Nairobi, 19 April (ENI)–A consortium of international relief agencies, monitoring violations of the rights of children in areas of armed conflict, is calling for their protection in the west of Sudan, warning that their well-being is at a critical juncture.
‘Children are very much affected given the displacement, uncertainty and numbers of armed militias that are involved in Darfur,’ Karimi Kinoti, a regional representative of the British agency, Christian Aid, told Ecumenical News International at the launch of the group’s latest report, Sudan’s Children at Crossroads, An Urgent Need for Protection.
Sudan’s western Darfur province is the scene of a conflict between government-backed militias and rebel groups that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
At the report’s launch in Nairobi on 18 April, Kinoti noted the issue of displacement in Darfur was causing great concern, as many children were not able to go to school or to get proper shelter or housing, and that access for aid agencies is often delayed or even denied.
The grouping of relief agencies, known as Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, says in its report that children in Darfur are experiencing extreme acts of violence and abuse.
‘Girls and boys continue to be victims of sexual violence, forced displacement, trafficking, and forced labour,’ said Ian McKinley, representing the Canadian High Commission (embassy) at the launch. ‘Girls have been victims of abduction by armed groups. They are used brutally as sex slaves or trafficked as sex workers or domestic servants.’
Watchlist noted that children in once troubled southern Sudan were now enjoying increased protection and improved services following the end of a separate 22-year-long conflict.
It said that most armed groups in Sudan, in both Darfur and in southern Sudan, recruited children into their ranks. The Sudan armed forces are also said to have incorporated child soldiers from other armed groups that it supported.
‘There should be a will to send children to school and make them stay there,’ said Dan Langoya, education programme coordinator for CARE International. ‘There should be a will make them become civilians.’
:: Report: www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/YZHG-72DPW9/$File/Full_Report.pdf [365 words]
