(Fox News) – It’s a level of violence hard to fathom. More people were displaced from their homes over the past year than in Iraq and Syria. Yet the recent rash of conflicts engulfing the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and reignited fears of civil war has generated little media and political attention — a notion that […]
(ICRC) – Since my last briefing, brutal attacks have continued, unabated, against the wounded and sick, medical care providers, ambulances and health care facilities. We are at risk of creating a ‘new normal’: too many actors are legitimizing attacks as “collateral damage” rather than outrageous violations. The question we need to be asking today is ‘where […]
(The Washington Post) – In the final days of Sahar Devdeh’s life, her parents feared their hugs might break her. She barely moved. She was too weak to cry. At times, her doctor thought, she looked more like a skeleton than a month-old baby. Link
(AFP) – At least six schoolchildren were among 11 people killed in Syrian regime shelling Tuesday in Eastern Ghouta, a war monitor said, despite a ceasefire in the hunger-hit rebel enclave. The bombardment of the rebel-held pocket outside Damascus came as a new round of peace talks to end Syria’s six-year war entered a second day […]
(United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases) – The Security Council today reiterated its strong condemnation of the recruitment and use of children by parties to armed conflict, as well as their killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence. Issuing presidential statement S/PRST/2017/21 at its debate on children and armed conflict, the Council […]
(UNMISS) – Senior South Sudanese army officers have been urged to show leadership by ensuring their troops protect children caught up in armed conflict and prevent the recruitment and use of children as fighters. The child protection unit of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) conducted a workshop training officers to understand and respect […]
(Teen Vogue) – Salina Guo says she’s 60, but looks older. She’s skeleton-thin, hollow-eyed, and hails from the village of Limi in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan. Guo’s husband was killed by government troops in November 2016. In January, South Sudanese forces attacked Limi again, killing at least 10 civilians, she and other survivors told me. […]
(UNICEF) – For years, the fighting, attacks and restrictions imposed on education in Ar-Raqqa forced children to attend school only sporadically. Many, like Reem, have never seen the inside of a classroom. Together with her family, Reem, 10, was forced to flee the violence around her home in Ar-Raqqa and seek shelter at Ein Issa, a tented […]
(BBC) – Aid has reached starving civilians trapped in the Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held area outside Damascus, for the first time in more than a year. Supplies for 40,000 people were allowed into the towns of Kafr Batna and Saqba on Monday, according to the UN. It comes days after the UN human rights chief said […]
(Geneva Call) – Alphonse and Clovis were younger than 15 years old when they joined the combatants of two different armed groups in North Kivu, a region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Following humanitarian negotiations with Geneva Call, the commanders of these groups came to realize that using children during military operations was prohibited, […]