- Question for Short Debate
- 4:00 pm
- Asked by
- To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) the impact of international conflict on children, and (2) the recommendations proposed by Save the Children in its report Stop the War on Children: Let Children Live in Peace, published in December 2023.
- My Lords, today one in every five children lives in or is fleeing from conflict zones. They face greater risks than at any time in the last two decades. From Gaza to Sudan, Yemen to the Democratic Republic of Congo, children find themselves caught up in violence that is not of their making. They risk being killed, maimed, raped and recruited into armed forces. They are often denied the most basic humanitarian aid and medical care. We have witnessed the bombing of schools and hospitals on a scale unseen in decades—a clear violation of international humanitarian law.Every year, the United Nations publishes its annual report on children and armed conflict, meticulously documenting the grave violations committed against children. Drawing on the UN’s research, Save the Children compiles its own report, Stop the War on Children, which analyses the most dangerous conflicts for children. Its latest publication was at the end of last year and is perhaps now a little out of date, but the most recent UN report, published in June this year, provides an updated and stark picture of where in the world children are suffering the most today. The UN reports a 21% increase in grave violations against children, with the highest numbers recorded in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the DRC, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan. Today, I shall refer briefly to Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine.The suffering of those caught up in the Gaza-Israel conflict has dominated media reports since the appalling killing and kidnapping of Israeli citizens by Hamas last October. Virginia Gamba, the special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, stated in June this year:“The parties to the conflict in Gaza are doing irreparable harm to children”.Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the IDF are all named in this year’s UN report as perpetrators of heinous acts. The UK’s deputy ambassador to the UN in New York, James Kariuki, said in the Security Council just last month:“Gaza has become the deadliest place in the world to be a child”.For those children who survive these horrors, the impact on their mental health is beyond comprehension. In March, Save the Children International quoted the remark of Dalia, a mother in Gaza, who said:“Our children have already lived through different wars. They already lacked resilience and now it’s very difficult to cope. The children are scared, angry and can’t stop crying … This is too much for adults to cope with, let alone children”.I turn now to the conflict in Sudan, which has persisted for over a year and escalated into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. It is reported that nearly 16,000 people have been killed—some say the number is vastly higher—and 14 million children are in desperate need of support to overcome the impacts of this conflict. Abduction, killing, maiming, sexual violence, recruitment and abuse: these are the daily risks faced by children in Sudan. They have witnessed their homes, hospitals, playgrounds and schools bombed, looted and occupied. They have lost loved ones. They have been subjected to unspeakable violence. Denied access to basic necessities such as food, shelter and healthcare, they are at risk of harm from hunger, disease and a severe lack of medical care.
- 4:08 pm
- My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for securing this debate, for her excellent and informed opening remarks and for her service as a parliamentarian and a Minister. If I may, in anticipation of the next speaker, I want also to thank the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, for his service. He is admired, respected and trusted by all and, for more than a decade, has been our best diplomat.I start with the obvious: this Question is not one that should excite partisan disagreement. The situation for children in conflict is, by almost any objective metric, worsening. Since 2021, one in five children are living in a conflict zone, as we have heard—a 2.8% increase. Save the Children reports a 13% increase in grave violations against children since 2021, with 76 now each day. Most concerningly, we have seen an increase of 20% in the number of children recruited by armed forces and militias.These figures are indicative at best. There are obvious inherent challenges in reporting and verification, which makes it likely that the figures, while the best available, do not adequately reflect reality. Indeed, the United Nations has conceded that, in far too many instances, age disaggregation does not form part of the statistical methodology. In November, the UN published a discussion paper that sought to disentangle the three-cornered relationship between climate change, conflict and the erosion of children’s rights. It quotes the Secretary-General’s special representative on violence against children:“The cumulative shocks of the climate crisis are exacerbating pre-existing crises … and … aggravating the risk factors … such as poverty, economic and social inequalities, food insecurity and forced displacement”.Of course, Russian aggression against Ukraine and the ongoing horrors in Gaza monopolise public attention, but many of the conflicts where children are most acutely affected are happening away from the gaze of the public—at least, that of the western public. Conflicts in Somalia, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Mozambique have seen observable interaction between climate change, the fracturing of food security, conflict and the recruitment of children to militia groups.
