War - crime against children

[xmasdale]

War is a crime against children

Peter Tatchell writes:

War is child abuse. Millions of children are being killed, wounded,
conscripted, orphaned, jailed and sexually abused in 30 conflict
zones. Peter Tatchell interviews Mark Waddington of the charity War
Child, which is reaching out to the child victims of war and
transforming their lives.

Watch the interview here:
http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.php?h=1bacbb974db1f87edd9d1ee1f73ba263

According to the United Nations, in the last 10 years, two million
children have been killed in the Congo, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Iraq,
Afghanistan and other war zones. That's one child killed every three
minutes.

In the Congo alone, four million people have died since the late 1990s
– the biggest mass killing since WW2. Iraq has seen over 650,000
deaths, coinciding with the invasion and occupation since 2003. Many
of the dead are children.

Among the children most vulnerable to violence are young girls, and
young people who are gay, HIV-positive, members of ethnic minorities
and dissenting faiths, and those whose parents support political
parties that are involved in conflicts.

In addition to the children killed, the UN estimates that six million
children have been permanently disabled as a result of conflicts over
the last decade.

In the same time-frame, at least 250,000 children have been
conscripted into armies and militias in the Congo, Uganda, Sri Lanka
and elsewhere. While boys become soldiers, girls are often exploited
and abused as cooks, porters and sex slaves.

In total, millions of children have been orphaned; hundreds of
thousands have ended up living rough on the streets (there are an
estimated 250 million street children worldwide); and tens of
thousands of teenagers have suffered imprisonment or been forced into
the sex industry.

The indirect effects of war can be as devastating as violence itself.
Vast numbers of children are suffering malnutrition, due to the
destruction of crops, livestock and food distribution networks.

Many child refugees have died as a result of diseases caused by a lack
of access to clean water and from the sometimes deliberate
contamination of water supplies by opposing armies.

There is also widespread child homelessness, following the bombing or
burning of villages; and illiteracy as a consequence of the disruption
of education following the destruction of schools and the murder of
teachers.

War Child is an award winning charity that works with local partner
organisations to protect marginalised children - street children,
child soldiers and children in prison - in places that are acutely
affected by conflict such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. For more information see: www.warchild.org.uk