Children and armed conflict – SecCo Working Group – Annual report (excerpts)

Letter dated 11 July 2008 from the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council

In my capacity as Chairman of the Working Group of the Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict, I have the honour to submit a report on the activities of the Working Group since the submission of my last annual report on 10 July 2007.

I should be grateful if you would have this letter and the enclosed report issued as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed) Jean-Maurice Ripert

---

Annual report on the activities of the Security Council Working Group

on Children and Armed Conflict, established pursuant to resolution 1612 (2005)

(1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008)

I. Introduction

1. On 26 July 2005, the Security Council adopted resolution 1612 (2005) on children and armed conflict, sponsored jointly by Benin and France.

2. In paragraph 8 of the resolution, the Council decided to establish a working group of the Security Council to review the reports of the mechanism referred to in paragraph 3 of the resolution, to review progress in the development and implementation of the action plans mentioned in paragraph 7 of the resolution and to consider other relevant information presented to it; and decided further that the working group should:

(a) Make recommendations to the Council on possible measures to promote the protection of children affected by armed conflict, including through recommendations on appropriate mandates for peacekeeping missions and recommendations with respect to the parties to the conflict;

(b) Address requests, as appropriate, to other bodies within the United Nations system for action to support implementation of the resolution in accordance with their respective mandates.

3. Pursuant to resolution 1612 (2005), the Chairman of the Working Group submitted reports to the Council on developments in relation to the Working Group for the periods from 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006 (S/2006/497) and from 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007 (S/2007/428). Since the issuance of the latter report, the Working Group has held seven formal meetings, on 19 July, 18 September and 6 December 2007 and on 5 February, 21 February, 8 May and 20 June 2008. Following each of those meetings, the Chairman issued a brief press release; all the press releases are available on the website of the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations.

/…

II. Substantive issues addressed

9th meeting

/…

11. Daniel Toole, Deputy Executive Director and Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), then presented the Secretary-General’s “horizontal note”, placing particular emphasis on the situation of children in the occupied Palestinian territories, Sri Lanka and the Sudan:

(a) In the occupied Palestinian territories, the number of children killed or injured as a result of the conflict had increased in the most recent period, and the restrictions on movement had adversely affected access to education;

/…

14th meeting

/…

42. The Director of the Programme Division of UNICEF, Nicholas K. Alipui, then presented the Secretary-General’s “horizontal note”, placing particular emphasis on the situation of children in Burundi, Sri Lanka and the occupied Palestinian territories:

/…

(c) In the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, the number of children killed or injured had increased in the first quarter of 2008 owing to an upsurge in violence between the parties to the conflict. In addition, schools were being affected more often by the conflict.

/…

III. Final observations

54. The increase in the Working Group’s activities over the preceding period was not reversed; the Working Group considered the situation of children in 10 conflict situations on the basis of reports of the Secretary-General produced in the context of the monitoring and reporting mechanism provided for in Security Council resolution 1612 (2005). That trend is likely to continue, as the contacts between the Secretariat, the Chairman of the Working Group and the countries concerned have made it possible to prepare for or carry out the establishment of the monitoring and reporting mechanism provided for in resolution 1612 (2005) in all the conflict situations referred to in the annexes to the Secretary-General’s most recent report on children and armed conflict (A/62/609-S/2007/757) and to include these situations in the Group’s programme of work for the period from May 2008 to April 2009.

55. The Working Group pursued its efforts to engage in dialogue with the countries concerned, all of which participated in the Group’s consideration of their situation and made comments upon the adoption of conclusions concerning them, despite the difficulties often encountered in providing the relevant documents to those countries within a reasonable time frame. The Group also made further efforts to enhance the transparency of its work by continuing to include in its conclusions a general summary of the discussions held at its formal meetings.

/…

___________