Children often bear high cost of armed conflicts, poverty: Assembly promotes rights, ensures their tomorrows.
Author | Seufert-Barr, Nancy |
Position | Includes related article on family - From a UNICEF report, 'The State of the Worlds Children' |
Economic marginalization, along with the devastations of armed conflict, are "casting a shadow over the future of nations by depriving millions of children of the right to develop normally in mind and body", asserts The State of the World's Children 1995, published annually by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).
In the wars of the last decade--a series of catastrophes that includes Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Haiti--far more children than soldiers have been killed and disabled, according to the report. In just ten years, approximately 2 million children have died in wars and between 4 million and 5 million have been physically disabled.
"These are statistics of shame. And they cast a long shadow over future generations and their struggle for stability and social cohesion", asserts the report. "More quietly, the continued economic and social marginalization of the poorest nations, and of the poorest communities within nations, is depriving far larger numbers of children of the kind of childhood which would enable them to become part of tomorrow's solutions rather than tomorrow's problems."
Profoundly concerned by the continuing deterioration of the situation of children in many parts of the world, the Assembly on the recommendation of the Third Committee asked (resolution 49/209) Member States and UN agencies to facilitate the extension of humanitarian relief and assistance to children in armed conflicts and the immediate aftermath of such conflicts.
Graca Machel, an expert appointed by the Commission on Human Rights to conduct a study on the impact on children of armed conflicts, told the Third Committee that the international community must collectively fashion a response to the children "whose tiny corpses, wounded bodies and fractured psyches were marking the landscape of humanity".
According to a report of the Secretary-General (A/49/643), Ms. Machel's study was mandated to recommend to the international community action relating to: protection of children; the impact of the indiscriminate use of weapons; and physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration.
The Assembly also expressed deep concern at the growing number of incidents related to the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (49/210), and at reports of street children being involved in and affected by serious crime, drug abuse, violence and prostitution (49/212). Governments...
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