War kills more than 100,000 babies a year, says group

MUNICH: At least 100,000 babies die every year because of armed conflict and its impact, from hunger to denial of aid, Save the Children International said yesterday.

In the 10 worst-hit countries, a conservative estimate of 550,000 infants died as a result of fighting between 2013 and 2017.

They succumbed to war and its effects, among them hunger, damage to hospitals and infrastructure, a lack of access to healthcare and sanitation and the denial of aid.

It said children faced the threat of being killed or maimed, recruited by armed groups, abducted or falling victim to sexual violence.

“Almost one in five children are living in areas impacted by conflict — more than at any time in the past two decades,” said the charity’s chief executive officer Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

“The number of children being killed or maimed has more than tripled, and we are seeing an alarming increase in the use of aid as a weapon of war,” she said on releasing the report at the Munich Security Conference.

Save the Children said a study it had commissioned from the Peace Research Institute Oslo had found that 420 million children were living in conflict-affected areas in 2017.

This represents 18 per cent of all children worldwide and was up by 30 million from the previous year. The worst-hit countries were Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The total number of deaths from indirect effects over the five-year period jumped to 870,000, when all children under age 5 were included, the charity said.

Thorning-Schmidt said the rising number of child casualties was very worrying.

“It is shocking that in the 21st century, we are going backwards on principles and moral standards that are so simple — children and civilians should never be targeted.”