STOP
THE WARON CHILDRENPROTECTING CHILDREN
IN 21ST CENTURY CONFLICTSTOPTHE WARON CHILDRENPROTECTING CHILDREN
IN 21ST CENTURY CONFLICT

Acknowledgements
This report was written by George Graham,
Mariam Kirollos, Gunvor Knag Fylkesnes,
Keyan Salarkia and Nikki Wong from Save
the Children. This team was supported in
producing the report by James Denselow,
Ida Haugen-Poljac, Kristoffer Nilsen, Ravi
Wickremasinghe and other colleagues
across the Save the Children movement
who provided expert comment and review.
We would like to thank the research teamfrom the Peace Research Institute in Oslo
(PRIO) for their background report andanalysis, ‘Children Affected by Armed
Conflict, 1990-2017’ – specifically, GudrunØstby, Siri Aas Rustad, Andreas Foro
Tollefsen. In addition, we are grateful tocolleagues from Every Casualty Worldwide,
Geneva Call, the London School of
Economics, Norwegian People’s Aid
and The Arsenal Foundation for theircontributions.
Most important, we would like to thankthe children who shared their testimonies,
their feelings and their hopes in thereport’s foreword and case studies.

Names have been changed
to protect identities.
Save the Children © 2019
Printed by
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Printed on 100 percent recycled paper
Illustrations by Tomas Drefvelin(cover, insides and back)2 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

CONTENTS
Children’s foreword 

4Foreword 

7

Executive summary 

9Introduction 

12PART I: Children’s exposure to conflict and grave violations A rising tide – children’s increasing exposure to armed conflict 
The ten worst conflict-affected countries to be a child 
The six grave violations against children 
The distinctive ways children are harmed by armed conflict 

16
16
18
19
22

PART 2: The three dimensions of the war on children 
1 Failing to uphold standards in conflict: the war in Yemen 
2 Failure to hold perpetrators to account: the Rohingya crisis 

28
30
32
33

3 Lack of practical action on the ground: the conflict in South Sudan PART 3: Emerging solutions: ensuring children’s protection in conflict  36
1 Upholding standards of conduct in conflict 
36
2 Holding perpetrators to account 40
3 Practical action to protect children on the ground and to support their recovery 
44PART 4: Turning the tide:
an international re-commitment to children in conflict 

52

Recommendations 

54

Endnotes 

56
3

LISTEN TO OUR VOICESBefore conflict, we had peace.
Before conflict, we could be children.
School was a place of learningand development, and where our voices
were heard.
The streets were full of joy and happiness,where we walked and played.
We remember a life without conflict.
And we know a childhood in peace is possible.
But today we are paying the pricefor adults’ war.

Do notsilenceourwords
and ourdreams.

We are scared.
Our playground has been transformed
into a dangerous place.
We hide under our kitchen table.
We hear gunshots, bombs and explosions.
We are forced to quit schooland leave our home.
Many of us have lost our parents,
brothers, sisters and neighbours.
We are forced to work, beg or even kill
to survive.
We marry as children and give birth
to children.
We have been tortured, kidnapped,
raped and silenced.
We feel anger, resentment, and sadness.
We go to bed hungry.
Some of us never wake up.
Our present and future have been put on hold.

All this is our right.
As leaders, you have this duty to fulfil.
We call on the world’s leaders to ensure
we are able to go to school, playand feel protected… in every circumstance.
We ask leaders to change
weapons for books,
bullets for pencils,
confrontations for games,
cries for smiles,
and hatred for love.
We ask leaders to put a smile
on every child’s face.
We ask leaders to turn to peace,to pledge to protect us
and promise us development.
We ask leaders to offer us the opportunities
that will enable us to become
the best versions of ourselves.
Our common future is at risk.
We demand that you act now.

This message was composed bychildren from Mali, Sudan, Colombia, Yemen
and Syria during consultations carried out
by Save the Children in January 2019.

We want the war to stop
– we don’t want to hear a single shot.
Let’s make the past the bridge to our future.
We have big dreams for ourselves
and our countries.
We imagine our countries in peace,
where we are put at the heart of all decisions– because we are our countries’ present andfuture.
Even during war, we dream of a country
where all children can walk safely in theirneighborhood,and go to a school free from violence.
A place with cinemas and parks– and electricity, so we can watch TV.
All this should be not only in our dreams,
but in reality.

4 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•P H OTO : M O H A M M E D AWA D H / S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

Do not silence our words and our dreams.
Listen to what we have to say.
Listen to our opinions.

Yemen: Eight-year-old Razan
seriously injured her eye when
she was hit by shrapnel during
an airstrike in Hodeidah. Save
the Children referred Razan toa specialist hospital for emergency surgery and is providing
psychosocial support tohelp her begin to cometo terms with her
experiences.

5Democratic Republicof Congo (DRC) : Withher mum, Lisa fled 30 km
by foot. She wasn't able
to bring anything, likemany of the families,
they left in a rush.

6 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•FOREWORD

PHOTO: JOAN MARIE DEL MUNDO / SAVE THE CHILDREN

The nature of conflict has changed, putting
children in the frontline in new and terrible
ways. Wars are lasting longer. They are
more likely to be fought in urban areas
amongst civilian populations leading todeaths and life-changing injuries, and laying
waste to the infrastructure needed to guarantee access to food and water. Attacks
on schools and hospitals are up. The denialof humanitarian aid is used as yet anotherweapon of war. The international rules andbasic standards of conduct that exist to
protect civilians in conflict are being floutedwith impunity.
Children are disproportionately suffering the consequences of these brutal trends;
almost one fifth of children worldwide are now
living in areas affected by armed conflict.
We are seeing more children facing unimaginable mental and physical trauma; morechildren going hungry; more children falling
victim to preventable diseases; more children
out of school; more children at risk of sexual
violence and recruitment by armed groups;
and more children trapped on the frontline
without access to humanitarian aid.
It should shame us all that last year saw
the number of recorded grave violations
against children in conflict rise yet again. We
are living in the age of a war on children.
I have seen the impact of conflict on Yemen’s children. The hospital waiting rooms
were full of sick, starving children; so weak
they didn’t even have the energy to cry. The
tragedy of Yemen’s suffering – as in conflicts
across the world – is that it is manmade.
Save the Children is working to help
children living in conflict across the world
including in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, South
Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congoand Myanmar, but the causes and impact ofthese grave violations cannot be confronted
by aid agencies like us alone.
This is why we are calling on all leaders tostop the war on children.
This report sets out an international planof action, which will make a real difference
for these children. We outline three mainareas for action including upholding standards of conduct in conflict, holding perpetrators to account, and investing in helping
children recover from the physical and psychological wounds of war. In each area, weare proposing practical recommendations
that both state and non-state actors cantake to ensure that children are protected.
Our humanity demands that we act, andour future depends on it. If these children
are left behind, we cannot fulfil the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals
and lay the foundations for a peaceful andprosperous society. A society where we canguarantee survival, protection and hope forall children.
In our centenary year, we are more
inspired and energised than ever by thetireless commitment and example set by our
founder, Eglantyne Jebb. Just a few years
after she founded Save the Children in 1919,
Eglantyne presented a Declaration of theRights of the Child to leaders from around the world
calling on them to remember the ‘forgotten’ children.
This declaration laid thefoundations for what would
later become the 1989 UN
Convention on the Rights of
the Child, a landmark humanrights treaty.
This reminds us thatthe suffering of millions ofchildren should never be
accepted as inevitable, and it
reminds us of what is possibleat this critical moment. Thereis still hope for children living in conflict
today, but this will require concerted action
from governments and non-state actors.
We can and must stop the children of
today from becoming the forgotten generations of tomorrow.

The sufferingof millionsof children
should neverbe accepted
as inevitable.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Chief Executive,
Save the Children International

7

8 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•EXECUTIVE SUMMARY‘Every war is a war against children.’
One hundred years on, those words of Save
the Children founder Eglantyne Jebb resonate
as strongly as ever. Right now, across theworld, millions of children are caught up in
conflicts they played no part in creating. Often
their rights are violated with total impunity.
New evidence presented by Save the Children is damning:• 420 million children – nearly one-fifth ofchildren worldwide – are living in a conflictzone; a rise of nearly 30 million children
from 2016.
• The number of children living in conflictzones has doubled since the end of the coldwar.
• 142 million children are living in high-intensity conflict-zones; that is, in conflict zones
with more than 1,000 battle-related deaths
in a year.
• New analysis from Save the Children showsthat the numbers of ‘grave violations’ of children’s rights in conflict reported and verified
by the United Nations have almost tripled
since 2010.
• Hundreds of thousands of children are dying
every year as a result of indirect effects ofconflict – including malnutrition, disease andthe breakdown of healthcare, water andsanitation.
The protection of children in conflict – and withit the realisation of the promises made in the
declarations, conventions and statutes of the20th century – is one of the defining challengesof the 21st century.
The nature of conflict – and its impact onchildren – is evolving. Intra-state conflict isincreasing, as are the numbers of armed actors
involved. The world is witnessing deliberatecampaigns of violence against civilians, including the targeting of schools, the abduction andenslavement of girls, and deliberate starvation.
Armed conflicts are more protracted; forinstance, the most prominent conflict in recent
times – the war in Syria – has lasted longer
than the second world war. The longer a conflict lasts the greater the indirect harm caused
as essential services cease to function. And inmany protracted situations the lines between‘conflict’ and ‘peace’ have become blurred.
Conflict is also increasingly urban; in Mosul
and Mogadishu, for example, children, theirhomes and their schools are on the front line,
vulnerable to indiscriminate attack. In today’s

armed conflicts, there is often no longer aclearly demarcated battlefield: children’s
homes and schools are the battlefield.

Children on the frontline
Increasingly, the brunt of armed violence andwarfare is being borne by children. Children
suffer in conflict in different ways to adults,
partly because they are physically weaker
and also because they have so much at stake– their physical, mental and psychosocial development are heavily dependent on the conditions they experience as children.
Conflict affects children differently depending on a number of personal characteristics –significantly gender and age, but also disability
status, ethnicity, religion and whether they livein rural or urban locations. The harm that isdone to children in armed conflict is not only
often more severe than that done to adults, it
has longer lasting implications – for children
themselves and for their societies. Children
suffer in conflict in three broad ways:

420

MILLION
CHILDREN
LIVE IN
CONFLICTZONES

They may be deliberately targeted.
The commission of atrocities against children
is an exceptionally powerful way of terrorising
a population – and, hence, a preferred militarytactic for armed forces and groups in manyof today’s conflicts. Children are also often
targeted because they may be easily manipulated and exploited, for instance, as soldiers or
suicide bombers. Schools become targets fortactical reasons – for example, as a recruiting
ground or because they are being used for military purposes.
Children suffer as a result ofindiscriminate or disproportionate
military action.
For example, they may be killed or injured bylandmines or the use of explosive weapons withwide-area effect in populated areas.
Children suffer on a huge scale from theindirect consequences of conflict.
These include displacement; the breakdown ofmarkets and essential public services, such as
healthcare, water and sanitation; and pervasive
insecurity. While indirect effects and direct violations are both part of the same continuum of
harm inflicted on children by modern conflict,9these indirect consequences of conflict affectand kill many more children. More still miss out
on school and the chance of a better future.

A crisis of complianceThis report argues that children suffering inconflict today are not primarily suffering froma deficit of identified rights. Rather, they are
suffering from a crisis of compliance with thoserights. Armed actors, often including government forces, are committing violations againstchildren. And they are often being met by, atbest, international indifference and, at worst,
complicity.
There are three key dimensions of the crisis
facing children in conflict today.
• States and armed non-state actors are failingto uphold standards in their own conduct
or to insist on this from their allies and fromothers over whom they have influence.
• Governments are taking too little action to
hold perpetrators of violations to accountfor their crimes.
• Not enough is being invested in practicalaction on the ground to protect children in
conflict and to support their recovery.
But there is cause for hope. When governments and other actors have decided that theywant to uphold high standards, we have seenthat rules, law and norms have been developed
to constrain violence. When governments andinternational bodies have committed to takeaccountability seriously, perpetrators havebeen punished. And when governments andmultilateral agencies have invested in practicalaction on the ground, children have been pro-

The ten worst conflict-affected
countries to be a child
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Democratic Republic of Congo
Iraq
Mali
Nigeria
SomaliaSouth Sudan
Syria
Yemen

tected and lives have been saved.
This report, Stop the War on Children, establishes the basis for an international plan ofaction to protect children in conflict. Leadersand governments have a particularly powerfulrole to play. We call on them to:• Uphold standards of conduct in conflict.
• Hold perpetrators of violations to account.
• Take practical action to protect children
and support their recovery.
(For our detailed recommendations,see page 54.)
It is 100 years since Eglantyne Jebb, thefounder of the idea of children’s rights, began
her work, and 30 years since the birth of the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The UN General Assembly’s 74th Session in
September 2019 is a timely opportunity for governments to recommit to protecting children in
conflict through specific pledges of action.
For the children living in the world’s
conflict zones, action cannot come soon
enough.

Our Charter to Stop the War on Children
Based on the principle that all children havefundamental rights, our Charter sets out ten
clear and incontrovertible goals:• All children are protected against killingand maiming.
• Schools and health centres are treated aszones of peace and protection.
• Every child is protected from rape and sexual
violence.
• No child is recruited into armed forces or groups.
• All children in conflict are safe from abduction,
detention and displacement.

10 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•• No child is denied access to humanitarian aid
in conflict.
• Violations of the rights of children in conflict are
rigorously monitored, reported and acted upon.
• Those committing, overseeing and ordering violations against children in conflict are brought tojustice and held accountable for their actions.
• Every child harmed or affected by conflictreceives practical help and support to cope,
recover and rebuild their lives.
• All children affected by conflict, including
refugees and those internally displaced, haveaccess to a good-quality education.

11

INTRODUCTION‘Mum and dad burned.
They died. We all died.’
Wafa, a four-year-old girl in Yemen
Wafa, aged four, and Shadia, two, were badly
injured in an airstrike in the Yemeni port cityof Hodeidah in June 2018. Their mother andfather were killed.
Since the incident Wafa has had difficulty
sleeping; she has nightmares and shouts out
in her sleep. She cries much of the time andcannot stand anyone, even her family, being in
her room.
Wafa had surgery to remove a piece of
shrapnel in her head. It left a 15cm hole inher skull. Following that operation her bodyswelled up as a result of additional fragmentsof shrapnel in her body. She had two further
operations to remove them.
Save the Children’s team in Hodeidah is

supporting Wafa and Shadia’s medical care,providing psychosocial support and assisting
the extended family to help the girls heal.
Wafa and Shadia may never fully recoverfrom the attack they suffered. They may carryphysical and mental scars for the rest of theirlives. Like millions of other children affectedby armed conflict, their wellbeing, education,
health and nutrition may suffer, severely damaging their life-chances. In turn, this is likely
to lead to negative consequences for theircommunity and ultimately for their country,
whose stability and prosperity depend on the
wellbeing of its people.
This example is also emblematic in anotherway. The killing or maiming of children – that
is, anyone under the age of 18 – has been
identified by the United Nations as one of six‘grave violations’ of children’s rights in armed
conflict. There is an imperative – especially

Injured and orphaned: Wafa, aged four, and her sister Shadia, two, were badly injured in an airstrike in the

Yemeni port city of Hodeidah in June 2018. Their mother and father were killed.

12 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•P H OTO : S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

on states – to understand what happened
that day and to insist on accountability. As
things stand, the family of Wafa and Shadia
are not able to say whether the girls’ parents
were deliberately targeted by the air strikes,
whether their deaths were the result of individual recklessness or the product of a wilfully
indiscriminate bombing policy, or whether
their death was an unfortunate consequenceof an attack that was proportionate to alegitimate military purpose. No one knows if acrime was committed – and no credible, independent efforts have been made to find out. If
it was a crime, no one will be held to account.
If it was an unfortunate accident, it is unlikelythat lessons will be learned to ensure that noother children lose their mother and father
in similar ways in the future. This reportargues that a world in which extreme violenceagainst children can take place with seeming
impunity is not a safe world for anyone.
In addition, there is the role played by
the international community in this story.
Powerful international actors have influence
over the war that killed Wafa and Shadia’s
parents. In this particular case, it is likely thatthe weapon used was not built in the country
whose air force dropped it, nor in the country
where it landed, but in a third country thatprofited from its sale. The commission of thispotential grave violation was facilitated byinternational actors. The posture that theinternational community takes towards warring parties – that is, the standards of conductthat governments expect and insist upon, thelevel of scrutiny that they impose in seeking
accountability for violations, and the practicalassistance they provide to keep children safe
– sets the rules and norms that either enable
children to be killed in armed conflict or that
protect them. For Wafa, Shadia and millions
like them, everything depends on this.

Every child’s right to protection
Children suffer in conflict in three ways. First,
they are sometimes deliberately targeted.
The commission of atrocities against children
is an exceptionally powerful way of terrorising a population – and, hence, a preferred
military tactic for armed forces and groups inmany of today’s conflicts. Children are also
often targeted because they may be easily
manipulated and exploited, for instance, assoldiers or suicide bombers. Schools becometargets for tactical reasons – for example, asa recruiting ground or because they are being
used for military purposes.

Second, children can suffer as a result ofindiscriminate or disproportionate military
action. For example, they may be killed or
injured by landmines or the use of explosive
weapons with wide-area effect in populatedareas.
Third, children suffer on a huge scale fromthe indirect consequences of conflict – displacement; the breakdown of markets andessential public services such as healthcare,social welfare, water and sanitation; and highlevels of insecurity. While indirect effects anddirect violations are both part of the same
continuum of harm inflicted on children bymodern conflict, these indirect consequencesof conflict affect and kill many more children
and leave even greater numbers of children
out of school.
The nature of conflict – and its impact onchildren – is evolving.1 Intra-state conflictis increasing, as are the numbers of armed
actors involved. The world is witnessing deliberate campaigns of violence against civilians,
including the targeting of schools, the abduction and enslavement of girls, and deliberate
starvation.2 Armed conflicts are more protracted; for instance, the mostprominent conflict in recent
times – the war in Syria – haslasted longer than the second world war. The longer
a conflict lasts the greater
the indirect harm caused as
essential services cease tofunction. And in many protracted situations the lines
between ‘conflict’ and ‘peace’
have become blurred. Conflictis also increasingly urban3;
in Mosul and Mogadishu,
for example, children, theirhomes and their schools areon the front line, vulnerable
to indiscriminate attack. In
today’s armed conflicts, there
is often no longer a clearly
demarcated battlefield: children’s homes and schools are
the battlefield.
This report argues that children sufferingin conflict today are not primarily sufferingfrom a deficit of identified rights. Rather, they
are suffering from a crisis of compliance withthose rights. Armed actors, often including
government forces, are committing violations
against children. And they are often being met
by, at best, international indifference and, atworst, complicity.
In this report we set out an agenda fortackling this crisis. The duty to try to keep

A world inwhich extreme
violence againstchildren cantake placewith seeming
impunity is nota safe world foranyone.

13

International legal provisions
for children in conflict 6
The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols are at the core of international humanitarian law (IHL), which regulates
the conduct of armed conflict and seeks tolimit its effects. The principles of ‘distinction’and ‘proportionality’ are the basis for specificrules, such as the prohibition of direct attacks
on the civilian population or on civilian objects,
the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, andthe obligation to adopt precautionary measures to avoid or limit casualties among civilians
and damage to civilian objects to the greatest
possible extent. IHL also includes special protections for children, including provisions forthe protection of education. Under IHL, states
bear the primary responsibility for ensuringthat the basic needs of civilians and civilian
populations under their control are met; but
if they are unable or unwilling to meet thisobligation, relief action can be taken by others,
such as humanitarian organisations, who must
be granted rapid and unimpeded access to thepeople affected.
The UN Convention of the Rights of theChild (UNCRC) is the most widely ratified
treaty in the world. It defines children as
persons under the age of 18 and recognises
and protects their equal and indivisible social,civil, political, economic, health and culturalrights. By setting the minimum standards andoverarching principles by which every society should treat every child, the UNCRC has
played a critical role in catalysing progress forchildren over the last 30 years. It establishes
the principle that ‘in all actions concerning children... the best interests of the child shall be a
primary consideration.’ Article 38 specificallyaddresses the rights of children in armed conflict, requiring states to take ‘all feasible measures’ to protect and care for children affectedby armed conflict. The Optional Protocol to
the UNCRC on the Involvement of Children
in Armed Conflict was adopted in 2000; it
promotes the principle of non-recruitment andnon-participation in armed conflict of children
under the age of 18 years.

