The regional conference on preventing grave violations against children in armed conflicts concluded Sunday in Doha. As chair of the 42nd meeting of the Council of Arab Ministers of Social Affairs, the State of Qatar hosted the one-day event via in-person and virtual attendance and in coordination with the Arab League and the Office of UN Special Representative of Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
The meeting, in which Their Excellencies the Arab Ministers of Social Affairs participated, discussed regional best practices on preventing grave violations against children in armed conflicts, based on the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergencies and Armed Conflicts of 1974, the General Assembly Declaration on the Rights of the Child of 1959, the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, and the optional protocols attached to the convention.
At the end of the meeting, the participants stressed the importance of full commitment to promoting the rights of the Arab child by adopting them via children-focused laws, policies, programs, and plans to discuss the negative repercussions of armed conflicts, conditions of asylum, displacement, and occupation on children in the Arab region, with all the scourges of displacement, homelessness, poverty, deprivation from the basic right to a decent life, cognitive empowerment, health, and the severe psychological effects that children endure, in addition to the dangers of physical exploitation, forced conscription, and so on.
Based on that, the participants expressed concern about the statistics of the UN and regional reports, which indicate a significant increase in the number of violations committed against children in armed conflicts, refugee conditions, displacement, and occupation.
They declared their solidarity with the Palestinian people as a result of the continued violations committed against children by the Israeli occupation forces, including killing, excessive use of force when arresting them, throwing children into prisons, and subjecting them to the most severe physical and psychological torture, and taking children as prisoners in violation of norms, international and humanitarian law, and international conventions on children’s rights.
The participants called on the international community to assume its full responsibility for protecting children who suffer from armed conflicts and occupation and protect children, especially in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Palestine, Sudan, and Lebanon, by obliging the concerned parties to decisions and laws that guarantee their protection as an integral part of any comprehensive strategy to prevent and resolve conflicts and to establish sustainable peace through preventive diplomacy, which ensures that children are not stripped of the types of protection afforded to them by the family, society and the law. (MORE)
Source: Qatar News Agency