IBAHRI marks International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression

IBAHRI Co-Chair and former President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, Mark Stephens CBE, commented: ‘The IBAHRI urges the international community to respect their obligations under international law. Children should be playing with toys, not shrapnel. Across all continents children are victims of aggression, and this cannot be allowed to continue.’

Hina Jilani, Co-Chair of the IBAHRI, remarked: ‘The humanitarian situations in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine are but a few examples of situations where children’s rights are not realised. There is a pandemic of attacks against children, and we must ensure their protection.’

The IBAHRI is highly concerned about the treatment of children in Gaza as, according to UNICEF – the UN-led organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of children globally: more than 50,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured since October 2023. Other reports state the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has worsened with a large section of the population facing starvation, with little to no access to food or water, and that schools are increasingly targeted in the hostilities, with 86.2 per cent of school buildings either directly hit or damaged as of 27 March. According to a recent report from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, around 660,000 children are out of school due to the ongoing conflict with Israel.

In Sudan, according to UNICEF 13.6 million children are reportedly in need of urgent protection and assistance. UNICEF also states that in this war-torn country, approximately 78,000 children under five years of age are dying every year from preventable causes such as malaria and nearly 730,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. UNICEF says that one in 18 children living in Sudan will not reach their fifth birthday. With more than four million children having been forcibly displaced internally and across borders since conflict erupted in April 2023, it has become the world’s largest internal displacement crisis for children.

IBAHRI Director Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC serves as Co-Chair of Bring Kids Back UA, a taskforce charged with developing recommendations for an effective mechanism to return children abducted from Ukraine amid the ongoing war with Russia. In the taskforce’s white paper, Reintegration of Children Affected by Deportation and Forcible Transfers: International Standards and Best Practices for Ukraine, it highlights thousands of children have been torn from their families and subjected to a deliberate campaign of cultural erasure designed to strip them of their Ukrainian identity.