14 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•The Rome Statue is the principal instrument of international criminal law withrespect to the protection of civilians, granting the International Criminal Court (ICC)
jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes when committed byany individual in the territory of a signatory
state or by nationals of that state, or in asituation referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council.7 There is also an important bodyof international criminal law that has arisen
from ad hoc tribunals and courts, including
the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia, the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia,
and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The
latter was the first international court to try
perpetrators for violations of IHL relating to
the recruitment of children. These tribunals
have also broken new ground in defining gender-based crimes.
In addition, the UN Security Council and
UN General Assembly have passed resolutions that carry the force of internationallaw both on specific conflict situations andon relevant thematic areas. These include
children and armed conflict 8; women, peaceand security9; the protection of civilians10; andthe elimination of all forms of discrimination
against women.11 The UN Security Council isthe only UN body with authority under the
UN Charter to issue a binding resolution on
all UN members.12
The African Charter on the Rights andWelfare of the Child of 1990 is notable as
the only intergovernmental treaty other thanthe UNCRC to recognise and protect the full
spectrum of social, civil, political, economic,
health and cultural rights of children. It has
been ratified by almost all states of the African Union. Article 22 directly addresses theuse of children in armed conflict, prohibiting
their recruitment as soldiers and direct participation in fighting wars.

Eastern Ukraine: Olha,a four-year-old girl almost
lost her life when she andand her best friend picked
up a mine thinking it wasa whistle.

PHOTO: SIMON EDMUNDS / SAVE THE CHILDREN

children safe is an ethical norm recognised inevery culture.4 The ability and willingness toprotect children would be recognised by thevast majority of people as fundamental tohumanity. In the early 20th century, a Britishsocial reformer, Eglantyne Jebb, championed
this basic truth – that all children, even thechildren of one’s enemies, have a special claim
to protection. She gave the idea expression,
first, in the establishment of the Save theChildren Fund in 1919 to respond to the deprivation to children caused by the blockadeof central Europe at the end of the first world
war, and then in drafting the Declaration of
the Rights of the Child in 1924. The Declaration was adopted by the League of Nations
and, ultimately, led to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, which is today the world’s
most widely ratified human rights treaty. 5
The Declaration was a defining moment,
establishing the principle that all children
everywhere have certain identifiable andequal rights. Subsequently, the worst episodesof the 20th century inspired the drafting ofadditional frameworks that sought to codify norms that further define our common
humanity. These include the United Nations
Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948, the Geneva Conventions of1949, the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention

in 1977 and the Rome Statute of 1998. All ofthese exist in part to protect children fromharm done to them by warfare.
Ensuring respect for and adherence to therules and norms that have been created toprotect children is important not only forchildren themselves, but also because thisrules-based international system underpins
the protection of everyone everywhere. If
the world is unable to come together to keep
children safe, then it is hard to have hope forsustainable international cooperation on any
other issue. In a context of increasing challenges to multilateral frameworks, bodies andinstitutions, including from some of the world’s
most powerful states, there is an urgency tothis task.
There are also important instrumental
reasons why the protection of children in
conflict is so urgent. A failure to protect thecurrent generation of children will undermine
progress in human development and advances
toward the Sustainable Development Goals,
leaving the societies in which these children
will grow up poorer and more fragile.13 Longterm global stability, security and prosperity
are contingent on the protection of children
from conflict. Current negative trends for theprotection of children in conflict thus haveserious implications not only for children
themselves but also for the wider world.

15

PART 1Children’s exposure
to conflict and grave
violations.

‘Every war is a war
against children’
One hundred years on, those words of Save
the Children founder Eglantyne Jebb remain
as true as ever. Despite constraints in theavailable data, the scale, severity and uniquenature of the harm done to children by armed
conflict is clear. More children are being
exposed to armed violence than at any timein more than 20 years. The number of verified violations perpetrated against them hasreached a record high. And the damage done
to many children – physically, psychologicallyand in terms of their development – will devastate their life chances.

A rising tide – children’s increasing
exposure to armed conflict

420 million children
are living in ‘conflictzones’ in 2017.
30 million morethan in 2016.

142 million were
living in high-intensity
conflict-zones.
16 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

New analysis commissioned by Save the Children and conducted by the Peace ResearchInstitute in Oslo (PRIO) maps the numbers ofchildren living in areas affected by armed conflict around the world.14 The research foundthat in 2017 more than 420 million children
were living in areas defined by PRIO as ‘conflict zones’ or ‘conflict-affected areas’ – thatis, within 50km of where one or more conflict
events took place in a given year, within theborders of a country. This is nearly one inevery five children worldwide15 – and a riseof nearly 30 million from the previous year.16
Of these children, 142 million were living in
high-intensity conflict-zones; that is, in conflictzones with more than 1,000 battle-related
deaths in a year.
The number of children living in conflict-affected areas has increased drastically since
the end of the Cold War, significantly outpacing population growth, even though the number of countries experiencing armed conflicthas remained stable. Today’s figure of 420 million is more than twice as high as at the endof the Cold War. This increase is being driven
by the proliferation of incidents of armed violence, the perpetuation of long-running conflicts and the increasingly urban character ofarmed violence.
This analysis uses data collated by the
Uppsala Conflict Data Programme (UCDP),
the world’s foremost provider of metrics onorganised violence. This dataset provides thegeographical location, timing and intensity ofrecorded conflict events globally, covering theyears 1990–2017. PRIO cross-referenced thisFIGURE 1: CHILDREN LIVING
IN CONFLICT-AFFECTEDZONES, BY CONFLICT INTENSITY, 1990–2017

500000000

400000000

The number of children
living in conflict areas has
doubled since the end of
the cold war

300000000

SOURCE: PRIO’S CALCULATIONBASED ON UCDP GED DATASET,GRIDDED POPULATION OF THE
WORLD V4, (CIESIN, 2016) AND
WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS (UN, 2017)

200000000

High intensity conflict

100000000

Medium intensity conflict

Conflict-zone

200

400

Non-conflict zone

600

800

Conflict-zone

2017

2015

2010

2005

2001 2000
2002
2003
2004

1995

1990

Low intensity conflict

Non-conflict zone

Asia

Asia

AfricaAfricaMiddle East

Middle East

Americas

Americas

EuropeEurope

1000

1200

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

FIGURE 2: NUMBER OF CHILDREN LIVING IN CONFLICTZONES IN 2017, BY REGION

FIGURE 3: SHARE OF CHILDREN LIVING IN CONFLICTZONES IN 2017, BY REGION

195 million children in Asia and 152 million children
across Africa are living in a conflict zone

Two in five children in the Middle East and a quarterof children across Africa live in a conflict zone

SOURCE: PRIO’S CALCULATION BASED ON UCDP GED DATASET,GRIDDED POPULATION OF THE WORLD V4, (CIESIN, 2016) AND
WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS (UN, 2017)

SOURCE: PRIO’S CALCULATION BASED ON UCDP GED DATASET,GRIDDED POPULATION OF THE WORLD V4, (CIESIN, 2016) AND
WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS (UN, 2017)conflict data with recently-updated population data from the Gridded Population of theWorld and from the UN17 in order to estimate
the numbers of children living in proximity toincidents of armed violence worldwide.
The UCDP defines armed conflict as asituation when armed force is used by anorganised actor against another organised
actor, or against civilians, resulting in at least
25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year.
This could be conflict involving states and/or non-state actors or it could be one-sided
violence perpetrated by an organised armed

group against civilians.18 The dataset definesa conflict event as a lethal incident in the context of an armed conflict.
Many countries account for the high number of children living in conflict-affected areas.
In absolute terms, the highest figures camefrom India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Asia has the largest
absolute number of children living in conflict-affected areas at 195 million children. In
proportional terms, the figure for children in
the Middle East is highest, with 40% of children – 35 million – living in conflict-affected17SyriaAfghanistan

Iraq
Mali
CentralAfricanRepublic

South
Sudan

Yemen

Somalia
Nigeria

Democratic Republicof Congo (DRC)

areas. Across Africa, 152 million children– one in four – are living in conflict-affectedareas, up from one in five in 2016.
The 142 million living in high-intensity conflict zones are of particular concern, given thegreater scale and severity of violence to which
they are exposed. Nearly 90% of Yemen’schildren, 70% of Syria’s children and 60% ofSomalia’s children were living in close proximity to high-intensity conflict in 2017.

Using this approach, the ten worst countries
for children in conflict are:• Afghanistan• Central African Republic• Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)• Iraq• Mali• Nigeria• Somalia• South Sudan• Syria• Yemen

The ten worst conflict-affected
countries to be a childThis list is presented in alphabetical orderin recognition that the quality of data available for each country is too variable tosubstantiate a definitive ranking.19 However,the DRC measures particularly poorly. The
evidence also suggests a deterioration in thesituation for children in Somalia, Syria andAfghanistan, all of which saw a rise in thenumber of verified grave violations in 2017(see pages 19–22). The UN considers Yemen
the worst humanitarian crisis in the world20
and the indirect effects of the conflict there
are putting huge numbers of children at riskof death due to malnutrition.21 However, thereporting of UN-verified violations by the
Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition in Yemen was
heavily contested in both 2017 and 2018, andDrawing on PRIO’s research and Save theChildren’s analysis of the UN’s data on grave
violations for 2017, we have identified a list of
the ten worst conflict-affected countries forchildren. This is based on nine indicators:• the prevalence of reports of each of the six
grave violations (see page 19)• conflict intensity (measured by the numberof recorded casualties)• total child population living in conflict-affected areas• the proportion of children living in conflictzones relative to the population of the country as a whole.

18 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

the number of violations featuring in the 2018
children and armed conflict report is relatively low. The new country on the list compared with the equivalent list we produced
in 2018 is Mali22 , which saw an increase inreported battle deaths from 2016 to 2017 anda tripling in reports of denial of humanitarianaccess.23
While we are unable to definitively capture all the reverberating impacts of armed
conflict on children, we can start to estimate
the huge toll that conflict exacts on children
living in the countries on this list. In a study
published in The Lancet, researchers matchedchild-survival data to data on the intensity,
scale and location of armed conflict in 35
African countries over the two decades to2015.24 They found that exposure to conflict
increased the average risk of death for children under the age of five by 7,7%. The risk
was greatest for children under the age of
one living in areas with exposure to more
intense conflicts over more protracted periods. The deaths recorded by the Lancet study
were due to the indirect impact of conflict,likely including the destruction of livelihoods
and assets, of sanitation and food systems, of
medical supply chains, and of access to basic
services.
We have applied the findings in The Lancet’s study to the ten worst conflict-affected
countries in which to be a child listed above
and estimate that in the last five years alone
more than 550,000 infants have died due tothe reverberating impact of conflict.25 The
total for children under five is 870,000. Theseestimates are imperfect – they are indicativeand may be highly conservative. However,they suggest that every year in just ten
conflict-affected countries at least 100,000
infants die who in the absence of conflict
would survive.

The six grave violations
against children
The UN Security Council has identified six
grave violations against children in situationsof armed conflict:• killing and maiming of children• recruitment and use of children as soldiers• sexual violence against children• abduction of children• attacks on schools and hospitals• denial of humanitarian access.
These grave violations have been defined on
the basis of their egregious nature and theirsevere impact on children’s wellbeing. The
UN Secretary-General publishes an annual
report on children and armed conflict that
documents the incidence of these violations inconflicts around the world.26
According to our analysis of the mostrecent annual report, the number of children directly affected by verified cases ofgrave violations in 2017 was the highest everrecorded, at more than 25,000.27 The crises
unfolding in the Central African Republic,
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen contributed significantly to this increase.28 Since
2010, there has been a 37% rise in the total
number of children living in conflict zones, but
a 174% rise in the number of verified incidents
of grave violations.
The figures for verified violations only represent the tip of the iceberg – the challenges
in collecting and verifying reports to the highstandards required by the UN mean thatmany more incidents do not make it into the
UN Secretary-General’s annual report. However, the trend is clear and, while it may tosome extent reflect more efficient reporting,it suggests not only are more children living
in conflict-affected areas, they are more
likely to suffer violations as a consequence.

Children in conflict (millions)

37% 174%

SINCE 2010:
MORE
CHILDREN
LIVING IN
CONFLICTZONESDRAMATIC
INCREASE
IN VERIFIED GRAVEVIOLATIONSGrave violations

500

25000

400

20000

300

15000

200

10000

100

5000

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

FIGURE 4: DRASTIC INCREASE IN GRAVE VIOLATIONS AND CHILDREN
LIVING IN CONFLICT ZONES
More children are living in conflict zones and grave violations againstthem are rising even faster.
SOURCE: SAVE THE CHILDREN’S ANALYSIS OF THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL’SCHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT REPORTS / PRIO’S CALCULATION BASED ON
UCDP GED DATASET, GRIDDED POPULATION OF THE WORLD V4, (CIESIN, 2016)
AND WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS (UN, 2017)19

10,677
UNVERIFIEDREPORTSOF
CHILDRENBEINGKILLED OR
MAIMEDIN 2017

How are the six
grave violations tracked?
A Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism(MRM) to track grave violations against children in conflict was created in 2005 by the
UN Security Council. At the global level, theMRM is overseen by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children
and Armed Conflict, in close cooperation
with UNICEF and the UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations. At country level,
the MRM is overseen by country taskforceson monitoring and reporting, which areco-chaired by the representative of UNICEF
and the highest UN representative in the
country.
By collecting timely, objective, accurate
and reliable information on violations andabuses committed against children by parties
to armed conflict (both state and non-state),
the MRM provides the UN Security Council
with an evidence base with which to holdperpetrators accountable. It also helps actors
on the ground to advocate for and to planadequate protection and response measures.
Verified violations are described in the UN
Secretary-General’s annual report on children
and armed conflict. Parties to conflict thatare found to have committed grave violations
are listed in the annexes to the UN Secretary-General’s annual reports. In order to bedelisted, parties to conflict are required todevelop and fully implement time-bound andspecific action plans to halt and prevent violations and to take remedial action.
The MRM is strongest when the UN Secretary-General and member states allocate
sufficient resources in terms of budget andstaff both to do the documentation and verification in the field and to engage in dialogue
with parties to conflict to work towards ending and preventing violations. Mandated andwell-resourced child protection adviser andchild protection officer posts in UN peacekeeping and political missions are critical
for this. So too is concerted advocacy for
non-governmental child protection actors tohave access to country taskforces, and where
possible to participate in those taskforces, inorder to complement the work of the UN inareas where it has limited access.
1 Killing and maiming
There were 10,677 UN-verified reports ofchildren being killed or maimed in 2017 – arise of nearly 6% from the year before. In
Afghanistan alone, the UN verified 3,179 childcasualties. Many of these incidents involved
improvised explosive devices and unexploded
ordnance, accounting for at least 33% of

20 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

those casualties. These include children being
used to plant bombs and/or to carry out theattacks themselves.29 According to UNICEF,
2018 saw a further increase in the killing andmaiming of children in Afghanistan. 30 In Nigeria, the Boko Haram armed group forced children – overwhelmingly girls – to perpetratesuicide attacks, which led to over half of all
the verified child casualties in the country in2017.31
In Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the use of air
strikes has taken a particularly heavy toll on
children. 32 In Syria, civilians constituted 71% ofdeaths reported by the Violation Documentation Center. Shelling and air bombardment
accounted for 57% of civilian deaths and 79%
of children’s deaths.33 Almost all the deaths
reported from barrel bombs were civilians;
27% were children.
Landmines and explosive remnants of
war pose a continuing risk, killing children in
Myanmar, Lebanon, South Sudan and Sudan.
Indiscriminate weapons, such as landmines
and cluster munitions, are a major threat tochildren even long after hostilities have ended.
Children often mistake them and other explosive remnants for toys. Children’s smaller sizemeans they are more likely to die from blast
injuries than adults: according to the Landmine Monitor, in 2017 children accounted for
47% of all civilian casualties from mines andexplosive remnants of war where the age ofthe victim was known.34
2 Recruitment and use
The overall number of verified cases of forced
recruitment and use of children in conflict
increased by 3% from 2016 to 2017, withmore than 8,000 girls and boys reported ashaving been recruited into the ranks of nonstate armed groups or national armed andstate-affiliated forces. 35 In certain countries
the increase was very significant: the numberof verified cases quadrupled in the Central
African Republic, doubled in the DRC andincreased significantly in Somalia, while thenumber of verified cases in South Sudan, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen persisted at alarming
levels.
Boys and girls tend to experience recruitment and use by armed groups or armed
forces differently. Regardless of how they
are recruited and whatever roles they are
required to carry out, children’s participationin conflict bears serious implications for their
physical and emotional well-being. They arecommonly subject to abuse and most of themwitness death, killing, and sexual violence.
Many are forced to commit violent acts, andsome suffer serious long-term psychologicalconsequences. The reintegration of these children into civilian life is an essential part of thework to help them rebuild their lives.36
3 Sexual violence
Grave violations of sexual violence include
rape, sexual slavery or trafficking, forced
marriage, pregnancy, and abortion and sterilisation. The challenges of underreporting are
exceptional.
In 2017 the UN Secretary-General documented 954 verified cases of sexual violenceagainst children in conflict situations, up 12%
from the year before. In Myanmar, theseincluded the gang rape of girls as young as
ten by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed
forces, and a 14-year-old girl who was gangraped and then killed in front of her motherand three siblings.37 A report published in
March 2018 by the UN Commission of Inquiry
on Syria and that drew on interviews withsurvivors of sexual violence, relatives of survivors, defectors, healthcare practitioners,
lawyers and members of affected communities
found that thousands of women, girls, men
and boys have been subjected to sexual andgender-based violence.38 These are just two
examples of recent conflicts where sexual
violence has been prevalent; though in termsof quantifying its incidence, such reports only
scratch the surface.
4 Abduction
In 2017, verified cases of child abduction
increased by 62% from the previous year,
making a total of 2,556. In Somalia alone,
the Al Shabaab armed group abducted morethan 1,600 children, some as young as nine.
Schools are a common target for abduction.
Children who are abducted almost always
face further grave violations, such as recruitment, sexual violence or killing and maiming.
Despite some success stories, many children
who are abducted during conflict never return
home; for example, 112 of the 276 ‘Chibok
girls’ abducted by Boko Haram in April 2014
remain unaccounted for.39
5 Attacks on schools and hospitals
There were 1,432 verified attacks on schools
in 2017, making it one of the worst years inrecorded history for attacks on education.
Much of Syria and Yemen’s education infrastructure has been reduced to rubble by missiles and bombs. According to UNICEF, one
third of Syria’s schools have been destroyed
or damaged or are occupied.40 One in ten
schools in Yemen have been destroyed ordamaged.41 As a result, an estimated 2 million
children in Yemen42 and 2 million children in

Syria are out of school.43 In Ukraine, at least
750 education facilities have been damaged
or destroyed since the start of the conflict.44
In Nigeria, Boko Haram has killed an estimated 2,295 teachers and UNICEF estimatesthat more than 1,400 schools have been
destroyed, damaged or looted, primarily in
the North East zone, and more than 600,000
children have lost access to education.45
The military use of schools continues in
Syria, Yemen, Sudan, the Philippines andAfghanistan.46 In some contexts, schoolgirls
have been specifically targeted for sexual
violence and by armed groups who oppose
female education. For instance, in the DRC,
militiamen abducted 17 girls from primaryschools in 2017 and raped them over thecourse of several months47. In Balochistan
Province, Pakistan a girls’ school was specifically targeted using improvised explosive
devices.48
Hospitals, clinics and other health facilities
are also a frequent target for military use
and/or attacks, and medical personnel arealso targeted. To take just two examples: in
Syria the UN verified 108 attacks on hospitals
and medical personnel in 2017, resulting in thekilling of six and injury to at least 29; in South
Sudan, at least 20% of the country’s 1,900
medical facilities had closed as of December
2017 due to the conflict, with 50% functioning at extremely limited capacity.49 Violence
disrupts healthcare systems precisely whenchildren need them more than ever. 50

3,179
UNVERIFIEDCHILDCASUALTIES IN
AFGHA­NISTANALONEIN 2017

6 Denial of humanitarian access
Access denial entails arbitrarily blocking thefree passage or timely delivery of humanitarian assistance to people in need and deliberate attacks against humanitarian workers.
More than 1,500 verified cases of denial of
humanitarian access took place in 2017, up by
roughly 50% from the year before. This represents a record high, building on a patternof aid denial that has spiked in recent years.
Children in Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria andYemen were prevented from receiving life-saving support.
The impact of this violation is particularly
striking in the most protracted and severe
conflicts. Save the Children research has
shown that 4.5 million children in 2018 wereat risk of starvation in ten of the worst conflicts for children, with one child likely to dieevery minute. 51 Millions of children in conflicts
around the world are currently unable toaccess basic assistance such as antibiotics or
food. More children in conflicts are at risk ofdying due to disease and hunger than fromany other cause and the denial of humanitar-21

Gaps in the data
The research in this report uses findings that are publicly available and credible. However, there remains asignificant and worrying gap in child-specific and gender-disaggregated data in conflicts. For example, there
are currently no comprehensive, reliable data on childcasualties in conflicts around the world. Authoritative
sources of conflict and fatality data, such as the Uppsala
Conflict Data Programme and the Armed Conflict andEvents Data project, do not provide any information on
the age distribution of those killed in conflict.
Likewise, as mentioned above, we know that there
is significant underreporting in many contexts of all
the grave violations, in particular, of sexual violence.
The UN data on violations collected through the MRM
inevitably only present a partial picture due to access
restrictions, security threats and limited child protection
resources within UN peacekeeping and humanitarian
operations. Furthermore, the six violations are only asubset of the many ways in which children are harmed inconflict.
If we are to see progress in the areas set out below,
improvements in the collection and use of high-quality
and more specific data will be essential.

