(The Intercept) – When Abu Fazel listens to news of the civil war still raging in Syria, he thinks about how he very nearly ended up a foot soldier there. But Abu Fazel isn’t Syrian, nor was he ever a would-be Islamic State fighter. He’s an 18-year-old Afghan refugee, living in the small city of […]
Read more
(Newsweek) – The use of child soldiers remains alarmingly common in conflicts across the world. From Syria and Iraq to Nigeria and South Sudan, multiple governments and armed groups are exploiting children to fight adult wars. Link
(Government of Norway) – Currently, 37 million children and youth do not have access to education because of crises and conflicts. Norway gives high priority to the protection of children’s education in conflict areas. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to education. By adopting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the […]
(AP) – Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday it’s unacceptable and appalling that more than 8,000 children were killed and injured in conflicts last year from Syria and Yemen to Congo and Afghanistan and urged combatants to do more to protect boys and girls. The U.N. chief said in his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, […]
(OSRSG-CAAC) – Boys and girls living in countries affected by armed conflict have been victims of widespread violations in 2016, as documented in the Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict released today and covering the period from January to December 2016. The alarming scale and severity of violations against children in 2016 – including […]
(HRW) – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has recruited Afghan immigrant children living in Iran to fight in Syria, Human Rights Watch said today. Afghan children as young as 14 have fought in the Fatemiyoun division, an exclusively Afghan armed group supported by Iran that fights alongside government forces in the Syrian conflict. Under international law, recruiting children under the age of […]
(AFP) – After the Taliban closed his local health clinic, Afghan farmer Haji Fazel Ahmad was forced to rent a car to take his sick wife to the nearest hospital six hours away. To his dismay the insurgents had shut that too. It is a scenario being played out across Afghanistan as medical facilities and workers […]
(Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition) – Statement of Leonard Rubenstein, chair of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, gave the following statement at the UNGA 2017 side event, Protection of Health Care in Armed Conflict, on September 22, 2017. I am honored to be here today representing the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. The coalition consists of […]
(New York Times) – Muhammad Anwar, 8, was vomiting all night and had severe diarrhea. His father, Hajji Aslam, did not know what to do. Most, and perhaps all, of the clinics in Oruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan are shut, including the one in their village, Shawali Karez. The province remains largely controlled by the Taliban, […]
(NPR) – Why would anyone want to harm an aid worker? They’re just there to help. They don’t take sides. They’re protected by international humanitarian law. Yet they’ve repeatedly been the target of some of the worst forms of violence, from kidnapping to gang rape to beheadings. In 2016 alone, 288 aid workers were attacked. Link
