Are we defending our children, caught in our wars?

ACAPE Town mother pleaded: “I fear for my daughter’s life. She is only 9!

“Why must she live in such danger? “Why? Why?” Her cry echoed a report I read: “The challenges and successes of protecting children in some of the most dangerous places”.

It “reaffirmed commitment to protect innocent girls and boys faced with the brutality of violent places”.

“We are called to protect children from all the atrocities they fall victim to… such as killing, maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence.”

It affirmed the crucial role of advisers in the field – “essential to ending such practices as child recruitment, abduction, sexual violence and the killing and maiming of girls and boys”.

Their “only crime is that they were born into conflict”.

One officer urged: “I hope the general population will be as outraged by the situation of children… as I am. These abuses are against… national and international law.”

Reading this report, one winced at the pain in so many local communities.

But the report was actually titled: “Child Protection in United Nations Peacekeeping.” In places like Lebanon, Afghanistan, South Sudan and the most notorious war zones on Earth.

And yet these are the conditions in which many people among us, live in too – in places like Nyanga, Mitchells Plain and Ocean View.

Do we need to write this in capital letters?

MANY OF OUR CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN WAR ZONES.

Globally, “protecting those who are most vulnerable in conflict is one of the crucial duties the UN Security Council has entrusted to UN Peacekeeping Operations”, the report read.

The UN had identified “six grave violations: the killing or maiming, recruiting or use of child soldiers; attacks against schools or hospitals; rape or other grave sexual violence, abduction, and denial of humanitarian access for children”. Sound familiar? These “six grave violations” are the core focus of the UN Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. And the UN warned: Sanctions could be imposed on any country which failed to address these violations of children’s rights.

National Police Minister Bheki Cele vowed on Friday to assert “the authority of the state”, in the war-zone suburb of Zwelihle, in the Overstrand:

Is he explicit about human rights the state will protect? Is there a blackand-white list of child rights they’ll now guarantee? Will his helmeted men and women in blue be given sufficient resources to keep the peace, to defend children’s universal rights at all costs?

Or do we need a different set of blue helmets – the UN – to step in too?