2000

1500

1000

500

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

FIGURE 5: INSTANCES OF DENIAL OF HUMANITARIAN ACCESS.
Denial of humanitarian access in conflict zones has increased
dramatically over ten years.
SOURCE: SAVE THE CHILDREN’S ANALYSIS OF THE UN SECRETARY
GENERAL’S CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT REPORTS

22 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

ian access is a major driver of their suffering. 52
These violations have been described as ‘starvation crimes’, emphasising that people are
not passively starving but are being starved. 53
Under IHL and customary internationallaw, the intentional starvation of civilians is
prohibited. But anomalously, the Rome Statute of the ICC does not expressly prohibit it in
the case of non-international armed conflicts.
The government of Switzerland has proposed
an amendment to the Rome Statute in order
to correct this discrepancy, with a decision
expected at the 18th session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute in
December 2019.

The distinctive ways children are
harmed by armed conflict
Children suffer in conflict in different ways
to adults, partly because they are physicallyweaker and also because they have so muchat stake – their physical, mental and psychosocial development are heavily dependent on
the conditions they experience as children.
Conflict affects children differently depending
on a number of personal characteristics, significantly gender and age, but also disability
status, ethnicity, religion and whether they
live in rural or urban locations. The harmthat is done to children in armed conflict is
not only often more severe than that done toadults, it has longer lasting implications – forchildren themselves and for their societies.
Malnutrition, disease
and lack of healthcareChildren bear a significant burden of conflict-associated morbidity and mortality as aresult of armed conflict. 54 Many more children
die in conflict as a result of malnutrition, disease and lack of healthcare than from bullets
or bombs: our estimates suggest in just ten
countries nearly 870,000 children may havedied in the last five years due to these reverberating effects. In the case of Yemen, an estimated 85,000 children died of extreme hunger
between April 2015 and October 2018, farmore than any estimates of the numbers who
are thought to have been killed directly. 55
Conflict makes children vulnerable to acuteand chronic malnutrition, with damaging
effects on growth, immune and metabolic systems functioning, and cognitive development. 56
Roughly three-quarters of the more than 150
million stunted children in the world live in
conflict zones. 57 Even when malnutrition does
not kill children, its effects can be life-long,life-changing and intergenerational. If a childdoes not get the right nutrition in their first
two to three years, the impact on their physical and cognitive development is irreversible. 58
Maternal malnutrition is a danger to children
too, specifically during pregnancy and whilenursing, contributing to low birthweight andchild stunting.
Access challenges and damage done inconflict to health, water and sanitation infrastructure exacerbate the risks to children.
The diseases driving child mortality in conflict-affected countries – pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and measles – arelargely preventable and treatable. But theseillnesses claim more children’s lives because
the healthcare and nutritious food that could
save them is unavailable or out of reach due
to insecurity. Proximity to organised violencealso significantly reduces the likelihood of
institutional births; for example, in sub-Saharan Africa it results in around 47,000 children
being born outside health facilities every
year, greatly increasing risks to the healthof the child in future years. 59 There is a link
between lack of adequate health services,increased risk of adolescent pregnancy andhigh rates of health complications, including
preventable maternal mortality. The risk ofpregnancy related-death is twice as high forgirls aged 15 to 19 and five times higher forgirls aged 10 to 14 compared with women in
their twenties.60
Death and injury
The ways children are killed and injured inconflict can be significantly different fromthose suffered by adults. New research supported by Save the Children shows how children experience blast injuries differently fromadults and how they have unique vulnerabilities. Evidence suggests, for example, that head
and facial trauma is more common in children
than in adults partly because they are more
likely to pick up unexploded ordnance. Studies
demonstrate the difference that penetrating
injuries to the face, head, neck, upper limb
and trunk have on children and adults. These
injuries affect 80% of child patients, markedly
higher than the 31% in adults.61 The research
has also found that adult protocols for bloodtransfusion are not effective for children (seebox below) and children with blast injuries are
more likely than adults to die.62 Additionally,physical injuries to children can result in disabilities that can have significant secondary
effects, not least in limiting access to education due to inadequate provision for disabledpupils. This is especially true in insecure andresource-poor environments.

RAPED ANDSEXUALLY ABUSEDBY SOLDIERS:MASIKA’S STORY
Masika is from the DRC.
When her father died she andher brothers and sisters wereunable to support themselves.
Masika stopped going to school
and decided to join an armed
group. On her way to the military camp, she was raped bya soldier. It left her barely able
to walk.
Masika spent a few days recovering, then continued to thecamp where she joined a military group. Masika was trained
to handle weapons. She wasalso forced to have sex withmany of the soldiers.
‘[The soldiers] wouldn’t stop
asking me for sex,’ she says.
‘I found myself having to justgive in.’
Eventually Masika and twoother girls managed to escape.
Masika returned home. She
now lives with her uncle and isback at school.
‘Everything that I had thought
I could one day do and beseemed impossible,’ she says. ‘Ithought my only option wasto get involved with armed
groups.’23

Long-term damage to mental health
Exposure to conflict, violence and insecurity
can have major psychological effects on children. Unless appropriate support is provided,
their distress can last well beyond the endof the conflict. Save the Children has conducted research on the impact of conflict onchildren’s mental health in Syria and Iraq. In
the Syria study, 84% of adults and almost all
children interviewed identified bombing andshelling as the number one cause of psychological stress in children’s daily lives.63 89% of
adults said children’s behaviour had become
more fearful and nervous, and 71% saidchildren increasingly suffered from frequent
bed-wetting and involuntary urination. In our
most recent research in Iraq, 43% of children
returning to Mosul reported feeling grief allor a lot of the time. More than a quarter ofadolescents reported never liking who they
are, with a further 12% saying they only likethemselves a little.64
In both studies, children were displaying
symptoms associated with toxic stress – atype of stress response that occurs when children experience strong, frequent or prolonged
adversity, without adequate support. A continuous state of toxic stress can have a lifelong impact on children’s mental and physicalhealth.65 It increases the likelihood of negative
impacts on children’s development or healthproblems later in life. Given that a child’s

experiences during the earliest years of life
have a lasting impact on the architecture of
the developing brain, toxic stress has serious
and enduring negative consequences on cognitive development and emotional regulation.
Specifically, the prolonged activation of stresshormones in early childhood can reduce neural connections in areas of the brain dedicatedto learning and reasoning, affecting children’sabilities to perform later in their lives. In thisway, in the societies in which it takes place,
conflict imposes yet another huge social coston future generations.
Loss of education
Education is both a basic right and a life-saving humanitarian response. Moreover, whenchildren living in crisis are asked what theyneed most, time and time again they say theywant to continue their education.66 For achild in conflict, school provides both accessto a safe space to learn and a precious senseof normality, routine and calm. Schools also
serve a protective function, often keeping
children safe from risks in their environment
and from negative coping strategies – school
can mean reduced rates of sexual violence,child marriage, harmful work and recruitment
into armed forces or armed groups. A safeand high-quality education is one of the mostsignificant determinants of the future lifechances of children and a key contributor to

Challenges in the care of child blast casualties‘Although improved care of the adult blast-injury
casualty in the last decade has transformed survival rates, currently there is no consensus about
haemorrhage control in the child patient. There
are no tourniquets designed for children, few
child-specific transfusion protocols and current
research is clear that children with blast injuries
are therefore considerably more likely than adults
to die than at point of wounding. Furthermore,children are often injured by blast in groups, soeven if they survive to be admitted to a hospital,such severe and complicated forms of casualty –requiring immediate and simultaneous treatment
in numbers – can overwhelm existing medical
capability.
Beyond the point of wounding, the long-term
treatment of the blast-injured child remains challenging and unresolved. Children’s experience of
pain is poorly understood, as is the treatment of

24 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

the condition. For those requiring prosthetic-limb
replacement, particularly in austere or low-resource environments, orthopaedic technologies
are inadequate, and child patients rarely receive
the levels of expert rehabilitation that their injuries will require. Nor will those replacement limbs
adapt well as they grow into adulthood.
Beyond rehabilitation lies the profound psychological challenge of child blast injury. In addition tolosing limbs, sight or hearing, they may have lostfamilies, homes and the prospects of literacy, education, marriage and employment.
Improving the care of child blast casualties, andsecuring their lives beyond survival, will depend on
the development of local capabilities from point ofwounding to rehabilitation and beyond.’
Dr Emily Mayhew, Co-chair, Paediatric Blast
Injury Partnership, Imperial College, London

More than 75 million children across most of the world’s
crisis- and conflict-affected countries currently require urgent
support to receive an education.

societies’ potential for long-term stability andprosperity.
However, during conflict, armed actors frequently attack schools, use them as barracks
and stores, or for shelters, interrogations anddetentions.67 Explosive weapons with a widearea effect also inflict significant indiscriminate damage on vital infrastructure in urban
areas, including schools. The immediate consequences of attacks on education can include
the death or injury of children, the destructionof facilities and disrupted access to learning.
In the long term, attacks can lead to diminished education quality, loss of teachers andweakened educational systems.68
More than 75 million children across mostof the world’s crisis- and conflict-affected
countries currently require urgent support toreceive an education.69 Girls are particularly
likely to be out of school, for a wide range ofreasons.70 For example, in South Sudan, 72%
of primary-school-aged girls do not attend
primary school, compared with 64% of boys.71
In Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya only 38%
of primary school students are girls.72 In
Afghanistan 60% of the 3.7 million out-ofschool children are girls.73
In recent years, Save the Children advocacy
has focused on education for refugee children.
Only 61% of refugee children attend primaryschool compared with 91% of children globally.74 Refugee enrolment at secondary level iseven worse – just 23% of refugee adolescentsreceive a secondary education, comparedwith 84% around the world. In total, morethan half of the world’s school-aged refugees– 4 million – are out of school, with refugees
five times more likely to be out of school than
the global average.75 Moreover, where formal
camps or structures do not exist, schools are
frequently converted into shelters for those
who have been forced to flee, thus reducing
access to education for host communities too.
Sexual and gender-based
violence against children
Sexual violence against children has multiple
and very significant negative impacts, in boththe short and the long term.76 Although both
girls and boys experience sexual violence,
girls are disproportionately targeted andaffected by it, both in peacetime and duringconflict. However, in conflict situations risks
of multiple forms of gender-based violence– including sexual violence, child marriage,
sexual harassment, female genital mutilation,
intimate partner violence, trafficking, sexual
exploitation and abuse – are exacerbated.
The physical impact of such violence on girls
and boys is severe. Health consequences forgirls can include serious physical injuries suchas traumatic fistula, sexually transmitted
infections such as HIV/AIDS, and forced andunwanted pregnancies, resulting in either
unsafe abortions or greater risk of maternalmortality or morbidity because their bodies
are not sufficiently developed to bear children.
The psychological impact of sexual violence
on children is profound and is often worsened
by family and community rejection, with communities frequently stigmatising children suspected of having been raped.
As a result of their gender, girls are often
forced to drop out of school, and/or are prevented from accessing income-generating
opportunities or social networks, resulting
in social exclusion and stigmatisation. These
consequences are particularly stark for those
who become pregnant as a result of rape;
they may even be forced to marry the perpetrator. The exclusion many girls face cantrap them in a cycle of extreme poverty andincreased vulnerability to sexual exploitation or trafficking. For boys, there is often adifferent but severe stigma associated withsuffering sexual violence; one consequence issignificant underreporting.
Child marriage
Conflict increases and exacerbates the inequalities that make girls vulnerable to childmarriage and its consequences. Fear of sexual
violence, the implications of unintended adolescent pregnancies, family shame and perceived dishonour, stigma, homelessness, andhunger or starvation have all been reported

25

P H OTO : N O U R WA H I D / S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

TRAUMATISED
BY SHELLING:
ASMAA’S STORY‘My 11-year-old brother used tocover his ears when the shelling
was happening. He thoughtthat if he closed his ears, hewould not hear the shelling
anymore. He stopped eating.’
Asmaa was 14 when she fled to
Lebanon from Syria with her
seven siblings. Their motherdied a month before they fled,
so her oldest sister led them.
They had to try four times toescape before they were successful. Each time they failed
they were threatened and sent
back. On the final attempt theyhid in a vehicle then walked forthree days across the mountains to get to Lebanon.
They are all traumatised fromthe shelling they experienced.
Asmaa’s younger brotherstopped eating due to thestress.

26 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

by parents and children as reasons for childmarriage.77 In some instances, child marriage
is used to facilitate migration out of conflict-affected countries and refugee camps.78 In
others, forced marriage of children or sexual
slavery have been used by armed groups as aweapon of war.79 Limited access to sexual andreproductive, maternal, newborn and childhealthcare in conflict settings increases thelikelihood of girls falling pregnant too young
and of young mothers and their babies dying
through birth and pregnancy complications.
To take the example of just one conflict
context, rates of child marriage have risen forgirls in Syria and among Syrian refugee populations.80 Marriage of children under 18 years
old is not a new phenomenon in Syria, but inthis protracted conflict child marriage has
become a coping mechanism. Families arrange
marriages for girls, believing marriage willprotect their daughters from violence by
strangers or armed groups and to ease financial burdens on the family. Three in ten Syrian
refugee girls in Lebanon between the ages of
15 and 19 are currently married, an increaseof 7% from 2017.81 Among Syrian refugees
in Jordan, the share of registered marriages
involving girls under 18 years of age rose from
12% in 2011 to 18% in 2012 to 25% in 2013 andthen to 32% in early 2014.82
There have been similar reports ofincreases in child marriage among Syrian refugees in Egypt, Iraq and Turkey.83 Improved
data collection, dissemination and analysis isessential to improving understanding of the
impact of conflict on child marriage and of
how to prevent marriages and to protect therights of married girls in conflict contexts.
Violations of the rights ofchildren allegedly associatedwith armed forces and groups
Around the world, thousands of children arebeing detained or otherwise having theirrights violated because they are regarded
as security threats for their – or their family’s – alleged association with armed groups.
Cases have been documented of children
being tortured or abused, kept with adultprisoners, not being provided proper legal
support or living in conditions that are againstinternational standards for juvenile justice.
Adolescent boys over the age of ten years are
particularly vulnerable. For example, in Somalia 67 boys were captured from Al Shabaaband detained in 2016, having recently been
forcibly recruited by the group. Several were
given sentences of 20–30 years and ten weresentenced to death, though these sentenceswere commuted in 2016 following advocacy

The gendered dynamics of conflict for childrenChildren’s experience of conflict is highly gendered.
Adolescent boys, for instance, are often targeted
due to perceptions of the threat they could poseand their potential fighting abilities. Girls are more
often targeted for sexual violence. Attacks on girls
and women are often used as a deliberate tactic
by armed groups to disrupt communities. Girls andwomen can also be attacked with the aim of forcibly displacing whole communities.
In times of conflict, gender norms become especially important. Girls, in particular, can be targeted for deviating from norms – either accepted
community norms or those idealised by armed
groups. ‘Offences’ can include entering public
spaces, engaging in work or not adhering to dress
codes. In countries such as Nigeria and Afghanistan, girls, women and schools have come underattack due to gendered views of armed groups.
The real and credible threat of gendered violence contributes to heightened fears. This, in turn,limits the girls’ social mobility – including access to
education, healthcare, information and legal status.
In some contexts, girls may be married as a supposedly protective and pre-emptive measure, duein large part to fears associated with an increase inarmed actors. These concerns are not unfounded.
Evidence suggests that increases in numbers ofon their behalf. In Iraq at least 1,036 children
were held in juvenile detention facilities onnational security-related charges in 2017,
mostly for their alleged association with ISIS,
with many not even being charged.84 Palestinian children continue to be arrested in large
numbers by Israeli forces – sometimes in theirhomes by night – to be held in the Israeli
military detention system and prosecuted inmilitary courts; throughout 2018, a monthly
average of 312 Palestinian children were heldin detention.85 The practice is also prevalent inother areas of conflict, such as the DRC and
Sudan.
Children who are accused of being associated with armed forces or armed groups
should be considered primarily as victims
and not only as perpetrators.86 They mustbe treated in accordance with internationallaw in a framework of restorative justice andsocial rehabilitation and, wherever possible,
alternatives to detention must be sought.

armed actors is associated with sexual exploitation
and abuse, including survival sex. An increased riskof sexual violence, child marriage and adolescentpregnancy leads to an increased risk of maternalmortality, particularly in contexts where ongoing
conflict and entrenched gender norms make accessible sexual and reproductive health services difficult or even impossible.
Recruitment of children into fighting forces isoften perpetrated using gender norms and gender-related push and pull factors. Traditional
assumptions that greater numbers of boys are subject to recruitment are accurate – they remain thelargest proportion of recruited children in the UN’s
data on children and armed conflict. However, Save
the Children has encountered cases where promisesof greater freedom and autonomy, education andother basic needs have been used to pull girls into
recruitment. Gendered pull factors, such as thepromise of wives, are also used to recruit boys.
In the case of abduction, whereas boys are often
seized to be used in armed groups for military
purposes, girls are routinely abducted to be usedas wives or to be sexually exploited. The different
experiences boys and girls have in abduction are
generally insufficiently accounted for in reintegration programmes.

The detention of children is always harmful
and never in their best interests – under the
UNCRC, the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must only be used as ameasure of last resort and for the shortest
appropriate period of time.
More broadly, the purported associationof parents and family members with armed
groups means tens of thousands of children
and their families face collective punishment87,
and as a result may be deprived of their liberty or are living in camps without freedomof movement. In 2017, a total of 2,199 children
were reported to have been deprived of theirliberty for their or their parents’ alleged association with Boko Haram in Nigeria, Niger
and Cameroon, though many were subsequently released by the Nigerian authorities.88
In Syria and Iraq, thousands of children areliving in limbo in camps, without freedom of
movement, due to family members’ alleged
links to ISIS.89

27

PART 2The three dimensionsof the war on children

As set out in Part 1, the war on children is
becoming ever more deadly and destructive.
From Syria to South Sudan the future of ageneration of children is under attack.
The war on children is being waged withblatant disregard for the universally agreed
international legal and normative framework
to protect children in conflict.
In this Part, we identify the three
dimensions of this crisis of compliance:
1. failure to uphold standards of conduct in
conflict
2. failure to hold perpetrators of violations toaccount
3. lack of practical action on the ground toprotect children and support their recovery.
We explore each dimension through threecase studies – on the war in Yemen, theRohingya crisis and the conflict in South
Sudan.

The crisis of compliance

And threeimperatives
for action:
1
Uphold standards ofconduct in conflict.
2
Hold perpetrators toaccount.
3
Take practical action
on the ground.
28 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

Preventing conflicts and atrocities in the firstplace and, where conflict is already taking
place, acting swiftly and in a coordinatedmanner to bring it to a rapid halt would end
the conditions in which grave violations ofchildren’s rights can take place. In this respect,
the children of Syria, South Sudan, Yemen,
Myanmar, the Central African Republic andmany other places can all point to a lack oftimely, concerted international action as asignificant cause of their protracted suffering.
However, the mere existence of conflictis not sufficient to explain the prevalence of
violations against children in conflict. Near
universal ratification of the UNCRC – ‘thatluminous, living document that enshrines therights of every child without exception, to alife of dignity and self-fulfilment’ 90 – has not
yet translated into a universal recognition ofchildren as holders of rights. This is particularly true in situations of armed conflict.
The context in which conflicts are fought
and, more importantly, the actions and inaction of parties to conflicts – and those with
influence over these parties – are critical
determinants of whether or not children suffer
grave violations of their rights. As outlinedin the introduction to this report, an extensive legal and normative framework exists toprotect children’s rights in conflict. However,in far too many places this framework is not
being upheld. This is the key challenge thatneeds to be met for millions of children tobe able to survive and thrive in the modern
world.
There are three dimensions
to this crisis of compliance:
First, states and other armed actors are
failing to uphold standards in conflict, both intheir own conduct as military actors and in
the behaviour that they demand from others.
There is no such thing as a ‘child friendly’
warzone, but the level of risk facing children
is determined by the degree to which combatants comply, or fail to comply, with their
responsibilities under humanitarian, humanrights and criminal law and seek to meet thehighest standards of civilian protection in theirapproach. The requirements to distinguishbetween civilians and combatants, to ensure
military attacks are proportionate to military
aims and to take all necessary precautions
to protect civilians before launching attacks
are all enshrined in IHL. Parties are required
to consistently abide by these standards, but
often they do not. In addition to international
legal requirements, standards of conduct also
include additional measures that could significantly lessen the harm caused to children
by conflict. Examples include minimising theuse of explosive weapons in populated areas,
avoiding the use of schools for military purposes or proactively tracking and addressing
civilian casualties and other forms of civilian
harm.
Common Article I of the four Geneva
Conventions requires signatories not just to‘respect’ the Conventions but also to ‘ensure
respect’ for them. This is an important principle, namely that those states that turn a blindeye to violations of internationally accepted
standards – by other states or by non-state
actors – in effect enable those violations. The
sale of arms, military equipment or associatedservices to parties to conflict where there is arisk that they will be used in unlawful attacks
on children is a notable example of states
helping to undermine standards.
Second, perpetrators of violations have little
reason to fear being held to account for theiractions. Even when perpetrators of violationsof international laws have their crimes madepublic and receive international condemnation
for them, most do not face any real political,
economic or legal consequences for their
behaviour. As a result, there are too few
effective deterrents to those who would commit grave violations against children – and aculture of impunity is perpetuated. The current international architecture for accountability is based on essential human values, but

without sufficient political will
it fundamentally fails children.
Approaches to the investigation and prosecution ofviolations must be strengthened as a matter of urgency.
These should include:• strengthened national judicial processes• greater support for andresourcing of international
investigatory mechanisms• strengthened expertise ininvestigating and prosecuting crimes against children
as a specific group that
requires special protection• more proactive use of targeted sanctions
against perpetrators• greater support for international judicial
mechanisms – whether the ICC, ad hoc
tribunals or greater application of the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Perpetratorsof violations
have little
reason to fear
being held toaccount for
their actions.

