Actions

Collaborative efforts over the last eight years between the Office of the Special Representative, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other key United Nations entities, as well as Member States, regional organizations, NGOs and other civil society groups, have resulted in significant advances, actions and tangible results for children. These advances include increased global awareness of some of the issues concerning children affected by armed conflict; development and strengthening of international norms and standards for the protection of children; consistent focus and prioritization of this issue by the General Assembly; placing children and armed conflict on the international peace and security agenda through systematic engagement of the Security Council; and deeper mainstreaming of children and armed conflict in the United Nations system. The broadening of the global circle of stakeholders and action on children and armed conflict through strategic and concerted advocacy has been critical in this process.

Beyond the United Nations, regional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States and the European Union have begun to implement the commitments that they have made to children in the context of their own peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives. Notably in recent months, the European Union adopted a strategy for the practical implementation of the European Union Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict. Also on the initiative of the European Union, a joint United Nations-European Union two-week pilot specialization course on "Child Protection, Monitoring and Rehabilitation" is being convened in 2006 as a practical measure to bring together child protection practitioners and to share and deepen expertise in support of important initiatives around monitoring and reporting on grave child rights violations. Also significant has been a more systematic inclusion of children's concerns in peace agreements, with the African Union Mediation for Darfur, for instance, explicitly incorporating children's provisions in the Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006.

Important precedents have also been set in the fight to end impunity through the application of international child protection standards. For example, in October 2005 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for five senior members of the insurgent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), including its rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who is charged with 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, enslavement, sexual enslavement, and forcible enlistment and utilization in hostilities of children under 15 years.

In March 2006, the International Criminal Court also announced the indictment of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, founder and leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for commission of war crimes, conscription and enlistment of children under the age of 15 and the use of children for active participation in hostilities. And, national processes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo recently saw the successful prosecution, conviction and sentencing of Major Jean-Pierre Biyoyo of the Mudundo Forty armed group by the National Military Tribunal in South Kivu, for the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict. Also for the first time, a former head of State Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia, was transferred into the custody of the Special Court for Sierra Leone under indictment on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups, or using them to participate actively in hostilities".