LONDON, December 11, 1995. Press Release from UNICEF

UNICEF PROPOSES ANTI-WAR AGENDA
1996 ÔState of the WorldÕs Children ReportÕ ten point plan to protect children in war 

The United Nations ChildrenÕs Fund (UNICEF) today announced a major anti-war initiative. Speaking at the international launch in London of the 1996 ÔState of the WorldÕs Children ReportÕ, UNICEF Executive Director, Carol Bellamy, proposed a ten point, action orientated anti-war agenda with concrete measures to reduce the impact of war on children.

ÔWars are not going to disappear but we can at least mitigate their effects and ensure that they do not target children,Õ explains Carol Bellamy. ÔTo that end, this anti-war agenda sets out a series of steps that we believe to be both realistic and effective and that would dramatically improve the wellbeing of children in situations of conflict.Õ

In particular, the agenda includes a call for a universal ban on the production, stockpiling, sale, export and use of antipersonnel land-mines and commits UNICEF to an organisational boycott of any company involved in the manufacture or sale of land-mines.

UNICEF calls for a Ôchild impact assessmentÕ prior to the application of sanctions and breaks new ground by insisting that the concept of children as zones of peace should be elevated to a tenet of international law. Children as zones of peace involves the establishment of geographical zones or time periods within which children can be protected from harm and provided with the essential services to ensure their survival and well-being in the midst of conflict.

The agenda demands that increased investment be made in conflict prevention activities and in efforts towards reconciliation and rehabilation. A cornerstone of rehabilitation must be the provision of psychosocial trauma programmes to help heal the emotional wounds of children affected by war. UNICEF also argues for special protection and support for women and girls because of the likelihood of sexual violence in wartime.

The anti-war agenda is set forth in UNICEFs 1996 State of the WorldÕs Children Report which provides a comprehensive description and analysis of the situation of children in war. The report bears witness to the suffering of children and provides a harrowing account of children thrown into mass graves, children wandering without parents, children wasting away in refugee camps. Of children tortured, slaughtered and brutalised into becoming gun-toting killers themselves.

The report highlights the increasingly damaging impact of warfare on children and the prospects for further deterioration as more and more states dissolve into sites of chronic violence. During the last decade UNICEF estimates that two million children have lost their lives, four to five million have been disabled, one million have been orphaned or separated from their parents and some 10 million have been psychologically traumatised. The report explains that most of the children who die in wartime have not been hit by bombs or bullets but have succumbed to starvation or sickness due to the destruction of medical services, water supplies and food sources.

In a chapter on child soldiers, the report claims that no less than 200,000 children under the age of 16 were fighting in wars in 1988 alone. One explanation for this increasingly common phenomenon is the proliferation of light weapons, suggests UNICEF. The AK-47 can be stripped and reassembled by a child of 10. UNICEFÕs anti-war agenda calls for an increase in the minimum age of recruitment under international law to 18 years.

Above all, the ÔState of the WorldÕs Children ReportÕ argues that the welfare of children is inseparably linked to world peace. Poverty and lack of development fuel hatred and escalate hostilities. Improvements in health, education, water and sanitation, nutrition and family planning would go far to reduce the underlying causes of many of todayÕs wars.

ÔIt was the suffering of children in war that prompted the founding of UNICEF 50 years ago,Õ says Carol Bellamy. ÔIt is the continuing suffering of children that reminds us how much more we need to doÕ.


For more information contact:

Stacey Adams, UK UNICEF Ð Tel: +44 171 405 5592 / 430 0162
Emily Booker, New York UNICEF Ð Tel: +1 212 326 7259
Anna Wright, New York UNICEF Ð Tel: +1 212 326 7566