Third, there is not enough practical action
being taken to keep children safe and tosupport their recovery. Parties to conflicts
are not doing enough to protect children
themselves or to allow others to provide
assistance. Efforts by the global community
to ensure the centrality of protection in thedelivery of humanitarian assistance are often
challenged due to weak accountability forcritical protection issues, especially in protracted crises. Furthermore, crucial interventions that would protect children in armed
conflict are underfunded and under-prioritised. In 2017, UNICEF reports that 2.8 million
children received some form of humanitarianchild protection support91, but this is just asmall fraction of the total need – UNICEF
estimates that some 48 million children are inneed of humanitarian support in 51 countries
worldwide.92 Between 2010 and 2018 the gap
widened substantially between the requirements detailed in humanitarian responseplans for all forms of humanitarian protection
work – not just child protection – and funds
actually received, dropping from an alreadydisappointing 42% in 2010 to just 37% in
2018.93 The average share of total humanitarian aid allocated to protection broadly
over the period 2010–18 is just 2.5% and theaverage share over the same period going tochild protection specifically is just 0.5%.94 Furthermore, too little of this funding is allocatedacross multiple years, even though protection
work typical requires long-term investments
in order to be successful.95
Education for conflict-affected children sim-29

1 Failing to uphold standards inconflict: the war in Yemen

1 IN 5SCHOOLS
IN YEMENARE NOLONGER
BEING
USEDChildren in Yemen are currently caught up
in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Yemen has been ravaged by a conflict that
escalated nearly four years ago when Saudi
Arabia, UAE and their allies, with diplomaticand military support from the US, UK, France
and other Western countries, launched a military offensive against the Houthis, an armed
non-state group that conquered key parts ofthe country in opposition to the Yemeni government led by President Abdrabbuh Mansour
Hadi. Nearly 80% of the population, 24 million
people, are now in need of humanitarian aid,96
including at least 11.3 million children.97 18
million people across the country are foodinsecure, including 8.4 million who are suffering from extreme hunger.98 The healthcare
system is on its knees, with over half of medical facilities damaged or closed99 – creating
further barriers for Yemeni people who arestruggling in the face of a national economiccrisis, widespread malnutrition and the grave
threat of cholera and other life-threatening
diseases.
The UN has documented strong evidence
indicating that all parties have committed
violations of international law, including grave
violations against children and violations andabuses that may amount to war crimes.100 For
instance, all parties have been responsible forrestricting access to humanitarian aid, exacerbating the suffering of Yemeni children.
In November 2017, a month-long complete

30 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

blockade was imposed by the Saudi- andEmirati-led coalition (SELC), cutting off key
seaports as well as Sana’a airport. While theports opened again in December 2017, a defacto blockade of administrative and logistical barriers remains, and Sana’a airport
is still closed to commercial flights, denying
Yemenis the ability to seek critical medicalcare abroad, hindering the import of medical
supplies and keeping families apart. These
impediments are at odds with the requirementin humanitarian law to allow and facilitate
rapid and unimpeded passage of relief where
it is required. The scale of the impact of theserestrictions renders them disproportionate
under the law of armed conflict, with a UN
Group of Eminent Experts deeming that ‘nopossible military advantage could justify suchsustained and extreme suffering by millions
of people’.101 Yet the international community
has failed to take strong action to change thissituation.
There is no way of knowing exactly how
many children have been killed in Yemen’swar. But it is possible to document that explosive weapons, when used in populated areas,
have been devastating. Airstrikes have been
responsible for the highest proportion of
direct civilian casualties. Between March 2015
and November 2018, a total of 18,942 airraids struck the country. That is 14 air raids
per day or one every 102 minutes for almost
four years.102 Recent findings from the Armed
Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED)
estimate that the total number of civilian
fatalities as a direct result of conflict is over
60,000 since the escalation of the conflict –six times higher than the frequently cited UN
figure of 10,000.103
Among the most shocking incidents was
the airstrike that killed 40 students and theirteachers while on a school trip in August
2018. The bomb was dropped by Saudi planes
but, according to reports based on analysisof the debris, had been built in the USA andwas sold directly to the Saudi government.104
The USA is not alone in selling weapons thathave been used – or are likely to have beenused – in the conduct of hostilities in this war
and that, by extension, are likely to havekilled children. Other nations selling weapons
or military equipment to the SELC or aiding
the war effort through technology, training orother means include Canada, China, France,
Georgia, Italy, Serbia, South Africa, Spain,
Sweden, Turkey and the UK.105
Attacks on schools are particularly concerning, not only for the direct risks of killingand maiming of students, staff and othercivilians who may be nearby but also because

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ilarly suffers from under-resourcing and shortterm approaches, as do some other forms ofpractical protection such as mine-risk education and ensuring adequate civilian protection
capability in peacekeeping missions. Thereis also a need for increased action to support the recovery of children who have been
harmed by conflict. Adequate mental healthand psychosocial support is critically lacking in most contexts. Reconstruction efforts
typically focus insufficiently on investment inchildren through education, health systems,
mental-health support and physical rehabilitation, and professional development for people
working in those services.
The following case studies exemplify thesethree dimensions. While each offers an example of failures across all three dimensions– standards of conduct, accountability andpractical action – they have each focus on one
particular dimension.

Damagedschool: Fahad,
12, outside his
school in West
Mosul, which wasdamaged extensively during thefighting between
Iraqi forcesand ISIS.

31

of the destruction of opportunities for children to secure an education and to advancetheir future. The UN-backed government hasendorsed the Safe Schools Declaration, which
includes a set of Guidelines for Protecting
Schools and Universities from Military Use
during Armed Conflict as well as broader
commitments to protect education fromattack. However, other parties to the conflicthave not committed to implement the Declaration and the Guidelines.106 In 2018, theUN Secretary-General’s annual report onchildren and armed conflict verified 20 attacks
on schools, including 19 aerial attacks by the
SELC, and eight incidents of military use ofschools by parties to the conflict.107 While
Saudi Arabia has reportedly established achild protection unit at the SELC headquarters and the UN Secretary-General did notlist SELC in the annexes to his 2018 reportfor committing attacks on schools or hospitals, the patterns of harm have continued in
2018.108 One in five schools in Yemen are nolonger being used because they have beendamaged or destroyed, are sheltering displaced families or are being used for military
purposes.109
The UN has warned that repeated strikes
on civilian centres ‘raise serious doubts’ about
the SELC’s respect for IHL.110 There is also
little evidence that any efforts to adhere moreclosely to IHL have made an impact in reducing civilian harm: between July and August
2018, Saudi/UAE coalition air raids hit twice
as many non-military sites as military targets,111 worse than the earlier – and alreadydisturbing – figure of one third of air raids
hitting non-military sites since March 2015.
Moreover, leading international human rights
organisations have been critical of the SELC’s
efforts to investigate allegations of violationsof IHL, finding that they have ‘failed to meetinternational standards’,112 including those of‘transparency, independence, impartiality andeffectiveness.’113
On at least three occasions between 2015
and 2018, the SELC successfully prevented the
UN Security Council from adopting resolutions calling on parties to comply with IHL,
to cease hostilities and to engage in a UN-led
political process without preconditions and ingood faith. The Security Council did, however,adopt Resolution 2451 on 21 December 2018,endorsing the agreements secured at Stockholm as part of the UN-led peace process andproviding a framework to support implementation.114
Yemen is important as an example of aconflict where basic international standardsof conduct have manifestly not been upheld

32 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

consistently by any of the parties. Moreover,while all parties have been guilty of serious
violations of international law, one party – theSELC – has done so with the support of multiple powerful international allies. It is a graphic
instance of the failure of influential leaders in
the international community to insist on thenorms and standards that all states are obligated to uphold – with predictably devastating consequences for children and damaging
implications for the international rules-based
system. The protection of children and theirrights should never be considered optionalor subject to negotiation. If the international
community is to succeed in protecting children
in conflict, leaders must take responsibility
and all its members must consistently, confidently and unequivocally assert and reassert
the centrality of the law, norms and frameworks established to constrain the behaviourof parties to conflict.

2 Failure to hold perpetrators
to account: the Rohingya crisis‘Unless those at every level of political and militarycommand fear that they will be held accountablefor crimes and subject to prosecution, there is little prospect of restraining their behaviour during
armed conflicts. Allowing perpetrators to benefit
from impunity can only lead to contempt for thelaw and to renewed cycles of violence.’
Graca Machel115
On 25 August 2017, following a series ofattacks on Myanmar police and border guard
posts by a loosely organised Rohingya armed
group, the Myanmar security forces began asystematic campaign of violence against the
Rohingya population in northern RakhineState. In the months that followed, more than730,000 Rohingya, over half of them children,were forced to flee the violence into neighbouring Bangladesh. It was an exodus of aspeed and scale the world had not witnessedsince the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
The violence left thousands of people deadand many more physically injured and psychologically affected. Save the Children’s teams
working with child survivors and their families
in Bangladesh heard first-hand testimonies of
the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya refugees, atrocities that have since been describedas ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanityand possibly genocide. Children have been
particularly affected. Children were often targeted for brutal sexual violence and killed andmaimed indiscriminately.

The government of Myanmar and the
Myanmar military have repeatedly rejected
the evidence presented by impartial investigators, denied responsibility for the commissionof crimes against humanity, blocked independent and credible investigations, and impededinternational human rights mechanisms.
Journalists investigating the abuses have been
imprisoned. Despite the gravity of the crimes
committed, international efforts to challenge
the Myanmar government’s stance have been
inconsistent at best and certainly not proportional to the enormity of the harm inflictedon the Rohingya. Some governments haveactively blocked measures to impose international accountability, with others deferring to
the government of Myanmar to investigate
the crimes committed by its own military.116
This not only denies justice to the Rohingya,
it normalises the crimes against humanity towhich they were subjected and entrenches
impunity.
In spite of the Myanmar government’s
refusal to cooperate with international
mechanisms, the UN-mandated IndependentFact-Finding Mission has been able to conduct
a very thorough examination into humanrights violations and abuses in the country.
Released in September 2018, it was unequivocal in calling for named senior generals of
the Myanmar military to be investigated andprosecuted in an international criminal tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity andwar crimes.
Now, well over a year since these crimes
took place, the international community is
still faced with the task of establishing justice.
Important steps in the respect have beentaken by the Human Rights Council and by
the ICC. The establishment of an ‘ongoing
independent mechanism’ by the UN Human
Rights Council in September 2018, in particular, offers hope that those responsible will one
day be held to account.117 And in an unprecedented decision, the ICC concluded in September 2018 that it did, in principle, have thejurisdiction to initiate an indictment against
members of Myanmar’s military for the crimeof forcible transfer of population, also called
the crime of deportation.118 That decision
opens the door for ICC prosecutors to apply
for a full-blown investigation into Myanmar
for deportation and other crimes against
humanity, including persecution.
These steps taken by the Human Rights
Council and the ICC send a strong signal
to the Myanmar military that perpetratorsof crimes against the Rohingya will be held
accountable. However, even if the ‘independent mechanism’ were to find conclusive evi-

dence of the guilt of perpetrators, or if the
ICC were to convict on the crime of forced
deportation, there would still be the challengeof gaining custody of the guilty parties.
There are far too many instances aroundthe world of perpetrators of violations not
being held to account that could have been
given as an example. However, the failure – sofar, at least – with respect to the atrocities
committed against the Rohingya stands out
as an especially vivid example. If the international community does not make it absolutely
clear that crimes of this magnitude will never
be tolerated, future perpetrators of violations,
whether in Myanmar again or elsewhere in
the world, will find encouragement. For thatreason, the response the international community chooses to make to those guilty of theegregious crimes committed against children
in Myanmar will reverberate right around theworld and potentially far into the future.

3 Lack of practical action on the
ground: the conflict in South Sudan
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country
but in its short history as an independent
nation its children have endured violence, hunger and rights violations on an immense scale.
Half the population is 18 or under119 and one
in two of these children are affected by the
conflict and associated humanitarian crisis.120
Despite the signing of a peace agreementin September 2018, more than seven million
people are in need of humanitarian assistance,
and the situation for children continues todeteriorate. Nearly one million children underfive are acutely malnourished, almost half of
IDP individuals are children and five out of ten
children are out of school.121 Moreover, South
Sudan remains the most dangerous place inthe world for humanitarian actors.122
All parties to the conflict have committed alarming levels of all six grave violations
against children.123 At least 19,000 children are
estimated to have been recruited and used inSouth Sudanese armed groups since the startof the conflict in 2013124, and thousands havebeen abducted, raped, killed or maimed. For
example, in July 2017 the UN verified the mass
recruitment of more than 150 boys at a cattle
market.125 The use of sexual violence, including
rape, has been systematic and employed as atactic of war.126 Conservative estimates put the
total number of conflict deaths – both adults
and children – at more than 383,000 since2011, with the actual figure potentially muchhigher.127 Partly as a result of these violations,

1.9

MILLION
CHILDREN
IN SOUTHSUDAN ARE
EXPECTEDTO FACE
SEVEREPROTECTIONRISKS IN
2019

33

Syria: Zahra, 11,with her sister Fatima*, 3, in the doorway of their family’s
temporary shelter inthe suburbs of Idleb
where they havebeen living for few
months after they
were forced to leave
their hometown because of the violent
clashes and heavy
bombardment.

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900,000 million children are estimated tosuffer from psychosocial distress.128 In this context, the UN estimates that 1.9 million children
are expected to face acute and severe protection risks in 2019.129
Protection in South Sudan has emerged
as much by default as by design. The influxof 200,000 South Sudanese into UN bases
in search of protection in 2013 created a
new set of challenges for the UN Mission inSouth Sudan (UNMISS) and for humanitarian organisations.130 The huge presence of
displaced people within these newly formed
Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites has offeredan opportunity for humanitarian actors toreach people with greater ease, but conditionsin these sites often do not meet minimum
standards.131 At the same time, given all thosepeople in need of protection and humanitarianassistance in South Sudan, it is possible there
has been a disproportionate focus on thosewithin PoC sites at the expense of others
living elsewhere.132 The lack of child-specificexpertise and child protection programming
is particularly problematic. UNMISS is a very
important actor in the protection that exists
in South Sudan, but it is ill-equipped to provide
child-specific programming or to enable others
to provide that assistance.

34 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

While measures to drive up standards ofconduct by parties to the conflict and to holdperpetrators to account would make a big
difference, South Sudan is a context where
increased practical action could protect
children and enable huge numbers of themto recover. The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed
Conflict has expressed serious concern at thesevere lack of funding for long-term sustainable reintegration programmes for children
formerly associated with armed forces andarmed groups. This increases the risk of children being re-recruited.133 Although nearly
6,000 children have been reunified with theirfamilies since the conflict started in 2013134,
thousands of unaccompanied and separated
children are in need of quality case management and appropriate care, including children
associated with armed forces and armed
groups.
Security spending accounts for 44% of
the government’s budget. The persistence of
conflict has contributed to the government’s
failure to allocate any of its annual budget
to child protection and social assistance tochildren.135 As of the end of 2018, international funding for child protection services– including family tracing and reunification,

Separated: Nur,11, stands near hishome in a Rohingya
refugee camp in
Bangladesh. Nur,
who has been deaf
since birth, became
separated from his
parents after theirvillage was attacked
in Myanmar. He’s
now living withextended family.
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case management, child-friendly spaces andpsycho-social support – was just 1.7% of thetotal humanitarian spend, which was itself
40% underfunded.136 Education consistedof just 5% of that total despite there beingnearly 2 million children out of school. Lackof multi-year and cross-sectoral funding
prevents investment in the comprehensive
community-driven responses required forchildren affected by conflict.137 As a result of
the shortfall, the majority of children who
need services to protect them and to enable
their recovery simply will not have accessto the assistance they require – there is notenough investment in crucial services. The
children of South Sudan are suffering not only
from abysmal standards of conduct by armed
actors and near total impunity for violations,but from far too little practical action to keepthem safe and to enable them to survive andthrive.

Three imperatives for action

identified as shaping the war on children.
These three dimensions give rise to threeimperatives for action by the world’s leaders:• Uphold standards of conduct in conflictand insist on these from their allies andothers over whom they have influence.
• Hold perpetrators of violations of children’s rights in conflict to account.
• Take practical action on the ground toprotect children in conflict and to support
their recovery.
Taken together, these three imperatives canform the basis of an international approachto ending violations against children inarmed conflict. Even small steps in each ofthese areas would directly and indirectly
strengthen the protection of children – making a difference in themselves and raising
expectations from others, thereby changing
the international environment in which conflict occurs. If all actors go up a step acrosseach of these three areas, children living in
the world’s conflict zones will be better protected.

Many more examples than the three given
above could have been selected to demonstrate the three dimensions that we have35

PART 3
Emerging solutions:
Ensuring children’s
protection in
conflict

While this report emphasises the scale andseverity of the threats facing children in conflict today, recent history has shown thatwhen there is political will, action and funding
the protection of children is possible. The
following section sets out some existing andemerging initiatives and practices that demonstrate the possibility of progress. They canserve as a platform on which the international
community can build its efforts to protect the
420 million children currently living in areas
affected by conflict, through:1. upholding standards
2. holding perpetrators to account
3. taking practical action on the ground.

1 Upholding standardsof conduct in conflict
The following initiatives are examples ofinternational action that has improved or is
improving the ways in which conflict is conducted so that children – and civilians moregenerally – are better protected. None ofthese initiatives on their own is a panacea forthe threats that children face in armed conflict, but each is an inspiring demonstrationthat good work is being done and progressin protecting children in conflict is possible.
Taken together, they paint an encouraging
picture of how standards can be progressively
raised over time. Leaders, governments,
armed groups, funders and NGOs should support and encourage them.

A platform on which
the international
community canbuild its efforts toprotect the
420 million children
currently livingin areas affectedby conflict.
36 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

The Safe Schools Declaration– reducing the military use of schools
The Safe Schools Declaration is an intergovernmental political commitment to protect
education during armed conflict. The Declaration is not legally binding and complementsinternational humanitarian law. By endorsing
it, states commit to:
1. collect reliable data on attacks and military
use of schools and universities
2. provide assistance to victims of attacks
3. investigate, develop and promote ‘conflictsensitive’ approaches to education
4. seek and support efforts to continue education during armed conflict
5. support the UN’s work on the children andarmed conflict agenda
6. implement the ‘Guidelines for Protecting
Schools and Universities from Military Use
during Armed Conflict’, which provide guidance on concrete measures that armed
forces and armed non-state actors can taketo deter military use of education institutions.

