Excellencies, colleagues, dear children,
Thank you for inviting the ICRC to address you on this important occasion – the first time the annual day on the rights of the child is dedicated to armed conflict. It is a grim sign of our times.
I have been asked today to invoke your international obligations to respect and protect the rights of children in armed conflict.
As you all know, the rights of children are comprehensively protected under international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law.
These frameworks remain fit-for-purpose and, together with ‘soft law’ commitments, provide a coherent basis for preventing violations, ensuring protection and securing remedies for conflict-affected children.
International human rights law and international humanitarian law must be applied in a complementary manner during armed conflict. Provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, such as the principle of the best interests of the child (art. 3), reinforce and inform the application of international humanitarian law’s protections for children.
Now - I could detail the long list of articles in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocol, as well as in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, that spell out special respect for children. Requiring – among other things – their continued access to education, age-appropriate food and healthcare, and their protection from recruitment and use in hostilities. The ICRC has just released our updated Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, including on how its articles protecting children – Article 24 and 50 among them – must be applied.
I could urge that the general, foundational rules of international humanitarian law governing the conduct of hostilities – the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions – be applied to take account of the specific risks faced by children. For example: the same explosive weapons that wound or maim an adult can more easily kill a child. With their smaller size and distinct anatomy – lower weight, smaller abdominal walls, less blood, and with torsos closer to the ground – children are more likely to die from explosive weapons, too.
I could continue to recite at length this bulwark of international law.
But I am conscious that you have heard it all before. I do not consider that the crisis of international law that we face today is a lack of knowledge of the law. Nor is it a crisis in the content or practicality of the law. The crisis is a failure of the rule of that law.
So instead of continuing to set out the law, let me ask you to think of the children that you are lucky enough to have fill your lives.
They are living in a time when the world is not just at war – it is preparing for more war. Global military spending is at record highs. Across regions, states are investing in weaponry, modernising forces, and rearming with a sense of urgency.
We would be gravely mistaken to think that any child is safe. Our generation is planting the seeds of system failure in international law, but it is our children who will have to harvest this violent future. It is estimated that 1 in 5 children now live in conflict-affected areas. This number has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Fewer and fewer children are spared.
A change of course is in our hands – and, as States, you are the only ones who can change course. I urge you to act on the following recommendations.
Think of the fundamental importance of education in our children’s lives. And have the foresight to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration and its accompanying Guidelines for protecting schools and universities from military use. The ICRC has just released a new Commentary on the Guidelines to assist States considering endorsement and working towards implementation.
Think of a child’s terror as everything they know is destroyed around them. And convince your government to endorse and implement the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences arising from the use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas.
Think how impossible it is for an infant to protect itself unaccompanied, when chaos erupts on the streets. And ask if your military has integrated specific child protection provisions into military doctrine and standard operating procedures.
Think of the desperation of a young boy, imprisoned for the supposed acts of his parents, or because he was forced to fight by powers greater than he. And put in place handover protocols to ensure that captured children are transferred out of detention to civilian child protection actors.
Think how much time our children spend online, where social media exposes them to armed actors seeking new recruits. And accede to the Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, and the Statute of the International Criminal Court – all of which prohibit child recruitment and use in hostilities. It is high time these were universally ratified.
And continue efforts of disarmament and towards a mine free world rather than the other way around.
Excellencies,
It is common to see children invoked as effigies of suffering in global media, in our public statements, in our words. It is much rarer to see the rights of the child mainstreamed into the political and military decision-making in armed conflict that takes place behind closed doors. We must change course, and put the child at the centre of our work.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your statements.
