.
Children growing up in areas controlled by Islamic State militants have been exposed to astonishing levels of brutality.
ASIA
Life as Rohingya refugees
Almost
60 per cent of the more than half a million Rohingya people violently
driven out of their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are children,
Unicef said. Many were separated from their families or fled on their
own after being attacked or having witnessed brutal violence.
A Times
correspondent visited a refugee camp in Bangladesh near the border with
Myanmar, where Rohingya refugees recounted the atrocities committed by
Myanmar government soldiers.
One woman described how
they had snatched her baby from her arms and threw him into a fire
before raping her. Other survivors recalled seeing government soldiers
stabbing babies, gang-raping girls and beheading young boys.
EUROPE
Explosives in Ukraine
Rebel-held
eastern Ukraine is home to 220,000 children who live under the threat
of mines and other explosives from nearly four years of conflict between
separatists and the government in Kiev.
The fighting
there escalated sharply in mid-December. A Ukrainian village and a town
were hit with rocket-artillery barrages, wounding eight people and
damaging about 50 homes.
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