Since the development of the Declaration in2015, the imperative not to use schools formilitary purposes or to subject students andteachers to attack has gained international
momentum. Save the Children is a memberof the Global Coalition to Protect Educationfrom Attack, which has been encouraging
governments to endorse the Declaration.
To date, 83 UN members have done so. The
Declaration is having a positive effect, withanalysis showing the discrepancy between
countries that have and have not endorsed:
in countries that have not endorsed the
Declaration, there has been a 97% increasein the reported incidents of military use ofschools since 2014, whereas in countries thathave endorsed the Declaration, the numberof incidents has dropped by half in the same
period.138 Disappointingly, there was anincrease over the last year in reports of themilitary use of schools in three countries thathave endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration:
Nigeria, Sudan and South Sudan. Nigeria andSudan have recently taken steps to reassess
their policies.139
International instruments toprotect children from recruitment– 115,000 children released
The past 40 years have seen a range oflegal instruments developed to strengthenchildren’s protection from military exploitation during conflict. As discussed above,
the UNCRC commits all ratifying states toprotecting and ensuring children’s rights,
which means holding themselves accountable before the international community
for ensuring children’s best interests andprotection from violence, abuse, neglect
and exploitation, including in armed conflict. In recognition of this commitment, theOptional Protocol to the Convention on
the Rights of the Child on the involvementof children in armed conflict in 2000 was asignificant development – the world’s firstinternational treaty wholly focused on ending the military exploitation of children. The
Protocol entered into force in 2002 and has
now been ratified by the majority of theworld’s countries.140
The Paris Principles and Guidelines onChildren Associated with Armed Forces orArmed Groups (Paris Principles) and theParis Commitments to Protect Children from
Unlawful Recruitment or Use by Armed
Forces or Armed Groups (Paris Commitments) were established in 2007. Currently
more than 108 states – over half the UN
General Assembly – have formally endorsed
them. The Paris Principles detail steps bothto prevent recruitment of girls and boys
and to support their reintegration, noting
relevant international legal standards. The
Paris Commitments lay out political commitments to be undertaken by states to address
recruitment and use.
By 2017, the 10th anniversary of the Paris
Principles and Commitments, more than
115,000 children had been released fromarmed forces or groups.141 At a global conference in Paris marking the anniversary,
more than 70 states, 10 UN bodies and 20
civil-society organisations reiterated theircommitment to addressing recruitment ofchildren in a global environment where thecharacteristics and dynamics of conflict arechanging.
2017 also saw the launch of the Vancouver Principles at a UN Peacekeeping
Defence Ministerial Conference. Recognising
the importance of the Paris Principles, theVancouver Principles comprise a comprehensive set of pledges including politicalcommitments by member states to enhance
the training, planning and conduct of theirown forces within peacekeeping operations
as they relate to the recruitment and use ofchildren.
While recruitment and use of children byarmed forces and armed groups remain apervasive and serious problem, there havebeen significant improvements over thelast two decades. Since 1999, more than
60 armed groups have made unilateral orbilateral commitments to reduce and end
the recruitment and use of children.142 Basedon the data collected for the UN Secretary-General’s children and armed conflict
report, 28 governments and armed groups
signed action plans with the UN between
2005 and 2018, committing to end their
recruitment and use of children. Over thesame period, 13 parties to armed conflict
were removed from the list of violators in
the annex to the UN Secretary-General’sannual report on children and armed conflict
after successfully implementing their plans.
Direct diplomatic pressure has proved to
be a powerful tool. For instance, in 2012 theObama Administration announced it would
withhold foreign military financing and training from a battalion in the DRC until thegovernment signed an agreement with the
UN to end its use of children in its armed
forces. The UN had tried for seven years
to persuade the Congolese government tosign the action plan; five days after the US
announcement, the DRC signed the plan.
The US has put similar pressure on otherstates as well, with good results.143

Directdiplomaticpressure
has proved
to bea powerful
tool.

37

Engagement with non-state armed
groups – securing commitments to end
violations
The UN Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict shows that roughly
three-quarters of all verified grave violations
are perpetrated by non-state groups. Asymmetric and diffuse conflict often contributes toa race to the bottom, with increased brutality
and reduced civilian protection. However,
too often there is a misleading perceptionthat engaging non-state actors or holding
them to account is unrealistic. As the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Roots ofRestraint in War report explained:
External entities are able to influence thebehaviour of armed forces and armed groups.
Making it a criminal offence for humanitarianorganisations and local communities to interact
with armed groups is counterproductive andhampers efforts to promote respect for humanitarian norms.144
Geneva Call, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that focuses on improving
the compliance and behaviour of non-statearmed groups, has engaged more than 100
actors in 25 countries. Complementing UN
initiatives, Geneva Call’s main instrument is
the Deed of Commitment, a mechanism forarmed non-state actors to commit to international norms. Signatories to the Deed ofCommitment for the Protection of Children
commit not only to a total ban on the useof children in hostilities, but also to ensuringthat they are not recruited into their armed
forces (whether voluntarily or involuntarily)
and never to compel children to associate

149 children demobilised fromarmed groups in Syria
In June 2014, after several months of negotiations with
Geneva Call, the People’s Protection Units, Women’s
Protection Units and ‘Democratic Self-Administration’in north-east Syria demobilised 149 children from theirranks and signed Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment
protecting children in armed conflict.147 Their signatures
publicly formalised their collective policy of preventing
children under 18 from taking part in hostilities and protecting them from the effects of the conflict.

38 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

with, or remain associated with, its armed
forces. Armed non-state actors would also
commit to ‘further endeavour to provide children in areas where [they] exercise authority
with the aid and care they [children] require’,
including access to food, healthcare and education.145 Signatories agree to take the necessary enforcement measures, such as internal
orders, training and sanctions, as well as tocooperate with Geneva Call in the verificationof their compliance.
Building on these Commitments, Geneva
Call works with groups to improve theirknowledge and operational capacity to comply with international standards, particularly
in key areas such as use and recruitment ofchildren; military use of schools; sexual andgender-based violence; and protection ofhealthcare. Through innovative technology,
dialogue, awareness-raising and advocacy,
Geneva Call and its partners have had widespread impact (see, for example, the box
below). A lesson that emerges is that, contrary to a commonly held view, certain armed
non-state actors have proved willing to accept
external oversight and to cooperate in the
scrutiny of their compliance.146
Banning landmines and cluster munition– saving thousands of lives and limbs
The global community has made tremendous
progress in protecting civilians – includingchildren – from indiscriminate weapons. The
Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Minesand on their Destruction, known as theAnti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, andthe Convention on Cluster Munitions are thehumanitarian disarmament standard-bearers for efforts to prevent and reduce harmfrom indiscriminate weapons.148 These ban
the production of anti-personnel mines andcluster munitions and require the destructionof stockpiles of these weapons. They are testament to the potential for successfully negotiated international treaties when there issufficient consensus, insight and political will.
The conventions have probably saved tensof thousands of lives. To date, 163 countries
are party to the Mine Ban Convention, and120 countries have joined the Convention on
Cluster Munitions. More than 53 million mines
have been destroyed149, large tracts of lands
have been cleared and nearly 30 states havebeen declared mine-free.150 A recent reporton cluster munitions shows a 72% decrease
in investment in cluster munitions from 2017
to 2018.151 These conventions have createdstrong international norms, with many states
not party to the conventions nonetheless

The Arms Trade Treaty– the first international legally binding
agreement to control conventional arms
One direct and practical way for countries toprotect children in conflict is to restrict theexport, supply and transfer of arms, weaponsand other military assets to parties to conflict
where there is an overriding risk that they
will be used to undermine peace and security
or to commit or to facilitate serious violations, including unlawful attacks on children.
Entering into force in 2014, the Arms Trade
Treaty (ATT) has been ratified by 100 states
and a further 35 have signed but not yet ratified it.152 States that are party to the Treaty
are obligated not to authorise internationaltransfers of weapons if there is a high risk
the weapons could be used in violation ofinternational humanitarian and human rights
law. Article 7.4 requires exporting states totake into account the risk of the conventionalarms and related items being used to commit or facilitate serious acts of gender-based
violence or serious acts of violence against
women and children.153
The ATT represents significant progress as
the first international legally binding agreement that establishes standards for regulating
the trade in conventional arms and ammunition, and with a core humanitarian purposeof reducing human suffering. Some shifts ingovernment behaviour have been achieved,with several European arms exporters denying, ceasing and/or halting export of militarymaterial to Saudi Arabia or other countries in
the coalition in response to violations in the
war In Yemen.154 However, at the time of writing major arms-exporters including France,
UK and USA155, continue to flout the treaty,
with arms transfers to Saudi Arabia continuing despite the overriding risk of violations ofinternational humanitarian and human rights
law in Yemen.
Avoiding the use of explosive weapons
in populated areas – preventing a
predictable pattern of civilian harm
Conflicts are increasingly fought in populatedareas and children are particularly vulnerable. For a number of years, the UN has
pointed out the predictable pattern of harmthat arises from the use of explosive weapons
with wide-area effect in densely populatedareas.156 Avoiding this practice would save

P H OTO : B E N W H I T E / S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

largely following the regulations set out inthem. Some non-party states, such as theUSA, also fund NGOs and other actors thatwork to clear the ground of explosive remnants of war in post-conflict contexts.

FORCED TO FLEE:GODFREY’S STORY‘I left South Sudan becauseof the war. My father was
killed by rebels. They came todrink alcohol, and then started
shooting my father. He wasshot because he worked forthe government.’
Godfrey, now 16, witnessed
his father’s brutal murder byrebels in South Sudan. He left
the country with the othermembers of his family, including his sister who was heavily
pregnant.
‘It took us three weeks to arriveat the settlement camp,’ says
Godfrey. ‘We had no food,blankets or water. My sistergave birth during the journey,
but the baby died.’
Godfrey and his family now
live in Bidibidi refugee campin Uganda, where life is muchbetter. Godfrey volunteers
in a Save the Children childfriendly space there.

39

children’s lives both during attacks and in
the longer term, as well as reduce the risk ofchildren suffering other grave violations.157 In
2018, the NGO Action on Armed Violence
recorded 32,102 deaths and injuries from theuse of explosive weapons around the world,
as reported in English-language media. Civilians continued to bear the burden of harm,
accounting for 70% of these casualties. Of thecivilian casualties, 43% were killed.158 Save theChildren is proud to be a founding memberof the International Network on Explosive
Weapons, an NGO partnership calling for
immediate action to prevent human suffering from this practice.159 Increasingly, states
are joining us in recognising
the issue as one of criticalimportance. Against the
backdrop of stark examplesof humanitarian harm, morethan 80 governments, several
multilateral organisations,and consecutive UN Secretary-Generals and otherhigh-level UN officials haveexpressed concern.
In 2018, Ireland led a jointstatement at the thematic
debate on conventional
weapons at the UN General
Assembly to support thiscall for action to tackle thehumanitarian harm causedby the use of explosive weapons in populatedareas.160 These are important first steps tothe formation of a non-legally binding commitment. Such a commitment should focus
on avoiding the use of explosive weapons in
populated areas, ensuring militaries understand the area effects of the weapons they
are using, and enhancing the understandingof long-term reverberating effects. The UN
Secretary-General’s Agenda on Disarmament
has called on states to engage constructively
in efforts to develop such a political declaration.161

For children
to be able toparticipate, theprocesses need
to be madeaccessible
to them.

The role of casualty recording
in protecting children in conflict
The systematic collection of evidence of harm
to children in conflict is crucial if violations
against children are to be properly recognised
and subsequently reduced. Effectively recording casualties can:• more clearly specify the causes of harm tocivilians caught in conflict, including children
and other vulnerable groups• help in the avoidance and mitigation ofcasualties• hold those responsible to account.162

40 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

Data from the UN and country-specific civilian-tracking organisations gives us an indication of the scale of the problem but is likely tobe the tip of the iceberg. The current lack ofresources given to casualty recording meansthat adequate data is unavailable for identifying the perpetrators and tackling causes ofharm to children in conflict.

2 Holding perpetrators to account
Accountability can come in a range of forms,
including through naming and shaming of perpetrators, seeking judicial action against themor imposing political or financial penalties.
In principle, the starting point should always
be local or national-level action – that is, forgovernments or communities in the contexts
where violations have occurred to lead theprocess of holding perpetrators to account.
However, in cases where local or national
actors are either unable or unwilling to do
this, regional-level or international mechanisms may be needed.
Children themselves can sometimes play
an important role in accountability processes.
For children to be able to participate, the processes need to be made accessible to them,information must be child-friendly, children
need to be listened to, and they must be
supported to campaign and influence governments to achieve justice.
Given the widespread impunity enjoyed byperpetrators of violations of children’s rights
in armed conflict, accountability is the area
where there is the most work to do to close
the gap between formal and rhetorical international commitments on the one hand andreality on the other. However, as described in
the following examples, the progress made bysome international-level initiatives offer someencouragement.
Measures to secure justice forchild survivors of sexual violence‘The only prize in the world that can restore
our dignity is justice and the prosecution of
criminals.’
Nadia Murad, Islamic State survivor
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prizefor her fight to end rape in conflict
Despite the sensitive nature of violations andwidespread underreporting of sexual violence against children, a number of promisingdevelopments at the international level haveemerged in recent years. In 2001, the UN

The importance of casualty recording
Evidence compiled in 2013 from civil society organisations that record casualties showed that by far
the primary cause of violent death among children
in Syria was explosive weapons, killing 7,557 children – 71% of the 10,586 children whose specificcause of death was recorded. Small-arms fire wasreported as the cause of an additional 2,806 childdeaths (26%);163 this included 764 cases of summary
execution and 389 cases of sniper fire, with clear
evidence of children being specifically targeted. Thislevel of descriptive detail, which is not provided byoverall mortality statistics or estimates, may prove
essential in future accountability processes, up to
and including war-crimes tribunals.
State armed forces that undertake casualty
recording can review and amend their own conduct as necessary. For example, since 2018 the US
Department of Defense has been required by law
to investigate and report publicly on allegationsof civilian and combatant casualties resulting fromits military operations. In addition to supporting
accountability for victims, this process enables continual improvement of strategies better to protect
civilians in future.
Similarly, casualty recording provides the basis
for evidence-based advocacy by third parties. Since
2007 the Human Rights unit of the UN Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan has used its systematically-recorded information on civilian casualties tosupport advocacy with parties to the conflict,leading directly to changes in their practice and asignificant reduction in civilian casualties. Other
UN peacekeeping and political missions – including in Iraq, the DRC and the occupied Palestinian

Security Council’s landmark resolution on
Women, Peace and Security put the issue ofgirl’s experience of sexual and gender-based
violence in conflict on the diplomatic agenda.167
The creation in 2009 of the office of the Special
Representative of the UN Secretary-General(SRSG) on Sexual Violence in Conflict has
further helped bring visibility to this issue
and energy to tackling it. Collaboration andalignment between the SRSGs on Children andArmed Conflict and Sexual Violence in Conflictis both mandated by the Security Council andcrucial to addressing crimes of sexual violence
perpetrated against children in conflict.

territory, and the African Union Mission in Somalia – also conduct and use casualty recording or
casualty tracking164 to various degrees. At headquarters level, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights maintains a Human Rights
Case Database that records casualty information,and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations has developed its own information-management system that includes casualty data.
Close to real-time casualty recording can also
improve protection and humanitarian responses tochildren in conflict. In Yemen, the Protection Cluster (which coordinates humanitarian protectionwork) makes use of figures on child casualties provided regularly by the Civilian Impact Monitoring
Project.165
Despite the individual examples of good practice
above, coordination across these systems and contexts remains patchy. As a result, opportunities for
useful information-sharing and analysis are lost. In
order to address this obstacle and promote bestpractice, the independent NGO Every Casualty
Worldwide led a three-year consultation including
16 casualty-recording organisations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, various UN
agencies and the ICC. This process culminatedin 2016 with the publication of the Standards for
Casualty Recording, which are internationally recognised as the authoritative guide to the field. 166
By adhering to the standards, casualty-recordingorganisations ensure consistency and accuracy
internally and across the sector.
Every Casualty Worldwide, January 2019

Recent momentum on this issue has further resulted in the development of a robust
legislative framework in the Security Council,
which has given the Office of the Special Representative new tools to drive the mandate
on the ground and to begin to effect somechanges in behaviour. The Taskforce forInternational Criminal Justice in South Kivu
in the DRC, for example, brings together
international and national actors, includingNGOs and local hospitals, to ensure accountability for perpetrators of sexual violenceagainst children and young people. Significant progress in the fight against impunity41

P H OTO : M O H A M M E D AWA D H / S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

WHEN A CROWDEDSCHOOL BUS WAS HITBY AN AIRSTRIKE:
ISMAIL’S STORY
Ismail was seven years oldwhen the school bus he was on
was hit by an airstrike on the
9 August 2018. He sustained
severe shrapnel injuries in hisleg, his eye and head, andremains traumatised by theevent. 40 children died in theattack – most were under ten
years old.
Ismail was in hospital for several weeks. He received intensive psychosocial support tohelp him come to terms withwhat he had been through.
‘We were on the bus when therocket hit…. One of my friends
died. Another one was injured.
I was unconscious until I wasat the hospital. I couldn’t see
anything after I was hit. Aftera week or two, I started to seea bit.’
Ismail wishes that the war
would stop. His dream is tobecome a doctor so that hecan treat children.

42 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

was achieved in the DRC in 2017, with twoemblematic cases being prosecuted: a colonel of the Forces Armées de la République
Démocratique du Congo was convicted forthe war crimes of rape and pillage affecting
150 civilians in Musenyi, South Kivu; and amember of parliament in South Kivu was convicted of crimes against humanity for his rolein the abduction and rape of 39 children in
Kavumu.168
The UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative – founded in 2012 with the aim of raisingawareness of the extent of sexual violence insituations of armed conflict and rallying global
action to end it – is also significant.169 One key
contribution has been the development of aninternational protocol on the documentationand investigation of sexual violence in conflict,which includes important guidance specifically on sexual violence and children. The UK
has formed a team of experts who can be
deployed at short notice to support governments, judiciary, police, military and NGOson evidence-gathering and training.
International criminal mechanisms –steps towards justice for children
The International Criminal Tribunal in theformer Yugoslavia (ICTY), which lasted
from 1993 to 2017, changed the landscapeof IHL. It provided victims an opportunity
to voice the horrors they had witnessed andexperienced, developed the framework forgender-based crimes of war and proved thatthose who commit atrocities against civilians
in conflict can be held to account. The tribunal indicted heads of state, prime ministers,army chiefs-of-staff, government ministers
and many other leaders from various parties
to the former Yugoslav conflicts.170 In the
final trial judgement of the ICTY in 2017,
more than 20 years after the Srebrenica
massacre, the court convicted Ratko Mladic,
former Commander of the Main Staff of theBosnian Serb Army, of ten offences, including
genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. Manyof his victims were children. Along with theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia and the Special Court for Sierra
Leone, the ICTY is an important exampleof how concerted international action hasdelivered some measure of accountability forcrimes committed against children.
Since those ad hoc conflict-specific courts
and tribunals were set up, the Rome Statuteof 1998 has been agreed, establishing theInternational Criminal Court in 2002. The
ICC recognised ‘conscripting or enlistingchildren under the age of 15 and using themto participate actively in hostilities’ as a war
crime.171 The first case before the ICC – The
Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo –focused specifically on the recruitment anduse of children. The 2012 guilty verdict rendered by the Court was a landmark decisionbecause it demonstrated that the ICC canbring to justice perpetrators of war crimes
specifically against children. Important policy
steps have been taken by the ICC that could
help improve justice for children. In November 2016, the Chief Prosecutor launched its
Policy on Children, highlighting the severityof atrocity crimes against and affecting children and reinforcing the court’s child-sensitive approach. By doing so, the Prosecutor
elevated the investigation and prosecution of
atrocity crimes against children to one of the
key strategic goals of the ICC.
However, the pace of international justiceis very slow. The verdict in the famous caseof Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo of the Central
African Republic was overturned in June
2018, and a number of high-profile suspects
have so far evaded being brought before thecourt. The ICC faces challenges of jurisdiction and enforcement, but it is now the principal mechanism for delivering international
justice and as such is key to global efforts totackle atrocities and violations against children.
The International, Impartial
and Independent Mechanism– steps towards justice for Syria
In December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 71/248
to establish the ‘International, Impartial
and Independent Mechanism to Assist in theInvestigation and Prosecution of Persons
Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes
under International Law Committed in the
Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011’.172
The Mechanism is mandated to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of
violations of IHL and human rights law andto prepare files in order to facilitate independent criminal proceedings in national,
regional or international courts or tribunals that have – or may in the future have
– jurisdiction over these crimes. At the timeof writing, over a million pieces of evidence
had been collected. These have been sharedwith national prosecutors’ offices who inturn are investigating against perpetrators ofinternational crimes. So far, Germany173 andFrance174 have issued arrest warrants for senior Syrian officials and authorities in Sweden
and Austria have also initiated investigations.

The principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’allows national prosecutors to pursue individuals believed to be responsible for certain
grave international crimes such as torture,
war crimes, and crimes against humanity,
even though they were committed elsewhereand neither the accused nor the victims arenationals of the country. Germany has thebroadest interpretation in Europe of this principle and, partly as a consequence, has taken
a lead in investigating crimes committed in
Syria. Such prosecutions are an increasingly
important part of international efforts tohold perpetrators of atrocities accountable,
to provide justice to victims, to deter future
crimes and to help ensure that countries do
not become safe havens for human rights
abusers.175
While the heavily contested politics surrounding the war in Syria suggest that justicefor its many victims is probably still a longway off, the Mechanism and the investigations
now underway are encouraging examples
of how international legal action can still
increase pressure on perpetrators of violations even in the absence of an internationallymandated judicial process. Lessons should belearned from the operation of this Mechanism– and also from the ‘independent mechanism’
for Myanmar mentioned in Part 2 above –with a view to establishing a standing mechanism to compile evidence on comparable
crimes in other countries as well.
Innovations in the use of financial
sanctions to promote compliancewith international law
In the USA, the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act authorises theAmerican Government to sanction humanrights offenders, freeze their assets and banthem from entering the territory. The Act
is the basis of current efforts to establish
sanctions in the USA against a list of nearly
20 individuals thought to be involved in thedeath of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul in October 2018.176 Similar legislation
has been introduced in Canada and acrossEurope, with the UK including a Magnitsky
Amendment into its recent Sanctions andAnti-Money Laundering Act.177 The Dutch
government, with the Norwegian Helsinki
Committee, is currently working at the EU
level to develop a stronger approach tohuman rights sanctions, which could be used
to target individuals, including from armed
non-state actors, with travel restrictions
across the EU.178 These are important andpotentially transformative efforts. They, and43

others like them, should specifically include
grave violations against children in their mandates.
In many of the worst-affected countries,
conflict is prolonged, exacerbated or driven
by poor governance, corruption and readyaccess to natural resources. Holding the companies, politicians and armed actors involvedin corrupt practices to account can reducethe incentives that drive conflict and can help
build peace. The US Security Exchange Commission’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has
sought to tackle the issue of corruption partlywith a view to addressing terrorism andinsecurity. The Act has successfully limited
the corrupt practices of large corporations
working in, for example, the DRC, Libya andNigeria. In the UK, recent amendments to the
UK’s Criminal Finances Act have introduced
Unexplained Wealth Orders as a civil investigatory tool to support asset recovery on
suspects of unlawful conduct, including grosshuman rights abuses. Unexplained WealthOrders require a person who is reasonably
suspected of involvement in serious crime to
explain the nature and extent of their interestin particular property held in the UK, and to
explain how the property was obtained where
there are reasonable grounds to suspectthat the respondent’s declared lawful income
would be insufficient to allow the respondent
to obtain the property. They therefore havethe potential to be a powerful tool in efforts
to tackle impunity for wealthy perpetrators ofviolations of children’s rights in conflict.