- 4:11 pm
- My Lords, I welcome this important debate. I thank my noble friend Lady Anelay and align myself with the remarks made about her service in this area, both in this House and in the previous Government. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his kind remarks.Children matter; our debate is testimony to that. In 2023, 450 million children—one-sixth of the population of children across the globe—were impacted by conflict around the world. Some 50% of all displaced people around the globe are children. These are not mere numbers but real lives and real people; they are the children who will build the world of tomorrow. Conflicts are raging. Children are dying, suffering and being maimed. The psychological impacts are immeasurable. Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, the DRC—the list continues. Children are being killed, schools are being targeted, young children are being recruited as child soldiers and given guns to kill, not books to learn; they are indoctrinated and brainwashed to commit the most abhorrent of crimes.In the brief time I have today, I will focus on sexual violence in conflict. I have been truly honoured to lead the UK’s efforts in tackling this scourge on humanity over the past seven years. It involves evil and inhumane acts of rape, torture and human trafficking. I have witnessed such actions, from Iraq and the DRC to Bosnia and Myanmar, and seen the deep, irreparable scars that go way beyond the abhorrent acts of violence and stay with the victims.The UNFPA reports that one-fifth of refugees, including IDPs, fall victim to sexual violence. Yet the courage and testimonies of the survivors and the children born of rape have inspired us. They not only survive but show us all the depths of their human resilience—I have experienced this directly, as have others—to fight back, as the report says. I join in my noble friend’s calls: I hope that the Government will take forward the recommendations of this excellent report.
- 4:15 pm
- My Lords, we cannot talk of children and war without referring to Gaza and Sudan, although we should add Afghanistan, Myanmar, Ukraine and other crises. What is happening is obscene and we cannot ignore the slaughter and depravation before our eyes. No matter the diplomatic obstacles or the longer-term geopolitical outcomes, we will continue to have blood on our hands until we successfully push, with our combined strength, for lasting ceasefires. But, in the meantime, we would do well to consider how best we can focus on both immediate and crucial longer-term priorities.Education is the magic bullet for development. Conflict deprives millions of children of an education and heralds a bleak future. Some of the more egregious effects include: an increase in terrorist groupings; the recruitment of ever-younger children as soldiers; increased local and regional violence; early and forced marriage of girls; increased sale of children for economic and sexual exploitation; enforced slavery; and the loss of hope.The coming together of groups motivated to learn does not have to be formal or necessarily taught in purpose-built schools. In Afghanistan newly set-up cluster classes, or secret education, in five provinces involve qualified teachers moving quietly from area to area and providing high-level tuition in private houses. Many thousands of girls have already enrolled, including the children of some Taliban commanders. It would not be impossible to set up similar schemes in other countries torn apart by conflict. Mobile education would rapidly reach many more children than any grand plans to rebuild infrastructure.Afghanistan’s crisis is relatively muted compared to Gaza, Sudan or Myanmar. Although there are undoubtedly severe food shortages, most Afghans are not starving. However, this is not the case in either Gaza or Sudan. What sort of a world are we living in where children die in their thousands for want of basic food? What pressures are we bringing to bear on our Governments?
- 4:18 pm
- My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for arranging this important debate at a time when it is absolutely vital that this is discussed, not only here but in other parts of the world. I declare my interest as an adviser and ambassador for the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and other organisations around the institute.Allow me to take the House back 28 years to when the UN commissioned Graça Machel, Mozambique’s first post-independence Minister for Education and a staunch advocate for children’s rights, to conduct a landmark investigation into the impact of war on children. The findings, presented in what we now call the Machel report of 1996, vividly depicted the brutal reality of children in conflict zones. It reminds us of the truth that we must never forget: children are the primary victims of war, and their protection should be central to the international human rights and peacebuilding agendas. The report has a clarion call for urgent action.In the years that followed, many of Machel’s recommendations were adopted with determination, including the appointment of a special representative for children in armed conflict. But despite these efforts, as Save the Children’s work has highlighted, the situation for children has deteriorated significantly. Today, an alarming 468 million children are living in conflict areas and zones, double the number in 1990. The number of grave violations against children has almost tripled since 2010.I wish to focus on one of the most horrendous of these violations: conflict-related sexual violence against children. Save the Children’s 2021 report, Weapon of War: Sexual Violence Against Children in Conflict, revealed that in 2019 31% of children lived in conflict-affected countries where at least one armed group committed sexual violence. This number is likely to increase with the rise in global violence. In 1990, 8.5 million children lived within 50 kilometres of sexual violence cases, but by 2019, this figure had skyrocketed to 72 million. Armed groups are deliberately targeting children with sexual violence to terrorise, intimidate and achieve political or military objectives, including ethnic displacement and humiliation. This is a catastrophic violation of children’s rights and a threat to entire communities and the world.
