Working for 'a World for Children Free of Violence'

The international community should move from "creating norms for the protection of children" to "applying the norms in different context," a top UN official suggested on the eve of Universal Children's Day, which falls on November 20. She also called for joint efforts to "achieve a world for children free of violence."

Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the UN secretary-general for children and armed conflict, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua that beginning with the 1990 World Summit for Children, the United Nations has increasingly sought to draw international attention to the plight of children affected by armed conflict.

Calling the issue of children and armed conflict an "initially very invisible subject," Coomaraswamy said remarkable progress has been made since Graca Machel, Mozambique's former Minister of Education, submitted her report to the General Assembly on this issue in 1996 as a UN independent expert.

Since then, a framework for protection in term of laws and principles has been established, Coomaraswamy told Xinhua, adding that there is now also the International Criminal Court to deal with the recruiting of child soldiers.

She lauded the active engagement of the Security Council by setting up the monitoring and reporting mechanism in the countries with conflicts to monitor the six grave violations of children, including killing and maiming of children, recruitment or use of child soldiers, rape and other grave sexual abuse, abduction, attacks against schools or hospitals and denial of humanitarian access.

"The Security Council has taken a very unprecedented step on this issue," said Coomaraswamy, who is also a UN under-secretary-general.

Yet the implementation of the established norms and standards has remained a problem, she said.

"As my predecessor has said, we should move from an era of creating norms to an era of application. That is the big problem ahead to apply the norms in different context," she remarked.

The date of Nov. 20 also marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As part of the Convention, the Optional Protocol to the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict has been signed and ratified by over 130 countries in the world.

Coomaraswamy said her office is also part of the 20th anniversary celebration and has started a campaign for the universal ratification of the Optional Protocol.

"We hope the Chinese government can help us in the Asia region to move toward the ratification," she said.

On the issue of recruitment of child soldiers, the special representative attributed it to "the lack of awareness on the part of the people."

"In some societies, children were abducted and recruited. But in others, children also voluntarily join because of poverty, or a sense of humiliation or discrimination. So I think it is important to understand the root causes, then we can deal with the prevention," she said.

She called on the international community to figure out ways to punish the perpetrators and end the impunity so that "it deters them from recruiting children and helps reintegrate the children back into the society."

A lawyer by training and formerly the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, Coomaraswamy is an internationally known human rights advocate. She was appointed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the post in April 2006 and reappointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in February 2007.

In the past three years, Coomaraswamy has visited nearly 20 war-torn countries and regions, including Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire, Afghanistan, Iraq and others, sparing no efforts to advocate child rights protection.

She appeared at the Gaza region one week after the Palestine-Israel conflict in early 2009. From November 15, she embarked on an eight-day mission to Sudan.

Talking about the biggest challenges she has faced within her term, Coomaraswamy said there have been two types of challenges.

"The main obstacle is that we are not being able to get the political will to move as fast as we would like to implement the resolutions; the other is the changing nature of armed conflict, which is posing many new challenges for children."

Both terrorist actions and counter-terrorism measures have had a deep impact on children, she said. "Children used as suicide bombers, attacks on girl schools, children in detention and children as victims of collateral damage ... We have to find new ways to protect children to meet the concerns of the changing nature of the conflicts."

According to UN statistics, there are 250,000 child soldiers worldwide. Some two million children have been killed, and six million permanently disabled in the conflicts so far.

In recent years, the international community has made some successful efforts to help child soldiers reintegrate into society, such as the network of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone.

"They have now made real success of their lives, becoming authors, PhD students, artists," said Coomaraswamy. She cited the examples of Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier in Sierra Leone who wrote the memoir "A Long Way Gone," and Grace Akallo, a Ugandan girl soldier who is now pursuing her postgraduate studies at a US university.

"They are extraordinary people, as they have gone through the world's most horrific experience," Coomaraswamy said, adding she expected to see more of these stories to show young people with similar experiences that "there is another way, and they can recover and do well."

Though it is "not easy, sometimes tough" to deal with governments or non-state factors, Coomaraswamy said she and her colleagues feel lucky -- "because this is about children."

"On this issue, the international community is so united. Few countries want to go against the UN. Even the most hard line governments give in much more than (on) any other issue," she said.

Talking about the future, Coomaraswamy is filled with confidence.

"We have come a long way. There are many challenges ahead, but if we all put our efforts together, we can truly achieve a world for children free of violence -- that's what we should work toward," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2009)