3 Practical action to protect
children on the ground and tosupport their recovery
Even if all the belligerents in an armed conflict
upheld the highest standards of conduct andfaced a credible threat of being held meaningfully to account if any violations did occur,
it would still be a profoundly unsafe context
for a child to find herself or himself in. It isessential therefore that measures to increase
compliance with international standards, laws
and norms are accompanied by investment inpractical measures at scale to provide direct
protection for children on the ground and tosupport their recovery. Wherever possible,
these measures should be locally owned andmanaged. Such measures can have a transformative impact for enormous numbers ofchildren. Following are some examples ofencouraging approaches and initiatives thatshould be supported and built upon.

44 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

Humanitarian child protection– keeping children safe in conflict
Humanitarian child protection actors work
to prevent and respond to child protection
issues through direct interventions with individual children, such as case management;
through programmes with families, suchas economic strengthening and parenting
support; and by strengthening child protection mechanisms in communities. They
also seek to build the capacity of national
actors to implement effective social support
systems. Child protection programming has
been identified as a life-saving intervention
that both prevents and responds to threats
and helps to reduce detrimental long-term
impacts on child development in conflict.
Furthermore, experience has shown thatcross-sectoral, fully integrated protection
programming can ensure that other humanitarian efforts are more successful.
Child protection work is complex andoften resource-intensive. It is a relatively
new sector that lacks a clear path towards
professionalisation, and the profile of childprotection practitioners can vary acrosscontexts according to needs and available
qualifications. A mapping and market analysis undertaken in 2015 by Save the Children
on behalf of the Child Protection Working
Group identified a shortage of high-quality
practitioners of child protection in emergencies as a core challenge for the sector.179 It
found that ‘children in a subset of some of themost extreme emergencies likely require atleast triple the current estimated child protection in emergencies practitioners.’ Further,
there is a lack of capacity building available
to those who need it the most, particularly
adults and professionals most regularly incontact with crisis-affected children and the
network of community-based organisations
and local-authority staff that constitute theprotective system around them.
However, despite the constraints it faces,
the sector is working to address these challenges. The Minimum Standards for Child
Protection in Humanitarian Action establish
the practice standards for the sector.180 The
Child Protection Area of Responsibility181
now has a localisation strategy based on theprinciple that humanitarian action should
be as local as possible and as international
as necessary – this is in line with the localisation workstream of the ‘Grand Bargain’,an agreement between the biggest donors
and aid providers that aims to get moremeans into the hands of people in need.182
This strategy includes a focus on building thecapacity of national NGOs to co-lead thecoordination of child protection responses
in humanitarian contexts. The Alliance forChild Protection in Humanitarian Action
also has a complementary Learning andDevelopment Working Group that oversees
a strategy for professionalisation.183 A Save
the Children-supported Professional Development Programme for child protection in
emergencies is a flagship initiative that has

been rolled out in Asia, the Middle East andEast Africa targeting national NGO staff
and staff from national authorities. Theseare encouraging examples of the professionalisation of a sector of humanitarian
response that needs much greater financial
support in order to enable its life-saving andlife-changing work on the scale that children
in conflict need.

Action for child protection
Reaching every last child in Bangladesh
Case management is an effective approach toaddressing an individual child’s needs in an appropriate, systematic and timely manner through direct
support and/or referrals.184 Using case management
approaches, child protection specialists facilitate thestrengthening of the protective environment aroundchildren by ensuring that a structured approach istaken to identify, assess, plan and review the protection needs of individual children. In humanitariancontexts, it is often done as an extension of the formal government case management system in orderto address overwhelming needs. In Bangladesh, childprotection agencies worked with the national authorities to provide case management to around 20 000
highly vulnerable Rohingya refugee children in 2018185,
addressing issues such as family separation, sexual andgender-based violence, child labour, abduction andtrafficking. Case management is challenging work,often requiring significant engagement with individual children and collaborative work with families
and communities to ensure children’s protection andaccess to multi-sectoral assistance and services. While
it is time- and resource-intensive, when considered as
an integral part of an overall humanitarian response,child protection case management ensures that every
last child receives the humanitarian response necessary to survive and thrive.
Family tracing and reunification – life-changing
practical action for children in South Sudan
In coordination with UNICEF, the Child Protection
Area of Responsibility and 31 partners, Save the Children has helped reunify nearly 6,000 unaccompaniedand separated children in South Sudan with theirfamilies and communities through family tracing andreunification activities.186 More than 18,000 unaccompanied and separated children have been registeredfor case management since 2013. In addition to the7,576 receiving on-going case management support,
reunification follow-up and alternative care, 5,362

are children who have been registered as missing by
their caregivers. This work led to the development ofa practice handbook for family tracing and reunification in emergencies, which supports the applicationof global standards and guidance to the South Sudan
context.187
Community-based child protection– sustainable change by those closest to children
For the majority of children in conflict, their families
and communities offer the most immediate and significant protection. Based on numerous ethnographic
studies and practice reviews, community-basedchild protection is most effective when it is ‘community-driven, bottom-up work that enables nonformal–formal collaboration and alignment, greater use
of formal services, internally-driven social change
and high levels of community ownership’.188 In East
Jerusalem, protection agencies have supported the
YMCA to help vulnerable communities in the WestBank to design and implement their own protection
and resilience interventions through a ‘survivor andcommunity-led crisis response’, an approach that has
been found to promote community resilience and asense of dignity, empowerment of community andyouth, and accountability of local authorities to thecommunity.189 Children can also be active agents forchange within their communities. The Save the Children Local Engagement to Advocate for Peace (LEAP)
project in three conflict-affected provinces of southern
Thailand supports ten local civil society organisations to empower children through direct activities
and through advocating for a more child-friendly andinclusive society by tackling injustice and inequality.
The approach of building the capacity of local organisations to support children’s empowerment has been
particularly effective in enabling children to articulate
their views and ideas at both the community and provincial level.

45Mental health and psychosocial support– a key to rebuilding futures‘There has rightly been growing attention tomental health and psychosocial support inhumanitarian contexts over the last several
years. But we now need to come together andtake a giant leap forward to consider how interventions can be replicated and taken to scale
to reach all those needing support, building on
provision across the education, health and protection sectors.’
Professor Alastair Ager,
Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, UK
Department for International Development
As discussed in Part I, the impact of conflicton children’s mental health can be severe andlife-long. However, the experience of Save
the Children and other organisations working with children and their families in conflictzones affirms children’s remarkable resilience,and important initiatives are underway tostrengthen mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in conflict contexts. International

46 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

guidelines – the Inter-Agency Standing Committee guidelines for MHPSS in emergencies– specify the need for a multi-layered systemof support that is delivered at different levelsof social and health systems.190 In recent years,
interest has grown among donor governments
and NGOs to find ways to step up MHPSS
responses for children affected by conflict. An
important conference in January 2018 developed a global roadmap with four key pathways
to addressing the MHPSS needs of children andyoung people affected by conflict:191
1. multi-sectoral programming and coordination across all layers and beyond just thechild protection sector
2. engaging young people not as beneficiaries
but as participants in their own lives
3. supporting caregivers’ wellbeing and MHPSS
needs and not only their parenting knowledge
4. strengthening national capacity.
Recognising that there are pre-existingregional and global shortages of mental-health professionals, particularly for

C H A R L I E F O RG H A M - B A I L E Y/ S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

The Power ofFootball: Arsenal
Football Club andSave the Children
have combined theirexpertise to createa ground-breaking
coaching programme
to help to build
children’s courage
and inner strength
through football.
P H OTO : C H A R L I E F O RG H A M - B A I L E Y/ S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

paediatric care, professionals need to beprepared with additional tools to work withchildren and their families in conflict. It is critical for donors and the global community tomove quickly from rhetorical enthusiasm foraction to support children’s mental health andwellbeing in conflict to concrete funding commitments and changes in practice – in orderto place MHPSS work at the core of humanitarian responses.

The HEART Programme
HEART, which stands for Healing and Education
through the Arts, is an arts-based approach toproviding psychosocial support for children affectedby serious or chronic stress.192 It uses group-based,
structured, expressive arts activities to help children process and communicate feelings related
to their experiences. Activities focus on relaxation, stress processing, understanding emotions,emotional regulation, confidence building, group
communication, problem solving, conceptualising
the future and group support. The healing process

begins when children process and express memories, ideas or feelings through artistic expression or
through talking with a trusted adult or peer who
listens supportively.
The HEART programme has been shown to help
children feel less isolated, more connected to theirpeers and safe amid the trusted adults in their lives
and the larger community. This in turn can lead toa child becoming more confident, secure, and capable, and more likely to thrive in education or social
settings.

47

P H OTO : C H A R L I E F O RG H A M - B A I L E Y/ S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

The Power of Football
Arsenal Football Club and Save the Children havecombined their expertise to create a ground-breaking coaching programme to help to build children’s
courage and inner strength through football. Former
footballer Per Mertesacker saw this for himself when
he visited Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan:‘I met a young Syrian boy called Mohammad.
Despite having fled his country his family have built a
new life in the camp and, while he dreams of becoming a footballer, he lives in the present and wants todevelop and be the best he can be. It was a privilege tovisit his home and spend time with him.
When I was still playing, I had my own mental
health issues. Some days, I felt that everything was aburden, both physically and mentally, but you have todeliver. My experience helps me to connect to young
players because everyone has a story and everyone
goes through something.
In Za’atari, I saw efforts to help kids recover fromemergencies, bringing football to war-torn and poverty-stricken regions with the aim of providing relief
from the struggles of daily life. We’re looking at serious mental challenges and psychological scars thatare difficult to talk about.

48 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

It was great to see that football brings joy toeveryone; it’s something genuine that we all share.
But beyond playing football, the programme is about
equipping children for life and giving them opportunities, keeping children’s dreams alive and helping themorientate towards their goals.
The programme uses a train-the-trainer approach,which first trained Arsenal coaches, who then trained
local coaches in Jordan, who in turn coach the Syrian
girls and boys. These coaches have also been trainedby Save the Children experts on psychological firstaid, enabling them to support building children’s resilience.
I spent some time with the kids. You always takesomething with you, like when I met 14-year-old
Nabila who told me that “Football isn’t just for boys,
it’s equal. I’m so happy we’re getting coaching andprofessional support to help us on and off the pitch.”
I truly believe that when children miss out on theirpotential, everyone loses in the world.’
Per Mertesacker is a former footballer forGermany and Arsenal and current managerof the Arsenal Academy.

Keeping children safe in and aroundschool – the Safe Schools programmeapproach‘My school is very cosy and warm. We got new
windows and heating. In the school the teachers
are nice. I love my school very much because
my school is a zone of peace’.
Anna, 8 years old, Ukraine
Save the Children’s Safe Schools programming is an inclusive, all-hazards approach to
keeping children safe from violence, disaster,
conflict and everyday hazards in and aroundschools. It draws on decades of experience,learning and research to support children
facing disruption to education due to conflict,including attacks on schools, forced recruitment and sexual violence. It builds on the‘Schools as Zones of Peace’ concept, which
was first developed in the Sri Lankan and
Nepali civil wars to protect schools from theimpact of political disturbances and violence.
These programmes focused on community-engagement initiatives to ensure that
schools were declared ‘zones of peace’. Since
the launch of the Safe Schools Declaration in2015, safe schools programmes link concrete
protection measures in schools and communities to long-term advocacy with and capacity
building of duty-bearers and armed non-state
actors.
These approaches facilitate sustainable,scalable solutions to protect education fromattack. Supporting the implementation of Safe
Schools programming is one way that governments that have endorsed the Safe Schools
Declaration can operationalise their commitments to make real changes for children on
the ground. In Ukraine, for example, Save theChildren works with schools near the line ofcontact between the combatants to mitigate
the impacts of the conflict, connecting local
interventions – such as the development ofschool safety plans and psychosocial support
for children – with national advocacy on the
Safe Schools Declaration through child-led
advocacy.
Education in emergencies – increased
funding and improved coordination
The World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 saw
the launch of Education Cannot Wait (ECW),a new fund that aims to create a catalytic
shift in financing in emergencies. ECW’s First
Emergency Response investment window
supports education programmes immediately
in sudden-onset or escalating crises. The
fund’s Multi-Year Resilience investment window addresses longer-term needs throughmulti-year joint programmes in protracted
crises, enabling humanitarian and development actors to work together on deliveringcollective education outcomes. ECW has
already reached more than 765,000 children
and youth with quality education in 19 crisis-affected countries, though fewer than half
are girls. The fund is on track to reach over1 million children by the end of 2018.193 At
the time of writing, ECW has launched two
ground-breaking multi-year programmes foreducation for refugees and host communities in Bangladesh and Uganda. ECW plans
to launch an estimated ten more multi-year
programmes in 2019. It is critical that donors
continue to support its ambitious funding targets and ensure every multi-year programme
is fully funded.
ECW works with the Education Cluster– the worldwide coordination mechanism
for education programmes in humanitariancontexts, which Save the Children co-leads
with UNICEF – to ensure the long-termsustainability of education provision in protracted crises. It does that by consultatively
developing response plans that capture theneeds and costs of both emergency andlonger-term programming. At the end of 2018
national-level education clusters and working
groups were active in 25 countries. Due toincreased interest and action for educationin emergencies, the Global Education Cluster has received increased funding in recent
years to strengthen capacity for coordination;
however, funding remains inconsistent fornational clusters and education-in-emergencies responses.
Supporting refugee children– getting back into school withinmonths, not years
In signing the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in 2016, all 193 member
states of the UN agreed that protecting those
who are forced to flee and supporting thecountries that shelter them are shared international responsibilities that must be borne
more equitably and predictably.194 Amongother things, the Declaration promised toensure that all refugee children would be inschool and learning within a few months ofcrossing an international border. Two years
on, in December 2018, the UN General
Assembly agreed an important new international framework, the Global Compact on
Refugees, that will transform the way theworld responds to mass displacement andrefugee crises, benefiting both children who
become refugees as a result of conflict andchildren in the communities that host them.

49

P H OTO : D A P H N E E C O O K / S AV E T H E C H I L D R E N

ROAD TO RECOVERY:JANAT ARA’S STORY‘When we learn and play, I feel peacein my heart, and forget what has happened to me.’12-year-old Janat Ara, a Rohingya
refugee, lives in a camp in Cox’s
Bazar, Bangladesh. She and her
younger sister are orphans. They arecared for by an aunt and uncle.
Janat attends a Save the Children
learning centre.
‘I love the learning centre,’ she says.
‘I particularly like it when we learn
maths and English.’‘I have been through a lot back in
Myanmar,’ she adds. ‘At the learning
centre we do drawing, dancing andsinging. That’s helped me and all thechildren who go there to forget what
we’ve been through.’Janat also attends girl friendly space
run by Save the Children. Hereshe’s learned about keeping healthy,
self-protection, risks of child marriage
and fire safety.
‘I want to work when I grow up,’she says. ‘I need to be able to earnmoney for myself.’ She hopes tobecome a teacher or to work in a
hospital or for an NGO.

50 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

Save the Children has focused its advocacy
on this process specifically on the issue ofrefugee education. Including refugee children
in the national education system of their
host country is the most practical and sustainable way to provide displaced children
with accredited and certified learning opportunities that can be monitored for quality.
The Global Compact includes a number of
positive commitments on this, including thatefforts be made to get refugee children backin school, ideally within a maximum of threemonths after arrival, and that ‘support will
be provided for the development and implementation of national education sector plansthat include refugees.’195 It refers to the needfor inclusive education and explicitly references the need to overcome barriers to girls’
education in refugee contexts. An increasing number of countries are taking positive
steps towards these goals, including seven
East African countries that have promised toinclude refugee education in their national
systems by 2020.196 While the Global Compact on Refugees is not legally binding andleaves open how countries meet commitments, it has received widespread support.
The creation of the Global Refugee Forummechanism provides a vehicle through whichgovernments will be able to make financial,technical and policy pledges and throughwhich progress will be measured.
The Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership– paving the way to better treatment
for children injured by bombs
and blast waves
The Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership is an
initiative between Save the Children and theCentre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial
College London that brings together experts
and institutions dedicated to improving the
response to children critically injured by
explosive weapons, wherever they may be.
Its purpose is to fill in the gaps in practiceand research, to help increase awareness ofthe complexity and long-term effects of blast
injury on children and to provide practicalguidance to practitioners on the ground. It is
the first organisation in the world specificallyfocused on the challenges of paediatric blast
trauma.
The Partnership has created a field manual
for medics working in conflict and post-conflict zones to help them treat blast-injured
children. It is a pragmatic framework to enable paediatricians without trauma experienceand trauma clinicians without paediatricexperience to structure their care of blast-injured children, turning guesswork into trans-ferable skills at the moment when they areneeded most. In this way, it enables cliniciansworking in severely constrained environments
to look after severely injured children withthe direction and confidence needed, increasing their patients’ chances of survival andtheir prospects for future wellbeing.
Civil–military coordination and training
Given the severe impact conflict has on children, coordination between military and civil
actors is an important means of reducing
the risks that children face. For Save theChildren, the key approach is to facilitate theinclusion of child rights and child protection
approaches within the operational frameworks of military, police and other relevantgroups. Our training has reached approximately 100,000 military staff and child protection units have now been set up within 12
national armed forces, with a further module
developed for the African Union Standby
Forces toolkit. We have also recently developed a partnership with NATO to develop achild-specific directive, which will offer statesa blueprint from which to draw in order tomainstream these approaches more broadly.
While complex, this sort of civil–military
coordination has tremendous impact when
done effectively. Participation in, and designof, training for military actors – focusing on
the unique vulnerabilities and needs of children, as well as the obligations on military
actors – helps to promote knowledge andcompliance. In crucial areas, for instancethe recruitment and use of children in armed
groups, improved training has translated into
improved action on the ground. Given militaries’ enormous role in protecting children in
conflict, investing in embedding child-specificexpertise within them is crucial.
Appointing an ambassador forchildren and armed conflict– making children a priority
In 2017, Sweden appointed an ambassador
specifically for children and armed conflict197,
acting as a focal point across all government
departments to ensure a consistent focus andinvestment in protecting children in conflict.
This role has made a significant difference
to the effectiveness of Sweden’s work on thisagenda, raising its profile within the Swedish
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, importantly,
strengthening the focus on children in armed
conflict in multilateral forums, such as the
UN and the European Union. One result has
been substantially more effective work on thisagenda at the UN Security Council level during Sweden’s two-year term. The success of

Our training has reachedapproximately 100,000 militarystaff and child protection units
have now been set up within
12 national armed forces.
this role depends on having a clear mandate
and objectives, as well as sufficient budget.
Other governments should consider following
Sweden’s lead.
Mediation and peace processes– putting children at the centre
Including child-specific provisions at theoutset of any political agreement increases
the chances of preventing future violations
and of ensuring the protection of children.
This has been demonstrated recently in the
Colombian peace process, during which childprotection served as a useful entry point
for dialogue with armed groups.198 In 2018,
the UN Security Council called upon member states, United Nations entities, and the
UN Peacebuilding Commission to take into
account children’s views, where possible, inpeace-making processes.199 UN agencies, civilsociety and UN member states have recently
joined efforts to develop soft guidance formediators. In 2016, Watchlist on Children
and Armed Conflict, a policy advocacy platform in New York, worked with stakeholders,
including the UN Department of Political
Affairs’ Mediation Support Unit, to put
together a Checklist for Drafting Children
and Armed Conflict Provisions in Ceasefire
and Peace Agreements.200 Subsequently,
the Security Council in its 2017 Presidential
Statement on children and armed conflictencouraged the Special Representative of
the UN Secretary-General for Children andArmed Conflict to work with relevant childprotection actors to compile a practical UN
guidance document on the integration of childprotection issues in peace processes, thereby
taking work on the Checklist further.201 By
developing concrete resources to facilitate
mainstreaming of children’s issues into peaceand ceasefire agreements, the global childprotection community is increasing the likelihood of children’s concerns being addressedin the aftermath of conflict.

51

PART 4This report has set out the scale and severity of thethreats to children in armed conflict and the distinctive
and devastating impact that such threats can have onchildren.

