(The New York Times) – 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 on Thursday. The United Nations agency warned against normalizing the brutality, a sentiment it has echoed in reports year after year. Link
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(CNN) – They have been killed, recruited to fight, used as human shields, forced into marriage and enslaved. 2017 has been a “nightmare year” for children caught in the crosshairs of conflict, the UN’s agency for children has said. Link
(Medium) – 2017 has been a devastating year for children trapped in conflicts. They came under attack in spaces where they should be safe — in homes, schools and hospitals and on playgrounds. Children were deliberately targeted in many conflicts: They were used as human shields, killed, maimed, abducted and recruited to fight. Millions of children also […]
(All Africa) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Leila Zerrougui of Algeria as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Ms. Zerrougui succeeds Maman Sidikou of Niger, who completes his assignment in January 2018 and to whom the Secretary-General […]
(AFP) – Jean-De-Dieu was working in the fields in his village of Mamoundioma one day in October when he heard the distant but unmistakeable sound of gunfire. The 48-year-old pastor and farmer abandoned the fields and fled with his wife and their 10 children to Oicha, 25 kilometres (15 miles) away, where they took refuge with […]
(Huffington Post) – “I saw many bad things in the army.” In Canada, an 11-year-old child is normally offered a football or a Frisbee, not an AK-47 and bullets. But Luny’s* boyhood was short lived. At 11 years old, he was recruited into the armed forces in South Sudan, forced to fight for a cause he […]
(IRIN) – The 36-year-old, who asked not be named, is one of dozens of women to accuse soldiers battling a new insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern South Kivu province of rape and sexual violence. The abuses documented by IRIN began in late September after government soldiers reoccupied areas briefly captured by a new […]
(SRSG CAAC) – The Special Representatives of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SVC), Pramila Patten, and for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba welcome the landmark decision by military justice authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the conviction of a provincial parliamentarian and members of the “Army […]
(AFP) – International war crimes judges will hand down on Friday landmark reparations to former child soldiers conscripted into a Congolese militia about 15 years ago, who were left brutalised and stigmatised by their horrific experiences. Warlord Thomas Lubanga, 56, was found guilty in 2012 at the International Criminal Court (ICC) of abducting boys and girls […]
(PHR) – In an extraordinary and landmark ruling, 11 Congolese militia members were convicted today of crimes against humanity for murder and the rape of 37 young children. The verdict represents a stunning victory for the victims, their families, their community of Kavumu, where the crimes occurred, for the wide array of organizations that mobilized around […]