- 4:21 pm
- My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Anelay for tabling this debate and Save the Children, both for its work in highlighting the cost of war on children and for its programming work, which deals with many of the issues that we are speaking about. As we have heard, children are, sadly, the most vulnerable victims in conflict. The latest report brings that into sharp focus. Not only do they suffer from the immediate effects of violence, displacement and trauma but we know that these experiences leave lasting scars, both physical and psychological.I want to highlight three issues in the time we have today, which I hope the Minister can address in his response. The first is the importance of continued access to education. Of course, that is a very difficult challenge in conflict zones, but we know that it is imperative to give children hope for their future. However, as we see in the report, for many, even a simple act of going to school is fraught with danger. The report highlights that attacks on schools increased by 74% last year. In Sudan, we hear of schools turning into military outposts. In Gaza, children are tragically killed when airstrikes hit their schools. Of course, in Afghanistan, we see the tragedy of girls denied access to any education at all.The UK’s support for the Safe Schools Declaration is critical, but we must also push for its full implementation. That means more investment in education in crisis settings and more support for child protection systems. Educating children in conflict can sometimes feel like an impossible task but the FCDO supports excellent organisations, such as Education Cannot Wait, which make a difference. I hope that support will continue.The second issue is child marriage, which the report highlights as a growing crisis. We hear that in conflict settings girls are 20% more likely to be married as children. For many families, sadly, child marriage can be seen as a form of protection or economic survival in the face of conflict, but it only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and violence. Again, the UK has done some excellent work in this area with organisations such as Girls Not Brides, UNICEF and many others. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that this will continue to be a focus for the FCDO.
- 4:24 pm
- My Lords, all of us are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for initiating such an important and timely debate. The House will discuss Sudan tomorrow, but, with some 11 million people displaced, 19 million children out of school and the catastrophic spread of famine throughout Sudan, the noble Baroness was of course right to raise it, as others have.Globally, there is a growing trend of targeting children during conflict and atrocity crimes, whether to kill, injure, abduct or abuse them, or to turn them into child soldiers, imposing unimaginable suffering on the lives of countless children. International law is clear that such targeting of children is a crime—however, too often, a low-level response and impunity send a different message.Although I will focus my brief remarks on children abducted during Putin’s war in Ukraine, can the Minister update us on both the plight of the over 2,600 missing Yazidi women and children—some of whose families I met during a visit to northern Iraq and who were alluded to in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon—and the plight of Leah Sharibu, the 14 year-old Nigerian girl abducted by Boko Haram, raped, forcibly converted and still held by jihadists? I have raised her case since she was abducted six years ago.Russia’s crimes in Ukraine are from the same stable and they are having a devastating impact on children. Some have died and others are injured, as Putin’s regime has targeted schools, children’s hospitals and family homes—war crimes leading to the displacement of millions of children. In addition, thousands have been abducted, forcibly exiled to Russia and subject to expedited adoptions. This had its origins in 2014 in Crimea, when Russia perversely called their trains used to transport children “trains of hope”. We know from the testimonies of rescued children that they have been subjected to indoctrination, told to become Russian and seen their Ukrainian identity destroyed.
- 4:28 pm
- My Lords, our modern weapons of war do not discriminate between the young and the old when they are used, such is their destructive power. Children in conflict zones are always the first victims of war, and those who survive are left traumatised. Witnessing extreme violence, losing a family member or being separated from loved ones can cause anxiety and other mental disorders. The psychological impact on them can be enormous and can last a lifetime.Childhood is the happiest time of our lives, and we often wish we could return to it. Those who live in a refugee camp or a conflict zone never experience their childhood. They cannot regularly attend school and do not have a proper social structure or grow up with the necessary skills and knowledge to contribute to their society.They often live in poverty and sometimes suffer from malnutrition, chronic stresses and diseases. In some cases, they are forced to fight in regular armies and killed. Some children become victims of sexual exploitation and are faced with stigmatisation and exclusion from their communities.It is no good just talking about these problems—there are lots more than I have highlighted here—we must also find solutions. We must implement some sort of joint international programme to improve the lot of these children. For instance, there must be counselling for traumatised children to cope with the psychological effects of war. We must set up a programme to trace children and reunite them with their families and, in cases of child soldiers, a programme to reinstate them into society by incorporating peace into their curriculum to promote conflict resolution, tolerance and social cohesion.To do all these things we need international co-operation on a large scale. The international community must adopt a comprehensive, co-ordinated approach to mitigate the damage done to children. We need some form of long-term humanitarian initiative, with legal protection for the well-being of children in conflict, along with a diplomatic effort to prevent conflicts and resolve existing ones, with an early warning system to detect potential conflict and take preventive action to reduce the risk to children. We should involve youths in such peacebuilding activities, empowering them to be the agents for change. We must create platforms for children to share their stories and participate in the decision-making process. We must advocate for a global movement of children’s rights and for the specific needs of children in conflict in international agreements.