YouSaid · the spoken record

Becker

lines on the record: 21
first: 2008-02-12
most recent: 2020-02-12
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We urge the Security Council to take the following steps: first, request that all conflict analyses include an assessment of the impact of armed conflict on children to ensure that such issues are dealt with at the beginning of any peace effort; secondly, ensure that country-specific resolutions on peace processes emphasize the need for explicit and comprehensive provisions for child protection; thirdly, urge mediators, the United Nations, parties to conflict and other stakeholders to ensure the meaningful participation of affected children and that their views are taken into account; fourthly, ensure dedicated and adequately resourced child protection capacity in United Nations peace operations and political missions; fifthly, request the Secretary-General and United Nations Special Envoys to ensure that child protection is addressed in all reports on peace processes and the monitoring and implementation of peace agreements; and, lastly, as a foundation for accountability, insist that the Secretary-General’s annual list of perpetrators of violations against children be accurate and evidence based, utilizing the data collected by the monitoring and reporting mechanism on children and armed conflict established through resolution 1612 (2005).”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“We welcome the new guidance for mediators to protect children in situations of armed conflict and encourage the Secretary-General to ensure its broad dissemination within the United Nations system. Finally, the Security Council can also help ensure child protection in peace processes.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“Some of the key components that we identified include the following: prioritizing child protection in the agendas of peace talks from the very beginning; ensuring that all parties explicitly agree to end the six grave violations against children, including by naming them as violations of ceasefire agreements; including specific provisions for children associated with armed forces or groups, including adequate resource mobilization and inclusion in DDR processes; including protections for education, including agreements by parties to vacate and rehabilitate schools that have been used for military purposes; ensuring that children’s needs and rights are adequately addressed and resourced in post-conflict programming, including their physical and mental health needs, education and vocational and economic opportunities; ensuring that transitional justice, accountability and reparations mechanisms specifically address violations against children and solicit children’s views; and ensuring that monitoring and implementation mechanisms for peace agreements address all child protection provisions and provide for civil society participation to promote transparency and accountability.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“For example, the 2002 ceasefire agreement between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stipulated that, within 160 days, school buildings occupied by either party would be vacated and returned to their intended use. In 2016, based on broad consultations and analysis, Watchlist prepared a checklist for provisions related to children and armed conflict in ceasefire and peace agreements. The checklist inspired the United Nations and Member States to develop the guidance that is being launched today.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“As the Secretary-General mentioned earlier, Colombia is a particularly good model where an explicit agreement on the release of children under the age of 15 by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo helped build trust between the parties ahead of the Final Agreement for the Termination of Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace. The peace agreement itself references children dozens of times, with detailed provisions regarding health, early-childhood education, food security, including school feeding programmes, and a truth, justice and reparations system mandated to pay special attention to crimes against children. Some peace agreements have included specific protections for schools, which are often targeted during armed conflict or used for military purposes.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“One of the first peace agreements to address children was the 1999 Peace Agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone. It called for particular attention to child soldiers, including the mobilization of resources and their inclusion in DDR efforts. That paved the way for the formal demobilization of nearly 7,000 children. Later studies found that the response in Sierra Leone was far more effective and integrated than in many other conflicts and that children who were demobilized appeared to be doing as well as other children in their communities.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“Special consultations were held for women, for university students and for the displaced, but none were specifically designed to include children. Institution-building often ignores children. Guatemala’s peace agreement, for example, included provisions to strengthen the justice system for adults, resulting in funding, training and monitoring. But justice systems for children were never even considered at the negotiating table and received no resources. Some take the view that general provisions to benefit the population at large will automatically trickle down and benefit children, but our experience is that that is not the case. We have learned that specificity is essential. In that regard, we also have some good examples to learn from.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“The 2015 Bamako Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, for example, does not mention the issue or include children in its DDR provisions, despite high-level advocacy by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. Peace processes also fail to include channels for child participation. In South Africa, for example, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that few children approached it to tell their stories until they convened special hearings for children and youth. Once organized, those hearings drew enormous input. Libya is another missed opportunity. In 2018, more than 75 public consultations for peace were held across the country, involving more than 7,000 Libyans.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“Peace agreements are most likely to address the issue of child soldiers, but they often fail to address justice for child soldiers as victims or accountability for the leaders who recruit them. This failure contributes to impunity and continued cycles of recruitment and re-recruitment. Provisions on children associated with armed forces or groups are sometimes too narrow, focusing only on child combatants and failing to include girls or those who did not bear arms. In Liberia, for example, community groups needed to advocate after the signing of the 2003 peace agreement to ensure that disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) efforts included all affected children. Despite the years of attention to the issue of child soldiers, some peace agreements still fail to address them at all.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“We know that children suffer disproportionately in war; they also benefit less in peace. Peace processes and agreements do more than end war. They establish a framework for transition and the political, social and economic agenda for peace. They establish priorities for post-conflict investment and resource allocation. When children are excluded, their needs and their rights become invisible. The result is underinvestment and a lack of critical programming. In such circumstances, we cannot be surprised if new grievances emerge and former child soldiers take up arms again. Addressing the needs of conflict-affected children in peace processes is not just a moral or a legal imperative — it is crucial to a durable peace. Our experiences with peace processes to date highlight some critical gaps.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“The Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict conducted an analysis of ceasefire and peace agreements to assess how well they addressed child protection. We were pretty discouraged by the results. We looked at all the documents in the Department of Political Affairs peace agreements database, going back to 1999, the year when the Security Council first took up the issue of children and armed conflict. The documents included peace and ceasefire agreements as well as declarations and other communiqués. We found that of 444 documents, fewer than 18 per cent included child-protection provisions, and many of those did so only in the most general way — for example, by calling for the protection of women, children and other vulnerable groups. This simply is not good enough.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“Ms. Becker: I am honoured to address the Council today on behalf of the Watchlist of Children and Armed Conflict, a global network of human rights and humanitarian organizations devoted to protecting and promoting the rights of children in armed conflict. In 1996, when Graça Machel delivered her seminal study on the impact of armed conflict on children (see A/51/306), she deplored the fact that up until then, no peace treaty had ever acknowledged the existence of child soldiers. Without such recognition, she said, there could be no effective planning for peace. Since then, the Security Council has repeatedly called for the inclusion of child protection in peace processes. But in reality, peace agreements that address child protection are still rare. They are the exception, not the norm.”
