S/PV.6114
6114th meeting
Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 10 a.m.
New York
Children and armed conflict
Mr. Shalgham (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) (spoke in Arabic): At the outset, I would like to express our gratitude to you, Madam President, for being here today to preside personally over this important debate. I would also like to thank the Secretary-General for his briefing, as well as to commend Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and the Executive Director of UNICEF for their efforts to protect children, both in situations of armed conflict and elsewhere.
The report (S/2009/158) of the Secretary-General before us focuses on the progress made in the implementation of resolution 1612 (2005) and its monitoring and reporting mechanism, as well as on the recruitment and use of children by parties to conflict in a number of countries. However, there is still much that the international community must do to implement that resolution.
We would like to emphasize that the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict are still taking place. Children are forced to participate in combat and the killing of people. They are often more subjected to abduction and sexual violence.
Libya expresses its concern and condemnation of the crimes committed against children involved in armed conflict. In that regard, we support the appeal of the Secretary-General to Member States to take stringent measures, within the framework of their national legislation and in accordance with international humanitarian law, to hold the perpetrators of those crimes accountable and to impose the harshest penalties in order to eliminate impunity. By the same token, Libya shares the view that the protection of children in armed conflict should be considered an important facet of the strategy to prevent and resolve armed conflict.
Children continue to be the main victims of grave violations of human rights in conflicts throughout the world. The report of the Secretary-General bears sad testimony to that fact. My delegation shares the view of the Secretary-General that the detention of children in various conflict areas, based on their alleged association with armed groups, constitutes an express violation of human rights standards.
In particular, my delegation wishes to focus on the abuse, torture and coercive interrogation of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons. Here, we would like to strongly condemn the Israeli military operations that have recently led to the killing and displacement of thousands of Palestinian children, caused by the demolition of their homes and the killing of their families. In addition, thousands of children suffer daily while going to school because of the racist separation wall erected on Palestinian land and the hundreds of checkpoints that separate Palestinian villages. The unique nature, duration and extent of their suffering, as well as its continuation, constitute an established policy pursued by the occupier, and affect tens of thousands of children. These practices and policies should be prosecuted.
The actions undertaken by the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict in attempting to protect children and remove them from hotbeds of tension and conflict deserve our appreciation. However, my delegation appeals to the Working Group to avoid selectivity and double standards in the course of formulating its recommendations and its actions as those should not be politicized.
Given the regional dimension of some conflicts, my country appreciates the recommendation of the Secretary-General that United Nations country teams, political missions and peacekeeping missions allocate necessary resources to mechanisms for information exchange and cooperation on cross-border child protection concerns such as recruitment, release and reintegration of children.
The state of abject poverty and degradation of an area, the widening of an area of conflict, the absence of development, the inability to obtain basic services and lack of social and economic opportunity are all factors that increase the risk of child recruitment and underline the necessity of far-reaching development and recovery programmes aligned with disarmament, demobilization and reintegration guidelines and programmes. Such programmes must be based on the needs of local civil society with a view to achieving the successful and sustainable reintegration of former child soldiers into society.
Libya calls on international institutions and donors to help implement those programmes and hopes that the appeal launched by the Secretary-General will receive a positive response from the international community, including the World Bank and other influential actors. They must set aside long-term resources for use by United Nations agencies, non‑governmental organizations, national organizations and civil society to promote child protection activities.
It must not be forgotten that the best way to protect children in armed conflict is to prevent the outbreak of such conflicts by addressing the motivations and root causes of conflicts.
