Kabul - 15 December 2008
UNAMA: Good morning everyone and welcome to our press conference today. My name is Nilab Mobarez from UNAMA Spokesperson's Office. We are joined this afternoon by the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Mr. Bo Asplund and the United Nations Children's Fund Representative, Ms. Catherine Mbengue who will speak on the issue of children in armed conflict in Afghanistan.
Before I hand over to them, I would like to make two short announcements.
INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS - PROFILING REPORT LAUNCHED
The first national internally displaced persons (IDP) profiling report has just been published by the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation and UNHCR and reveals complex challenges for IDPs in Afghanistan.
More than 1.2 million people have been uprooted within Afghanistan by conflict, community tensions, and natural disasters in the last decade. More than an estimated 235,000 people are currently displaced according to the first-ever nationwide profiling of IDPs. The report suggests ways to resolve the protracted IDP situation and urges concerned parties to anticipate potential further displacement.
The report pulls together surveys done in different regions of the country by the UN Refugee agency's offices, the provincial Departments of Refugees and Repatriation and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
The report concludes that under current circumstances, internal displacement is likely to continue, if not grow. It calls on the IDP Task Force and other coordination mechanisms to closely monitor new and potential displacements, and to develop contingency plans accordingly.
FAO: CONTROLLING DESERT LOCUSTS IN SOUTHWEST ASIA
The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock working with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is hosting the 26th session of the Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in south west Asia (SWAC) starting today in Kabul.
The SWAC was established on 15 December 1964 and has four member countries - Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan.
I would now like to give the floor to Bo Asplund.
UNAMA DSRSG, BO ASPLUND: Thank you very much, good afternoon and welcome. I am happy to see such a good number of people here. The subject we are going to discuss today is a report by the Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict to the Security Council on Afghanistan, which has been published for the first time ever. That is what we are talking about and what we will present to you today.
There have been reports on other countries where the issue of children in armed conflict is greater. There are countries where it is common for children to be used as soldiers which is not the case here. But there are serious issues in Afghanistan that affect children and are discussed in this report.
The main findings of this report refer to cases of recruitment of children by illegal armed groups, for example, to use as suicide bombers; killing and maiming of children; sexual violence; attacks on schools and hospitals where children are affected; and the denial of humanitarian access or difficulty in gaining humanitarian access to children in some cases.
One recent example is, and of course you remember it, was last Friday when a 13- year old boy was used as a suicide bomber in Helmand and killed three foreign soldiers. This is one example of children that are used in an armed conflict in a totally unacceptable way. The key thing that it demonstrates is the total disrespect of the fundamental rights of the child by the Taliban. This is unjustifiable under any circumstances and by any standards - you cannot force children to commit these kinds of acts.
This report documents some of these issues related to such use of children in Afghanistan. In order to be able to continue reporting on what is happening with children or unacceptable consequences for children in armed conflict, we have, as is usual formed a task force to be able to report on this regularly.
The task force is formed of a number of UN organisations: UNAMA, UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR, UNODC, and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and an international protection NGO. I would like to stress that the fact that we are forming a task force does not mean that it is going to be just a discussion group - it is going to monitor the situation for children in armed conflict and try to make sure that public opinion is developed against these practices so that the curve or the number of such incidents will decrease across Afghanistan.
I would like to see this task force, which the UNICEF representative and myself cochair, focus on making sure that through advocating with all involved groups in the country, but particularly village elders, we minimise the bad things that are happening to children.
When I say 'bad things', there are instruments that monitor the general situation for children but this is different. These are the bad things that happen as a result of the conflict.
I'd like to mention just two things before I hand over to Catherine. Between July 2007 and July 2008, there were 230 attacks on educational institutions that have been documented by the Ministry of Education and UNICEF.
These include a number of different incidents like the burning of school buildings, threatening students, or parents not sending their kids to school.
The other issue is civilian casualties. As you know UNAMA and all UN agencies are extremely concerned about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We have had the Shindand incident where 60 children were killed. All these incidents where civilians are killed affect children.
The United Nations must engage the NGOs, the whole human rights community, we must engage with the military forces, both Afghan and foreign and of course those anti-government forces; to make sure the bad consequences for children are minimised.
All these actors must respect the international legislation that UN bodies have adopted in human rights and humanitarian law. That is absolutely key to improving the situation for children.
Thank you, I will now hand over to Catherine from UNICEF who is more familiar with the details of the operation and the things that we are doing here.