2020-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8721 (2020) · source
“We will continue to participate in the monitoring and reporting mechanism and to build and strengthen programmes for children on the ground. We will continue to pressure perpetrators to end their violations and to offer support to the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. For us, those are urgent priorities. We commend the Security Council on the progress it has made to end violations against children, but we appeal to it not to stop short of making that progress consistent and tangible for children caught up in extremely dangerous situations. We urge Council members to commit to negotiating a new resolution within the next year to close existing gaps, maintain the progress achieved to date, and ensure that all parties to armed conflict are held to account for their violations against children.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“Finally, I would like to address the Security Council Working Group's use of its toolkit in responding to grave violations against children. The toolkit provides a valuable array of actions to encourage parties to armed conflict to comply with their international obligations. While the Working Group has used some of the actions in the toolkit regularly, others have been used seldom or even not at all. Those tools are already available to Council members, and they should immediately put them to use. Full and robust use of those tools will result in improved protection for children and accountability from perpetrators. There is no time to waste. As NGOs working on behalf of children in appalling circumstances, we support the Security Council's important efforts.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“In resolutions 1539 (2004) and 1612 (2005), the Security Council said that it would consider the imposition of targeted measures, such as arms embargoes, against parties that do not end their use of child soldiers. Yet the Security Council has taken targeted measures against just one individual, imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on a former commander in Cote d'Ivoire. The Security Council cannot expect to achieve accountability based on empty threats. To ensure their own credibility, Security Council members must be prepared to exercise their powers to impose targeted measures when warranted. That entails systematically referring information to relevant sanctions committees and, in other cases, applying measures through country-specific or thematic resolutions of the full Security Council.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“Some parties to armed conflict have recruited and used boys and girls as child soldiers year after year, in defiance of both international law and the Council's own resolutions. Between 2002 and 2008, at least 14 parties to armed conflict have been named in all five of the Secretary-General's reports on children and armed conflict. Those persistent violators include the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional in Colombia, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and the Government forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar. Those persistent violators should be subject to the Council's strongest action.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“It should be automatically applied to all situations of armed conflict in which children's security and rights are violated by armed forces and groups. As recommended by the Secretary-General, we also urge the Council to give equal consideration to all six grave violations against children so that any of those violations could trigger the application of the monitoring and reporting mechanism and the listing of a party in the Secretary-General's annexes. At the same time, we recognize that an incremental and pragmatic approach has contributed to the success of the children and armed conflict agenda. For that reason, as a next step, we encourage the Council to add rape and other forms of gender-based violence as an additional trigger for the mechanism.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“Our study also identified obstacles and challenges, including the need for greater collaboration with other existing networks, stronger support for the participation of civil society groups, better efforts to protect the safety of survivors and others who provide information, and more effective responses to violations. To address those, we have provided practical recommendations to the United Nations and its partners, which should be swiftly implemented. Fundamentally, the Security Council must also address the scope of the monitoring and reporting mechanism. Currently, the mechanism is triggered only by violations involving the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and is automatically applied only to the situations on the Council's formal agenda.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“First, the monitoring and reporting mechanism must be strengthened and its scope expanded. Secondly, strong and consistent action must be taken against perpetrators that repeatedly violate the rights of children. Thirdly, accountability must be demanded from perpetrators by imposing targeted measures when warranted. Finally, the full range of actions in the Working Group's toolkit in response to continuing violations must be utilized. It has now been over two years since resolution 1612 (2005) set the groundbreaking monitoring and reporting mechanism into motion. While the mechanism is still in its infancy, a recent Watchlist field-based study found that the mechanism has made impressive strides in the quest to collect timely, accurate and objective information.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“We welcome the Council's achievements - the monitoring and reporting mechanism, the development of action plans to end the use of child soldiers, and the very important efforts of the innovative Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. However, we are not here to celebrate. As members know, in many ways children in armed conflicts today are no better off than their peers were years ago. Impunity for those who brutally attack them is too often the norm. Today, it is as important as ever that all of members of the Council stay focused on the purpose of their work and redouble their efforts to make real change for children. We urge the Security Council to take several critical steps without delay. Those steps reflect the 12 recommendations set out by the Secretary-General in his latest report on children and armed conflict.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source
“Ms. Becker: I would like to thank the presidency and the members of the Security Council for giving non-governmental organizations (NGOs) the opportunity to participate in this important forum. It is an honour to be here. I am speaking today on behalf of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, an international network of NGOs including grassroots civil society groups as well as some of the largest humanitarian and human 08-2361] rights organizations in the world. Many of our colleagues are witnessing war every day and struggling to protect children from the constant threat of violence. Today's open debate provides an important opportunity to reflect on the progress achieved by the Security Council in strengthening protections for children.”
2008-02-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5834 (2008) · source