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Killing Children in Conflict Zones

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Killing Children in Conflict Zones

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Belligerents treat children no differently from adults, brutalizing and killing them without remorse or concern for fundamental human rights.

In February, marking the 20th anniversary of its Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, an annual report on affected children warned about grievous violations of their fundamental rights.

According to the UN’s representative for the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerroughui, “(i)n Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen, thousands of children are killed, maimed, recruited and used, and face acute humanitarian crises.”

The UN report highlighted attacks on schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods, along with rape and sexual violence against young girls.

“Despite the advances that have been achieved in (the past) two decades, the basic rights of children are regularly violated, and there are current issues of grave concern,” Zerrougui explained.

Last August, a draft UN reported noted the vulnerability of children in conflict theaters worldwide, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying:

“I am highly concerned by the scale and severity of the grave violations that were committed against children in 2016, which included alarming levels of killing and maiming, recruitment and use and denial of humanitarian access.”

A disturbing 4,000 verified cases of rape occurred by combat troops in global conflicts, another 11,500 by UN peacekeepers and other non-governmental armed personnel.

A new UNICEF report highlighted the “shocking scale” of violence against children in conflict zones, saying “(n)o safe places (exist for them). (T)hey are targeted in their homes, schools and playgrounds.”

“(P)arties parties to conflicts blatantly (ignore) international laws designed to protect the most vulnerable” - notably America, Israel and their rogue allies, UNICEF failed to explain.

Mass murder and brutality comprise the new normal - like the old normal down through the ages, today more devastating with weapons able to cause mass destruction and human slaughter.

“In conflicts around the world, children have become frontline targets, used as human shields, killed, maimed and recruited to fight,” UNICEF explained, adding: 

“Rape, forced marriage, abduction and enslavement have become standard tactics in conflicts from Iraq, Syria and Yemen, to Nigeria, South Sudan and Myanmar.”

Millions of children worldwide are vulnerable to death, severe injuries and other appalling human rights abuses - the world community doing nothing to intervene responsibly, nor the UN, failing to condemn culpable nations, ones involved in naked aggression, endless wars on humanity.

Numbers of world body casualties reported way undercount reality, the true count multiples higher in conflict theaters - including deaths from untreated diseases, severe malnutrition, starvation and overall deprivation.

  

UNICEF and other UN agencies calling on parties in conflict theaters to observe international laws, norms and standards is ineffective rhetoric, nothing with teeth enforcing it.

That’s today’s reality in all conflict theaters, America the lead aggressor, bearing full responsibility for ongoing horrors in most active war zones.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

 

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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