16 January 2003 00:00
STATEMENT BY SERGEI LAVROV, RUSSIA'S PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE, AT THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL'S MEETING ON THE QUESTION "CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT," JANUARY 14, 2003
Children's suffering from hunger, disease and violence remains, unfortunately, a bitter reality of our days. The altered character of armed conflicts has led to the fact that over 90 percent of their victims are accounted for by the civilian population, at least one half of them being children. They constitute more than 65 percent of the refugees and internally displaced persons. Protecting the rights of children, including in armed conflicts and post-conflict situations, is one of the major tasks facing the international community.
The best method of protecting children is to prevent conflicts from originating or settle them before they become destructive. The role of the UN and its Security Council, bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, can hardly be overestimated here.
Yet the practical implementation of the humanitarian tasks linked to the protection of children, including in armed conflict, ought to be the prerogative in the first place of specialized organizations and humanitarian institutions - the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund, World Food Program, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other bodies having their own mandates and autonomous both operationally and financially, with the general political backing of the Security Council.
The problems of childhood are far from exhausted by armed conflicts. We have to look on the tasks of child protection from a broader angle. Child neglect, drug addiction among children, the trade in children and even in their organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of children - this is a far from complete bitter list of problems threatening children in the world today, and so - the future of all humanity.
Separately one has to say about the problem of terrorism, which declares itself ever more cruelly and spares neither adults, nor children. It is our common duty to raise secure barriers to the spread of this evil and other maladies of a universal character.
One such barrier can and should be the International Criminal Court, the Statute of which became operative last year. We are convinced that the Court will blend into the existing system of maintenance of international peace and security with the key role of the UN and its Security Council. The inevitability of punishment will thus be ensured for the gravest international crimes, including those against children.
The entry into force on February 12, 2002, of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, bearing on the involvement of children in armed conflicts, marked an important milestone. This document is called upon to assist the real protection of children from war.
We positively assess the UN Secretary General's report, prepared for the present meeting of the Security Council, and would like to dwell on two aspects which are, to our mind, of paramount importance.
First of all, it is the problem of the use of child soldiers by armed units, by so-called insurgents and by terrorist groups. We strongly condemn the recruitment of child soldiers and consider that the guilty persons should be brought to justice. We support the efforts of the Secretary General, directed toward the identification of the parties in armed conflicts that continue this shameful practice.
By fighting the use of children in combat actions we thus not only protect them from the horrors of war, but also prevent their inevitable conversion into antisocial members of society in their adult lives, for a child, from an early age traumatized by war and knowing nothing but weapons, hatred and violence, will hardly be ready to live normally in the conditions of peace and legality.
Another important topic is sexual exploitation and abuses. Children, and especially little girls, constitute the most vulnerable in this regard group of population in a conflict situation. It angers us that sexual violence comes not only from members of armed units and groups but also from humanitarian personnel and peacekeepers - that is, people in whom the sufferers have special confidence, from whom they expect only good and help. Russia fully supports the efforts of the Secretary General and his Special Representative, aimed at providing comprehensive training for UN personnel, as well as at exercising oversight over their conduct and preventing the impunity of perpetrators.
We share the Secretary General's approaches to the problems of incorporating the "child factor" in the mandates of peacekeeping missions, securing access for humanitarian institutions to zones of conflicts, separating civilian persons from armed elements and protecting the civilian character of places of accommodation of refugees and internally displaced persons. The further building-up of the information-educational and country work of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict will help the attainment of our common goals.
|
RUSSIA IN FACTS