OVER 8 000 CHILDREN KILLED, HURT IN CONFLICTS-UN
NEW YORK - Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday it’s unacceptable and appalling that more than 8 000 children were killed and injured in conflicts last year from Syria and Yemen to Congo and Afghanistan and urged combatants to do more to protect boys and girls. The UN chief said in his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, that the United Nations verified 3 512 child casualties in Afghanistan, over 40 percent of the total and “the highest number ever recorded” in the country. Guterres said the recruitment and use of children in conflict more than doubled in Somalia and Syria compared with 2015. And the UN verified 169 incidents affecting at least 1 022 youngsters in South Sudan - over 60 percent of them recruited and used by government security forces, he said. The secretary general said the number of violations against children committed by extremist groups - al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Islamic State and the Taliban - totalled more than 6 800. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement that Guterres is “appalled” not only by the more than 8 000 youngsters killed and injured and the recruitment of children, but by sexual violence against girls and boys and attacks on schools and hospitals. “A child killed, recruited as a soldier, injured in an attack or prevented from going to school due to a conflict is already one too many,” said Virginia Gamba, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict. The report contains a blacklist of government forces and rebel groups that recruit, use, kill, maim, rape, sexually abuse or abduct children in armed conflict or attack schools and hospitals.