On July 12th 2011, at the open debate on Children and Armed Conflict, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Security Council Resolution 1998, expanding the UNSC’s Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism to include the grave violation of attacks on schools and hospitals as a trigger for its implementation.
SCR1998 makes attacks on schools and hospitals a “trigger violation”—a violation on the basis of which armed forces or groups can be added to the Secretary-General’s “list of shame.” This is a historic expansion of the existing group of trigger violations: recruitment and use of child soldiers, rape and sexual violence and killing and maiming of children. It further allows the UN to negotiate specific Action Plans with parties to conflicts in order to stop attacks against schools and hospitals.
While emphasizing that schools and hospitals ought to be institutions of peace respected by all parties to conflict, resolution 1998 will also allow the Security Council to consider, within one year, a broad range of options for increasing pressure on persistent perpetrators of violations and abuses committed against children.