Turning the tide:
an international
re-commitment tochildren in conflict

To respond to these escalating threats,
we set out three pillars for action:
1. upholding standards of conduct in conflict
2. holding perpetrators to account for violations
3. taking practical action on the ground to keep children
safe and to support their recovery.

2019
The 100th year
since the founderof the idea of childrights began her
work and the 30th
anniversary of the
UN Convention on
the Rights of theChild.
52 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

There are powerful intrinsic moral arguments for
greater efforts to protect children in conflict. Suchefforts are also critical for the maintenance of the international rules-based system everyone’s security depends
on. There are compelling strategic and economic reasons to commit seriously to this agenda: unless the failure to protect children in conflict is tackled, sustainable
development and sustainable peace are in jeopardy. Protecting children in conflict is of universal importance.
As Save the Children enters its centenary year, weare recommitting to our founding purpose: we will holdourselves and others to account to do more to ensure
the protection of children in conflict. Working in almost
all those conflict-affected countries that are the worst
places to be a child (see page 18), Save the Children will
scale up operational responses in key areas, includingchild protection and education in emergencies, andwill support children’s recovery, including those whohave suffered mental and psychosocial harm. We will
strengthen our advocacy to challenge states and armed
non-state actors to live up to their obligations and topush leaders to take their responsibilities more seriously.
This report has highlighted examples of where international progress has been achieved and children havebeen better protected as a result. The hope they offer
must galvanise further action.
Our ‘Stop the War on Children’ Charter (overleaf)
sets out principles for protecting children in armed conflict, holding those responsible for violating the rightsof children to account and helping children rebuild theirlives. This final section of this report makes recommendations on how the Charter’s principles can be translated into action.
There is nothing inevitable about the grave violations or suffering that is inflicted on children in Yemen,
Myanmar, South Sudan or any other conflict. Violations against children take place because of conscious
decisions made by individuals – decisions taken by theperpetrators themselves and by others on whether or
not to intervene. The values and incentives that determine those decisions can – and must – be influenced
and changed. Governments have an especially crucialrole to play in shaping these values and incentives – thestandards and instruments upheld by states influence theenvironment in which other states and non-state actors
operate. For this reason, governments, in particular,
must urgently strengthen the three pillars for action
described in this report.

‘Stop the War
on Children’
Charter‘Every war is a war against children.’Written by Save the Children’s founder Eglantyne
Jebb one hundred years ago, those words are acall to action for our generation.

We call on every government and every armed
group to affirm and adhere to international laws,
human rights provisions, rules and standards
designed to protect children.

Across the world, millions of children are caught
up in wars they played no part in creating. Many
children are routinely subjected to appalling actsof violence, including killing, maiming, sexual violence and exploitation. Many more are treated ascollateral damage in general onslaughts that failto protect children. Children in desperate need offood, care and help are denied humanitarian aid.
And failure to protect schools and schoolchildren
has resulted in classrooms becoming a target.

Individually and collectively, we arecommitted to working for a world in which:Fundamental human rights and international laws
designed to protect vulnerable children from theanguish and destruction of war are violated with
impunity.
As people of many countries, cultures and beliefs,
we demand that the war on children must stop.
The time has come to shatter the culture of impunity surrounding those who commit crimes against
the world’s children – our children.
Children are our present, our future and our hopefor rebuilding societies broken by war. No childshould be subjected to the fear and trauma thatcome with armed conflict. And every child has
the rights that need to be protected, grounded inshared morality. Our common humanity demands
that we act on our responsibility to provide that
protection.

• All children are protected against killing andmaiming.
• Schools and health centres are treated as zones
of peace and protection.
• Every child is protected from rape and sexual
violence.
• No child is recruited into armed forces orgroups.
• All children in conflict are safe from abduction,
detention and displacement.
• No child is denied access to humanitarian aid in
conflict.
• Violations of the rights of children in conflict are
rigorously monitored, reported and acted on.
• Those committing, overseeing and ordering violations against children in conflict are brought tojustice and held accountable for their actions.
• Every child harmed or affected by conflictreceives practical help and support to cope,
recover and rebuild their lives.
• All children affected by conflict, including refugees and those internally displaced, have accessto a good-quality education.
Eglantyne Jebb said, ‘The only international
language in the world is a child’s cry.’We have heard that cry and it will not gounanswered. The war on children must stop.

53

RECOMMENDATIONS
We call upon all leaders, governments, armed
non-state actors, humanitarian NGOs andrelevant bodies to re-commit to protecting
children in conflict and to set out their own
practical agendas for action.
The following recommendations are aimed
specifically at governments, since it is governments that have the primary responsibility for
upholding children’s rights and the greatest
potential influence on the protection of children in conflict. In developing their agendas
for action, we call on governments to:Uphold standards of conduct in conflict• Commit to sign and implement in full the
Optional Protocol to the Convention of
the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict and toendorse the Paris Principles and the Paris
Commitments, which include the principleof ‘straight 18’ for recruitment into armed
forces.
• Commit to endorse and fully implement the
Safe Schools Declaration and to encourageother states to follow suit.
• Strengthen doctrine, training and othermeasures to ensure armed forces and allies:• Understand and take into account thereverberating effects from military
actions in collateral-damage assessments• Take measures to reduce them
• Record casualties according to internationally agreed standards.
• Support progress towards a political declaration on avoidance of the use of explosive
weapons in populated areas.
• Facilitate dialogue between states, the UN,
NGOs and non-state armed groups toprotect children; support efforts to engage
non-state armed groups to develop policies,
codes of conduct and action plans to protect children; and ensure that humanitarianand human rights work is not impeded by
restrictions on organisations’ interaction
with armed groups.
• Regulate and improve transparency oninternational arms transfers and delivery
and the supply of other military services,making these explicitly conditional on
respect for international legal and norma-

54 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

tive standards – as a matter of policy, nostate should authorise the sale of arms,
military equipment or services to actorsthat are listed by the UN Secretary-Generalfor committing the six grave violations or
where there is credible evidence that theweapons may be used to perpetrate rights
violations against children.202 Further, allstates should endorse and ratify the Arms
Trade Treaty, with parties to the Treaty
adhering to its obligations in full.
Hold perpetrators of violations toaccount:• Support international mechanisms to prosecute cases of violations of children’s rights
in conflict, including through resourcing
dedicated gender-sensitive, child-specificexpertise in international investigations andthrough support for the ICC and ad hocjudicial mechanisms.
• Encourage the UN General Assembly toestablish a standing impartial, independentand international mechanism that can be
activated to collect, consolidate, preserve
and analyse evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights
violations and abuses, notably children’s
rights.
• Support financially and diplomatically the
UN’s systematic monitoring and reportingof violations of children’s rights in conflict,including the tracking of age- and sex-disaggregated data on casualties and otherviolations, and the complete, accurate andimpartial naming of perpetrators.
• Develop and use national systems – suchas sequestering property, freezing bankaccounts and imposing travel bans – to takeaction against individual perpetrators ofviolations of children’s rights in conflict andresource national crime agencies to investigate grave violations of children’s rights
in third countries and to prosecute throughnational courts.
• Support children to raise complaints of violations of their rights in conflict directly – inAfrica through the complaints procedureof the African Committee of Experts on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child203 and glob-ally by committing to sign and ratify thethird Optional Protocol to the Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which enables
children to hold parties to the UNCRC toaccount for failing to uphold their rights.204• Support an amendment to Article 8 of theRome Statute to include intentional starvation of civilians within the list of war crimes
capable of being committed in non-international armed conflicts.
• For members of the Security Council: refrainfrom impeding UN action against perpetrators of grave violations of children’s rights
in conflict.
Take practical action to protect children
and support their recovery• Increase multi-year investment in humanitarian child protection with the aim ofgrowing its proportion of total humanitarian funding from 0.5 percent to 4 percent,and ensure the centrality of protection
in humanitarian needs assessments andresponses in conflict contexts, requiring
all humanitarian sectors to measure andreport on child protection outcomes in theirinterventions.205• Ensure mental health and psychosocial
support for children and their families arewell resourced and fully mainstreamed as
an essential component of all humanitarian
responses.
• Increase investment in other crucial protective humanitarian programmes for children,
including education, programmes to tackle
sexual and gender-based violence and minerisk reduction.
• Mobilise new child-focused recovery funding as a core element of post-conflictreconstruction, building human capital byinvesting in children’s education, healthcare,
protection, mental health and psychosocial
support.
• Ensure that all children forced by conflict toleave their homes have access to good-quality education within a few months of displacement, and support the developmentof national costed plans that set out thefinancing needs for all displaced children to
be educated and the measures for ensuring

their access to good-quality education.
• Designate dedicated, senior child protection
and child rights expertise in multilateralpeacekeeping and political missions, by
securing specific provisions in UN Security
Council mandates including explicit resourcing for senior-level child protection advisers.
• Review approaches to counter-terrorism
and prevent violent extremism to ensurethat children are treated first and foremost
as children, irrespective of their alleged
association with armed groups.
• Appoint an ambassador for children andarmed conflict at national levels.
• Systematically support the inclusion of children in peace-making and peace-building
efforts.
2019 is the 100th year since the founder ofthe idea of child rights began her work andthe 30th anniversary of the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child. The UN General
Assembly’s 74th Session in September 2019 isthus a timely opportunity for governments toarticulate their recommitment to protecting
children in conflict through specific pledgesof actions they will take against each of thethree pillars. For the children living in theworlds’ conflict zones, these commitments andthis action cannot come soon enough.

For the children living in theworlds’ conflict zones, thesecommitments and this action
cannot come soon enough.

55

ENDNOTES
1

Save the Children (2018), The War on Children:
Time to end grave violations against children in conflict
2 See for example, Williams (2017), ‘Continuity andChange in War and Conflict in Africa’, PRISM, 6, 4,
p33-45 https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-6-4/Article/1171839/
continuity-and-change-in-war-and-conflict-in-africa/
3 ICRC (2019), ‘Precautionary measures in urban warfare:
A commander’s obligation to obtain information’, https://
blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2019/01/10/joint-blogseries-precautionary-measures-urban-warfarecommander-s-obligation-obtain-information/
4 This is reflected in the major faiths, which placevalue on the protection of children. In Islam, forexample, clear rights exist to life, protection, healthand education. At the foundation of the Jewish socialworld-view is the proposition that individuals are
obliged to protect the life and dignity of all humanbeings, with the vulnerability of children demanding
an even greater responsibility. In Christianity, thebelief that children are a gift from God and should be
the subject of protection and cultivation is central. In
Buddhism, the avoidance of harm is a taught preceptthat runs through all the Buddha’s teaching.
5 The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child was
adopted in November 1989 and came into force in
September 1990. Currently, 196 countries are party
to it, including every member of the United Nations
except the USA.
6 Much of the following is drawn from Fatima, S. et
al (2018) Protecting Children in Armed Conflict, Hart
Publishing.
7 The ICC’s Policy on Children identifies the following
war crimes directed specifically against children: childrecruitment and use, the forcible transfer of children
as an act of genocide, and trafficking of children as aform of the crime against humanity of enslavement orsexual slavery. Other crimes affecting children include:
killings, mutilation, torture, pillaging, and sexual andgender-based crimes, perpetrated either againstchildren themselves or their families and communities,
and attacks against buildings dedicated to educationand healthcare. ICC Office of the Prosecutor, (2016).
Policy on Children. https://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/
otp/20161115_OTP_ICC_Policy-on-Children_Eng.PDF
8 United Nations Security Council, S/RES/1612(26 July 2005). http://www.un.org/ga/search/
view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1612%20(2005)&Lang=E&Area=UNDOC
9 United Nations Security Council, S/RES/1325,(31 October 2000). https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/
doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.
pdf?OpenElement
10 United Nations Security Council, S/RES/1265,(17 September 1999). https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/
doc/UNDOC/GEN/N99/267/94/PDF/N9926794.

56 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

pdf?OpenElement
11 United Nations General Assembly resolution 34/180,
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women (18 December 1979). http://www.
un-documents.net/a34r180.htm
12 It is mandated with maintaining international peaceand security, including through the establishment ofpeacekeeping operations and special political missions,international sanction and the authorisation of
military action.
13 In 2015, states agreed the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable
Development Goals. These set an ambition forhuman development – including inclusive and peacefulsocieties of which protection is a key component.
SDG 16 sets targets to reduce all forms of violenceagainst children (SDG 16.1, 16.2). The Sustainable
Development Goals (2015) UNDP. https://www.un.org/
sustainabledevelopment/
14 Ostby et al (2018) Children Affected by Armed Conflict,
1990–2017, PRIO
15 Defined as individuals under the age of 18
16 The number of children living in conflict zones in 2016
is estimated at 393m. This is higher than the figureof 357m cited in Save the Children’s End the War on
Children (2018). The upward revision is due to the useof more accurate and finer-grained population data.
17 For full methodology see Ostby et al, note 16.
18 This methodology therefore uses different definitionsof armed conflict from those used in International
Humanitarian Law (IHL)/Law of Armed Conflict(LOAC).
19 A notable absence from this list is Myanmar, where
violence forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya
people – more than half of whom were children – toflee into neighboring Bangladesh in August and
September 2017 (see page 32). Inadequate reportingand data collection mean that the absolute numbers
captured are low.
20 UN News (2018), Yemen overview (webpage), https://
news.un.org/en/focus/yemen.
21 Save the Children (2018), Starvation in Yemen:
85,000 children may have died of hunger. https://blogs.
savethechildren.org.uk/2018/11/starvation-in-yemen85000-children-may-have-died-of-hunger/
22 Save the Children (2017) End the War on Children: Timeto end grave violations against children. https://www.
savethechildren.net/waronchildren/pdf/waronchildren.
pdf
23 United Nations, General Assembly, Annual Report of
the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict(CAAC). S/2018/465 (16 May 2018). http://undocs.
org/s/2018/465
24 Wagner et al (2018) ‘Armed conflict and child mortality in
Africa: a geospatial analysis’, The Lancet, Vol 392, 10150,

25

26

27
28

29
30

31
32
33

Pp 857-865. https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/
lancet/PIIS0140-6736(18)31437-5.pdf
This is the estimated minimum total indirect deathsof infants/under-fives in the period 2013–2018. For
Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the DRC,
Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, we
assume that the findings of Wagner et al apply, asbaseline infant/under-five mortality is comparable(based on UNIGME data). Using Wagner et al’sfinding that 3.2–3.6/5–5.7 under-one/under-fives diefor every one battle death, we multiply recorded
battle deaths in our sample countries (UCDP) by
the mid-point in the range (3.4/5.35) to estimate thenumber of indirect under-one and under-five deaths
that resulted from conflict (n = 555,150 and 868,011
respectively). This total includes adjustments for Syria
and Iraq – both of which had lower baseline infant
and child mortality. In those two countries we used
Wagner et al’s findings that 6.6–7.3%/6.6–7.4% of all
under-one/under-five mortality could be attributed
to conflict – applying those percentages to total
infant/under-five mortality in Syria and Iraq between
2013 and 2018 (UNIGME). This is a deliberately
conservative approach. According to UCDP data,
and Violations Documentation Center data for Syria
due to underreporting in the UCDP data, there were331,664 battle related deaths in the same countries
in the same period. Of these, using the same sources,
174,703 were combatants.
The annual children and armed conflict reports are
not the only vehicle for recording and publishingviolations against children in conflict. The Special
Representative of the UN Secretary-General forChildren and Armed Conflict also produces contextspecific reports, which provide further detail. The
SRSG also provides a report to the UN Human
Rights Council. In addition, violations against girls
are reported in the UN Secretary-General’s annual
report on women, peace and security, and the UN’s
annual report on sexual violence in conflict includes
data on sexual violence against girls and boys.
See note 23
Office of the Special Representative of theSecretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict(2018), ‘Children faced with unspeakable violence in
conflict as number of grave violations increased in 2017’(webpage) https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/
children-faced-with-unspeakable-violence-in-conflictas-number-of-grave-violations-increased-in-2017/
See note 23
UNICEF, 27 November 2018, press release, ‘Geneva
Palais briefing note on the situation of children in
Afghanistan’, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/
geneva-palais-briefing-note-situation-childrenafghanistan
See note 23
See note 23
Guha-Sapir et al (2017) ‘Patterns of civilian and childdeaths due to war-related violence in Syria: a comparative
analysis from the Violation Documentation Center dataset,

34

35
36

37
38

39

40

41

42
43

44

45

46

47
48
49

50

51

2011–2016’, The Lancet, Vol 6, 1, 2017, pp 103–110.
Available at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/
langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30469-2/fulltext
Landmine Monitor (2018), Landmine Monitor 2018:
20th annual edition. http://www.the-monitor.org/
media/2918780/Landmine-Monitor-2018_final.pdf
See note 23
Office of the Special Representative of theSecretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict(2019), ‘Child recruitment and use’ (webpage), https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/
See note 23
United Nations, Human Rights Council, ‘I lost my
dignity’: Sexual and gender-based violence in the Syrian
Arab Republic. HRC/37/CRP.3 (8 March 2018), https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/
CoISyria/A-HRC-37-CRP-3.pdf
See note 23. The Chibok girls are female students
who were kidnapped from the Government Secondary
School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria
in April 2014.
UNICEF (2018), Nearly five million Syrian children
accessing education despite over seven years of war on
children. (webpage) https://www.unicef.org/pressreleases/nearly-5-million-syrian-children-accessingeducation-despite-over-seven-years-war
UNOCHA (2018), Yemen Humanitarian Needs
Overview 2018, https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/
files/dms/yemen_humanitarian_needs_overview_hno_2018_20171204.pdf; UNICEF, (2017). Yemen
Humanitarian Situation Report November 2017, https://www.unicef.org/yemen/YEM_sitreps_Nov2017.pdf
See note 41
Associated Press (2018), ‘Back to school, but not for allof Syria’s children’ (webpage), https://www.apnews.
com/0e72a3ca724b4b35bdb8a9c215363b3c
UNOCHA (2018), Ukraine Humanitarian Needs
Overview 2018, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/
files/resources/humanitarian_needs_overview_2018_en_20171130.pdf
GCPEA (2018), ‘I will never go back to school’: The
Impact of Attacks on Education for Nigerian Women andGirls. http://protectingeducation.org/sites/default/files/
documents/attacks_on_nigerian_women_and_girls.
pdf
GCPEA (2018), Education Under Attack 2018, http://
www.protectingeducation.org/sites/default/files/
documents/eua_2018_full.pdf
See note 46
See note 23
Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (2018),‘Everyone and everything is a target’: The impact of attacks
on healthcare and denial of humanitarian access in South
Sudan, https://watchlist.org/wp-content/uploads/
watchlist-field_report-southsudan-web.pdf
Healthcare in Danger (2011), Healthcare in Danger:
Making the Case, ICRC, http://healthcareindanger.org/
the-issue/
The ten conflict-affected countries included in the

57

52
53
54

55
56
57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

analysis were Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen,
Nigeria, South Sudan, Iraq, the DRC, Sudan, andthe Central African Republic. Save the Children UK(2018), Hunger – a Lethal Weapon of War: The impact
of conflict-related hunger on children, https://www.
savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/gb/reports/policy/
Hunger%20-%20a%20lethal%20weapon%20of%20
war%207th%20pp.pdf
See note 51.
For more, see de Waal, A (2018), Mass Starvation:
The history and future of famine, Polity Press.
Shenoda et al (2018), ‘The effects of armed conflict onchildren’, Pediatrics, Volume 152, 6, http://pediatrics.
aappublications.org/content/142/6/e20182585
See note 21.
See note 54.
FAO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO, IFAD (2017), The Stateof Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2017. FAO,
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7695e.pdf
Save the Children (2010), Hungry for Change: An eightstep, costed plan of action to tackle global child hunger,
https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/library/
hungry-change-eight-step-costed-plan-action-tackleglobal-child-hunger
Ostby et al (2018), ‘Organised violence and institutionalchild delivery: micro-level evidence from sub-Saharan Africa,
1989–2014’, PRIO, Demography, Volume 55, 4, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-018-0685-4
UNFPA (2016), Adolescent Girls in Disaster andConflict: Interventions for improving access to sexual andreproductive health services, https://www.unfpa.org/sites/
default/files/pub-pdf/UNFPA-Adolescent_Girls_in_
Disaster_Conflict-Web.pdf
Quintana et al (1997), ‘The spectrum of pediatricinjuries after a bomb blast’, Journal Pediatric Surgery,
Volume 32, 2, pp 307–11; Bendinelli (2009), ‘Effectsof land mines and unexploded ordnance on the pediatricpopulation and comparison with adults in rural Cambodia’,World Journal of Surgery, Volume 33, 5, pp 1070–1074
Bull et al (2018), ‘Paediatric blast injury: challenges andpriorities’, The Lancet Child Adolescent Health 2018,https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-centres-and-groups/centre-for-blast-injurystudies/PBIComment.pdf
Save the Children (2017), Invisible Wounds: The impactof six years of war on the mental health of Syria’s children,
https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/library/invisible-wounds-impact-six-years-war-mental-healthsyrias-children
Save the Children (2018), Picking Up the Pieces:
Rebuilding the lives of Mosul’s children after years ofconflict and violence
Shonkoff et al (2012), ‘An integrated scientific framework
for child survival and early childhood development’,
Pediatrics, 29(2), pp. 460–472, https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/22218840
Save the Children (2015), What Do Children Want inTimes of Emergency and Crisis? They want an education.
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/
global/reports/education-and-child-protection/what-

58 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

do-children-want.pdf
67 See note 46.
68 GCPEA (2019), ‘The Problem’ (webpage), http://www.
protectingeducation.org/problem
69 ODI (2016), Education Cannot Wait: Proposing a fund for
education in emergencies, https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.
org.uk/files/resource-documents/10497.pdf
70 These can include higher rates of child marriage andadolescent pregnancy; greater levels of domestic
labour and care work that keep girls in the home; lackof mobility due to safety concerns either at school oren route; lack of access to menstrual hygiene supplies;
and a low value placed on girls’ education generally.
71 MONESCO (2018), Global Initiative on Out of SchoolChildren: South Sudan case study, Global Partnershipfor Education/UNICEF, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/
ark:/48223/pf0000265399
72 UNHCR (2016), No More Excuses: Provide education to
all forcibly displaced people, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/
ark:/48223/pf0000244847
73 Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,
UNICEF (2018), Global Initiative on Out of SchoolChildren: Afghanistan case study. https://www.unicef.org/
afghanistan/sites/unicef.org.afghanistan/files/2018-05/
afg-report-oocs2018.pdf
74 Save the Children (2018), Time to Act: Providing refugee
children the education they were promised. https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/13479/pdf/
time_to_act_report_online.pdf
75 See note 74.
76 Save the Children (2011), Unspeakable Crimes Against
Children: Sexual violence in conflict. https://www.
savethechildren.es/sites/default/files/imce/docs/
unspeakable_crimes_report.pdf
77 Save the Children (2018), 2018 End of Childhood Report,
https://www.savethechildren.org/content/dam/global/
reports/2018-end-of-childhood-report.pdf
78 See note 77.
79 See note 77.
80 See note 77.
81 UNHCR (2018), Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian
Refugees in Lebanon. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/
documents/download/67380
82 See note 77.
83 See note 77.
84 See note 23.
85 See note 23.
86 See Article 38 on the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, https://www.ohchr.org/en/
professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx; The Paris
Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children
Associated with Armed Forces or Armed
Groups, https://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/
ParisPrinciples310107English.pdf
87 Collective punishment is a form of sanction imposedon persons or a group of persons in response to acrime committed by one of them or a member of thegroup. (See Rabbat, P and Mehring, S (2015) ‘Collective
punishment’, Oxford Public International Law, http://
opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/

law-9780199231690-e269.) State practice establishes
this rule as a norm of customary international law
applicable in both international and non-internationalarmed conflicts. This prohibition is an application,in part, of Rule 102 that no one may be convicted of
an offence except on the basis of individual criminal
responsibility. However, the prohibition of collective
punishments is wider in scope because it does not
only apply to criminal sanctions but also to ‘sanctions
and harassment of any sort, administrative, by police
action or otherwise’.
88 See note 23.
89 Wille (2018), ‘Iraq’s so-called “ISIS families”: rounded up,
vilified, forgotten’, Just Security (webpage), https://www.
justsecurity.org/61437/iraqs-so-called-isis-familiesrounded-up-vilified-forgotten/
90 N Mandela (2000). ‘Statement on Building a Global
Partnership for Children’, 6 May 2000. http://www.
oneworldonepeople.org/articles/mandela_children.
htm
91 2.8. million children accessed psychosocial support,
categorised as child protection in the overview (seenote 92).
92 UNICEF (2018), Humanitarian Action for Children
2018: Overview, UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/
publications/files/UNICEF_Humanitarian_Action_for_
Children_2018_Overview_ENG.PDF
93 Based on FTS data accessed on 17/01/19 (HRP
funding for Protection+child protection+gender-based
violence).
94 M Thierry (2019), ‘Funding for Child Protection in
Humanitarian Action 2010-2018’, Save the Children
Norway, unpublished report. Estimate based on FTS
data. Examining child protection funding needs indetail is challenging because the data is lacking. No
systematic data on child protection needs exists andfigures for child protection funding only started to berecorded in 2018. The data on child protection funding
as a share over time was extracted by going throughall funding flows reported by OCHA in the protection
sector between 2010 and 2018 and isolating thoseprojects that address child protection specifically.
95 One of the objectives of the Grand Bargain is to movetowards longer-term funding for humanitarian action.
The Grand Bargain – a shared commitment to better serve
people in need, https://agendaforhumanity.org/sites/
default/files/resources/2018/Jan/Grand_Bargain_
final_22_May_FINAL-2.pdf
96 UNOCHA (2019), Global Humanitarian Overview 2019,
OCHA. https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/
GHO2019.pdf
97 UNICEF (2018), Humanitarian Action for Children,
Yemen. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/
resources/2018-HAC-Yemen.pdf
98 See note 96.
99 See note 96.
100 See note 23. From January to December 2017, theUnited Nations verified the following violations in
Yemen. Recruitment: 842 cases, among which 534
were attributed to the Houthis, 142 to the Security

Belt Forces, 105 to the Yemeni Armed Forces,
50 to Popular Resistance and 1 to AQAP. Killingand maiming: 1,316 cases, among which 670 were
attributed to the coalition, 324 to the Houthis, 41
to the Popular Resistance, 19 to other international
forces fighting for the Government of Yemen, 10 to
AQAP, and 4 to the Yemeni Armed Forces. Attacks
on schools: 20 cases, of which 19 were attributed to
the Coalition and 1 to an unidentified group in Dali.
Attacks on hospitals: 11 cases, among which 5 were
attributed to the Houthis, 5 to the Coalition and 1 to
the Security Belt Forces. Military use of schools andhospitals: 10 cases, among which 5 were attributed to
the Houthis, 1 to the Yemeni Armed Forces, 4 to the
Popular Resistance. Abduction: 1 case attributed to
the Houthis. Denial of humanitarian access: 248 cases,
among which 168 were attributed to the Houthis, 35
to the Yemeni Armed Forces and 15 to the Coalition.
101 United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights (2018), Situation of human rights in Yemen,
including violations and abuses since September 2014,
para 24 p. 32. https://www.securitycouncilreport.
org/atf/cf/%7b65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3CF6E4FF96FF9%7d/A_HRC_39_43_EN.pdf
102 Yemen Data Project (2018), Yemen Data Project Air
Raids Summary for November 2018. https://mailchi.
mp/17cf33c9bbb7/december2018-yemen-data-projectupdate-426035 Note: Air raid refers to a single
incident or air raid, which in turn may comprise
multiple airstrikes.
103 ACLED (2018), ‘Yemen war death toll now exceeds
60,000 according to latest ACLED data’, (webpage),https://www.acleddata.com/2018/12/11/press-releaseyemen-war-death-toll-now-exceeds-60000-accordingto-latest-acled-data/
104 J Borger (2018), ‘US supplied bomb that killed 40 children
on Yemen school bus’, The Guardian, 19 August 2018,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/19/
us-supplied-bomb-that-killed-40-children-school-busyemen
105 A Dewan (2018), ‘These are the countries still selling arms
to Saudi Arabia’, CNN, 23 November 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/22/middleeast/arms-exportssaudi-arabia-intl/index.html, also see F Slijper, Under
the Radar: The United Arab Emirates, arms transfers
and regional conflict, 2017, https://www.paxforpeace.
nl/publications/all-publications/under-the-radar
106 GCPEA (2019), ‘Safe Schools Declaration Endorsements’(webpage), http://www.protectingeducation.org/
guidelines/support
107 See note 23.
108 Civilian Impact Monitoring Project, (2018). Civilian
Impact Monitoring Report August – October 2018.
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.
humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/
civilian_impact_monitoring_report_august_-_october_2018.pdf
109 UNICEF (2018), Fast Facts Yemen Crisis. https://www.
unicef.org/mena/sites/unicef.org.mena/files/2018-12/
Yemen-FastFacts-En-06Dec18_0.pdf

59

110 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (2018), Press briefing note on Yemen,
Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Montenegro, 11 May
2018, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/
DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23071&LangID=E
111 Yemen Data Project (2018), Yemen Data Project Air
Raids Summary for August 2018, https://mailchi.mp/
f47262abc07d/september2018-yemen-data-projectupdate-389115 and Yemen Data Project, (2018),
Yemen Data Project Air Raids Summary for July 2018,https://mailchi.mp/04ccee3fac00/august2018-yemendata-project-update-382175?e=c5a23e9692
112 Human Rights Watch (2018), Hiding Behind the
Coalition - Failure to Credibly Investigate and Provide
Redress for Unlawful Attacks in Yemen. https://www.hrw.
org/report/2018/08/24/hiding-behind-coalition/failurecredibly-investigate-and-provide-redress-unlawful
113 Amnesty International (2017), ‘Amnesty International
response to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s investigations’.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/
mde31/5494/2017/en/
114 United Nations Security Council, S/RES/2451, 2018,
http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2451
115 United Nations (1996), Impact of Armed Conflict onChildren, Report of the expert of the SecretaryGeneral, Ms. Graça Machel, submitted pursuant
to General Assembly resolution 48/157, 26 August
1996, http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.
asp?symbol=A/51/306
116 According to the United Nations report of the
independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar, thereis ‘a pervasive culture of impunity at the domestic
level’, see United Nations, Report of the independentinternational fact-finding mission on Myanmar, 12September 2018, https://www.securitycouncilreport.
org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/a_hrc_39_64.pdf
117 United Nations (2018), ‘Human Rights Council adopts
10 resolutions and one Presidential statement’,
28 September 2018, https://www.ohchr.
org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.
aspx?NewsID=23652&LangID=E
118 International Criminal Court (2018), Decision on the‘Prosecution’s Request for a Ruling on Jurisdiction under
Article 19(3) of the Statute’, ICC-RoC46(3)-01/18,
6 September 2018, https://www.icc-cpi.int/
CourtRecords/CR2018_04203.PDF
119 UNOCHA (2018), Humanitarian Needs Overview 2018
South Sudan, November 2017, https://reliefweb.int/
sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/South_Sudan_2018_
Humanitarian_Needs_Overview.pdf
120 UNICEF (2017), Childhood under Attack, Briefing
Note, UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/southsudan/
UNICEF_South_Sudan_Report_Childhood_under_
Attack_15Dec_FINAL.pdf
121 UNOCHA (2018), Humanitarian Needs Overview 2019
South Sudan. https://www.humanitarianresponse.
info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/
documents/files/south_sudan_humanitarian_needs_
overview_2019_final.pdf

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122 A Stoddard et al (2018), Aid worker security report:
Figures at a glance, Humanitarian Outcomes.
123 United Nations, Children and armed conflictin South Sudan, S/2018/865, 25 September
2018 http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.
asp?symbol=S/2018/865&Lang=E&Area=
UNDOC
124 UNICEF (2018), Release and Reintegration: Children
Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups.
https://www.unicef.org/southsudan/UNICEF-SouthSudan-CAAFAG-Briefing-Note-Oct-2018.pdf
125 See note 123.
126 See note 123.
127 F Checchi el (2018), Estimates of crisis-attributablemortality in South Sudan, December 2013-April 2018
A statistical analysis, London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine. https://crises.lshtm.ac.uk/
wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/09/LSHTM_
mortality_South_Sudan_report.pdf
128 See note 120.
129 See note 121.
130 See note 121.
131 See note 121.
132 See note 121.
133 See note 123.
134 Child Protection Information Management System,
South Sudan (national database), 2018.
135 World Bank (2018), South Sudan Economic Update,July 2018, World Bank, Washington, DC. https://
openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30294
136 UNOCHA (2018), Financial Tracking Service. https://fts.
unocha.org/countries/211/summary/2018
137 Warchild (2018), Closing the Funding Gap for the
Reintegration of Children Assosciated With Armed Forcesand Groups. Briefing, September 2018. https://www.
warchild.org.uk/sites/default/files/link-files/war_child_uk_reintegration_child_soldiers_briefing_paper_web.
pdf
138 B Sheppard (2018), Yes, We Can End the Military Use of
Schools, Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/
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139 See note 138.
140 United Nations, ‘Optional Protocol to the Convention on
the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children inarmed conflict’ (webpage), http://indicators.ohchr.org/
141 M Wallström and L Zerrougui (2017), ‘Ending the useof child soldiers’, Statement, 12 February 2017. https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/ending-the-use-ofchild-soldiers/
142 Child Soldiers International (2016), A law unto
themselves? Confronting the recruitment of children
by armed groups. http://www.refworld.org/
pdfid/574809d24.pdf
143 J Becker (2017), Campaigning for Children: Strategies for
Advancing Children’s Rights, Stanford University Press.
144 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)(2018), Roots of Restraint in War. https://www.icrc.org/
en/publication/roots-restraint-war
145 Geneva Call (2013), Deed of Commitment under Geneva
Call for the Protection of Children from the Effects ofArmed Conflict, article 7. https://www.genevacall.org/
wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2013/12/DoCProtecting-children-in-armed-conflict.pdf
146 ‘Nearly all signatory groups have abided by theirmonitoring obligations, providing information andreports on their implementation, and allowing
follow-up missions. No signatory has ever refused toreceive a Geneva Call delegation in areas under its
control, even after allegations of non-compliance’.
P Bongard, ‘Engaging armed non-state actors on
humanitarian norms: reflections on Geneva Call’s
experience’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine,
Humanitarian Practice Network, Issue 58, July
2013, https://genevacall.org/wp-content/uploads/
dlm_uploads/2013/12/art-1.pdf
147 Geneva Call (2014), Deed of Commitment under
Geneva Call for the Protection of Children from the
Effects of Armed Conflict signed by the Peoples Protection
Units (YPG), Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) andthe Democratic self-administration in Rojava. 5 July
2014. https://genevacall.org/wp-content/uploads/
dlm_uploads/2014//07/2014-5july-YPG-YPJ-syriachildren.pdf
148 M Wareham (2017), ‘Preventing Suffering through‘Humanitarian Disarmament’‘, Human Rights Watch.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/18/preventingsuffering-through-humanitarian-disarmament
149 ICRC (2018), The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention:
Twenty Years of Saving Lives and Limbs and Reducing
Civilian Suffering. https://www.icrc.org/en/publication/
anti-personnel-mine-ban-convention-twenty-yearssaving-lives-and-limbs-and-reducing
150 Landmine free 2025 (2018), The Problem, (webpage).
https://www.landminefree2025.org/the-problem.html
151 The 2017 report listed 166 investors and a total of
US$ 31 billion invested, as compared to 2018, with88 investors and US$ 8700 million invested. M Beenes
and M Uiterwaal, Worldwide Investments in cluster
munitions: a shared responsibility, Pax, the Netherlands,
December 2018, p. 9, https://stopexplosiveinvestments.
org/wp-content/uploads/PAX-Dec-2018-updateWorldwide-Investment-in-cluster-munitions-WEB.pdf
152 Arms Trade Treaty, Treaty Status, accessed 21 January
2018. https://www.thearmstradetreaty.org/treatystatus.html?templateId=209883
153 United Nations, Office for Disarmament Affairs.
The Arms Trade Treaty, Accessed January 2019.
https://unoda-web.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/
wp-content/uploads/2013/06/English7.pdf
154 For example, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland.
155 See note 153. The US has signed but not ratified the
ATT.
156 UNOCHA, Protecting civilians from the use of explosive
weapons in populated areas, OCHA, https://www.
unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/EWIPA%20Fact%20
Sheet%20June%202017.pdf
157 Save the Children (2013), Explosive Weapons and Grave
Violations against Children. https://resourcecentre.
savethechildren.net/sites/default/files/documents/

explosive_weapons_and_grave_violations_against_children_1.pdf
158 Action on Armed Violence (2019), 2018: a year of
explosive violence. https://aoav.org.uk/2019/2018-ayear-of-explosive-violence/
159 The International Network on Explosive Weapons(INEW) (2018), About, (webpage) http://www.inew.
org/about-inew/
160 The political statement was supported by Austria,
Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Germany, Guatemala,Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Montenegro,
Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal,
Samoa, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland,
Uganda, Uruguay, Zambia.
161 United Nations (2018), Securing Our Common Future:
Agenda on Disarmament, 2018. https://front.un-arm.org/
documents/SG+disarmament+agenda_1.pdf
162 Casualty recording is the process of systematicallyand continuously recording deaths in armed conflict inas much detail as possible, both concerning the deadand how, when, where and by whom they were killed.
163 H Dardagan and H Salama, (2013). Stolen Futures: theHidden Cost of Child Casualties in Syria, Oxford ResearchGroup. http://www.everycasualty.org/downloads/
reports/Stolen-Futures.pdf
164 A restricted form of casualty recording, conducted byparties to conflict.
165 Led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees andSafer Yemen.
166 Every Casualty (2016), Standards for Casualty Recording,https://www.everycasualty.org/downloads/ec/pdf/
StandardsforCasualtyRecording-Version1.0(2016).pdf
167 United Nations, Resolution 1325, S/RES/1325 (2000),
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/
N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement
168 United Nations, Report of the UN Secretary-Generalon Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, S/2018/250, 16
April 2018, www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/reports/sg-reports/SG-REPORT2017-CRSV-SPREAD.pdf
169 UK government, ‘Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative’(webpage), https://www.gov.uk/government/
organisations/preventing-sexual-violence-initiative/about
170 United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for theformer Yugoslavia, ‘About the ICTY’ (webpage), http://
www.icty.org/en/about
171 Rome Statute of the International Criminal
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172 International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism,‘About us: mandate’ (webpage), https://iiim.un.org/
173 Reuters (2018), ‘Germany issues international arrest
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174 Reuters (2018), ‘France issues arrest warrants for senior
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for-senior-syrian-officials-idUSKCN1NA11L
175 Human Rights Watch, (2017). ‘These are the
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176 Human Rights Watch (2017), ‘The US Global
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177 Reuters (2018), ‘MPs back ‘Magnitsky amendment’ on
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178 Norwegian Helsinki Committee, (2018). ‘Governments
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179 Save the Children (2015), The Child Protection in
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180 The Child Protection Working Group (2012),
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181 The Child Protection ‘Area of Responsibility’ is agroup of humanitarian organisations who work on
improving coordinated responses for child protection
in humanitarian and early-warning contexts. The
team provides in-country and remote support to fieldlevel child protection coordination groups. The Child
182 The objective of the localisation workstream is
to ‘increase and support multi-year investment in
the institutional capacities of local and national
responders, including preparedness, response andcoordination capacities, especially in fragile contexts
and where communities are vulnerable to armed
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183 The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian
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184 The Child Protection Working Group (2014), Inter
Agency Guidelines for Case Management & Child
Protection. http://www.cpcnetwork.org/wp-content/
uploads/2014/08/CM_guidelines_ENG_.pdf

62 STOP THE WAR ON CHILDREN A REPORT FROM SAVE THE CHILDREN•

185 Save the Children Programme data
186 Save the Children, Child Protection Information
Management System
187 Save the Children (2017), A practice handbook forfamily tracing and reunification during emergencies,
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188 M Wessels (2015), ‘Bottom-up approaches tostrengthening child protection systems: Placing
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189 Grundin (2018), Learning from Community-led
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190 Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), (2007).
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191 Save the Children (2018), Healing the invisible woundsof war: A roadmap for addressing the mental healthneeds of children and young people affected byconflict Report on the Wilton Park Dialogue 2018.
Wilton Park, DFID, Save the Children. https://www.
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192 Save the Children (2018), Manualized Psychosocial
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193 Education Cannot Wait, ‘About us: the fund’(webpage), http://www.educationcannotwait.org/
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194 United Nations (2016), ‘New York Declaration’.
(webpage), https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/
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195 United Nations (2018), The Global Compact on
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196 IGAD (2017), Djibouti Declaration on Regional
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197 Government Offices of Sweden (2017), ‘Ambassador
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198 See note 23.
199 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2427,
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resolutions/doc/2427
200 Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (2016),
Checklist for drafting children and armed conflictprovisions in ceasefire and peace agreements https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/

Watchlist_ProvisionsChildrenArmedConflictPeaceAgreements_2016.pdf
201 United Nations, Statement by the President of the
Security Council, S/PRST/2017/21, http://undocs.org/S/
PRST/2017/21
202 When seeking to grant the supply of defence assets
for defensive purposes, governments should provide
greater transparency, reporting on the type, quantity
and intended use of arms, weapons and military assets
exported, supplied or otherwise transferred to parties
to conflict and taking measures to trace the use andonward transfer of such assets.
203 African Committee of Experts on the Right andWelfare of the Child (2018), Revised rules of procedureof the African Committe of Experts on the Rights andWelfare of the Child. ‘Working Documents’. https://
acerwc.africa/working-documents/
204 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on
Human Rights (2014), Optional Protocol to the Convention
on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/
OPICCRC.aspx
205 This should be a key outcome of the ‘needs
assessment’ workstream set up as part of the Grand
Bargain63

Eglantyne Jebb said
‘The only international languagein the world is a child’s cry.’We have heard that cry
and it will not go unanswered.

The war on children must stop.

stopwaronchildren.org