YouSaid · the spoken record

Lewis

lines on the record: 25
first: 1997-05-21
most recent: 1998-09-29
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

“As it happens, as we speak, Carol Bellamy, our Executive Director, is on her way to Sierra Leone. It never ends. But along the way, all of these pressing and critical issues arise, and they must be dealt with.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“There is always the tendency to marginalize children in international debate. In this instance, that would be folly because the Convention gives exact expression to everything the Security Council wants to achieve. As I close, I must emphasize again how extraordinarily valuable it is to have the Security Council initiate these deliberations and permit our participation. Every debate takes us another step forward. UNICEF is on the ground before conflict, during conflict and after conflict. Like our colleagues in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross, we wrestle with these issues every hour of the day. We are inescapably involved, whether with child refugees or internally displaced children or any children made vulnerable by war.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“Let me take a moment to remind the Council of article 38, paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: "States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child." This is further underscored by paragraph 4, which invokes international humanitarian law to ensure the protection and care of children who are affected by armed conflict. Could it be more clear? Here we have a human rights Convention giving the imprimatur of primacy - and legitimacy - to international humanitarian law in conflict situations. It represents the very core of this whole debate. I am not going to be a chauvinist for the Convention. It stands on its own. But it must not be depreciated simply because it deals with children.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“However, what is not always recognized about the Convention on the Rights of the Child is another variant of the principle of indivisibility: the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the only international human rights instrument which explicitly incorporates international humanitarian law. The two are as one within the articles of the Convention. What that means, of course, is that instead of for ever trying to find a way of meshing human rights law and humanitarian law, we have an existing international covenant which does it for us, and were that to be recognized and employed for children in conflict situations, we would have the concrete expression of a goal which the Security Council espouses. Do we exaggerate? I think not.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“Whether we are dealing with refugee populations or the internally displaced; whether we are dealing with peacekeepers or humanitarian workers; whether we are dealing with bona fide Governments or opposition groups or rogue militias - everything hinges on the sanctity and observance of international human rights and humanitarian law. Having said that, I would like to engage in a piece of UNICEF dialectic. When the Convention on the Rights of the Child was drafted, one of its most celebrated aspects was the principle of indivisibility - that is, all rights are equal: political, civil, economic, social and cultural. Equal. It was a triumph of consensus. It then became a manifestation of consensus when 191 countries ratified the Convention and embraced its contents as binding international law.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“This approach is now being pursued system-wide throughout the United Nations. May I add that we are also pioneering the development of an incident-tracking system that will be made available to Member States and our colleagues throughout the United Nations, and we have now distributed Security Awareness Training programmes to over 200 duty stations. I suspect that most of the United Nations system is aware of our preoccupation with security imperatives and our equivalent preoccupation with the need for resources to address them. That is why the Secretary-General's plea for resources is no idle addendum: it speaks to the heart of the matter. Thirdly and finally, there is the matter of respect for international human rights and humanitarian law. This is obviously the crux of this debate.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“Many individuals and agencies and nation States have spoken feelingly and eloquently of the dangers to humanitarian personnel working in the field. The Secretary-General's report provides statistics. Please allow me to put information specifically from UNICEF on the record. In the past four years, 14 of our staff members have died in conflict situations, and in the past two years alone, 25 others have been seriously injured, mostly by gunshot. We have also dealt with the nightmare of rape. Indeed, following the rape of a staff member in Goma on 12 May 1997, UNICEF made sure that every single office would have access to post-exposure treatment for the HIV/AIDS virus within 24 hours. If taken immediately after exposure, this cocktail of medication significantly reduces the risk of transmission.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“We see the toll that is taken and try to deal with it on the ground, every day, whether in Sierra Leone or, more recently, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Children engaged in hostilities as soldiers are deprived of every single right granted under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF would argue that only when we have an international agreement on the age of 18 will we be able to say that we have put the protection of the lives and psyches and futures of children ahead of other considerations. When the international community equivocates over the age of recruitment, it sends a sadly ambiguous message to the military predators who haunt the zones of conflict looking for children to abduct, to seduce or to conscript. Secondly, there is the matter of the safety and security of humanitarian personnel.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“UNICEF understands the sensitivities within the Council, and it is not our intention to aggravate them. But we feel morally obliged to say that until the age of 18 is universally embraced as the minimum age of recruitment, whether by way of adoption of the optional protocol or the amendment of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there will continue to be, in one sordid conflict after another, the reckless abuse of children as child soldiers. We recoil with horror at the idea of lO-, 11- and 12- year-olds employed as fighters, porters, cooks, messengers and sex slaves in regular and irregular armies. But we put it to the Council that in terms of the effective damage - some would say destruction - of a child's present and future life, 15-, 16- and l7-year-olds are equally vulnerable.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“Above all, we must challenge the obscenity of impunity through the use of the International Criminal Court. We have said all that before, and more, especially in the context of the Graca Machel study. Today there are three matters that we would particularly like to emphasize before the Council, all of them flowing from comments within the Secretary-General's report and, of course, within the particular mandate of UNICEF. First, there is the matter of child soldiers. UNICEF could not help but note that in the presidential statement of 29 June last, as in the report before us, there is no specific reference to the age of recruitment. There is a strong denunciation of the recruitment and use of children in hostilities in violation of international law, but no reference to age.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“We reiterate again that children must be a distinct and priority concern in all actions to promote peace, implement peace agreements and resolve conflicts; that every peace agreement must include specific reference to the demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers; that children's rights and special needs, of every kind, must be specifically and systematically included in the mandates authorizing such actions; that we must dramatically reduce the availability of small arms and light weapons which serve to transform children into junior militarists; and that we must train all personnel - civilian, military and peacekeeping - on their legal responsibilities to children, particularly to protect them from egregious violations of their rights - and, in that way, incidentally, contribute to the development of national capacity.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“We participated in those previous debates, or we helped to inform their content. The speeches and views are on record. We have listened carefully today and find ourselves again in agreement with the great part of what has been said. In particular, we strongly associate ourselves with the visceral horror that everyone feels at the pattern of targeting and slaughtering civilian populations at will - populations, as the Deputy Secretary-General noted, made up overwhelmingly of children and women. There is no question about it - we live in an age of madness, where flesh-and-blood human beings in many conflicts are given no more value than inanimate objects that are trampled and dismembered. Against this background, we note the desperate vulnerability - compounded time and time again - of refugee populations and the internally displaced.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“Thank you immensely, Mr. President, for giving the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) this opportunity. The combination of the Secretary-General's excellent report that informs today's debate, the strong and thoughtful statement of the Deputy Secretary-General that introduced it, the previous debate in May 1997, and the presidential statement following that debate last June specifically devoted to "Children and armed conflict" serve to give focus to the inseparable twin themes of protection for humanitarian assistance on the one hand and protection of children in war on the other. UNICEF appreciates the significance that this represents when seen in the context of the influence of the Security Council on the affairs of nation States. It is not our intention to reconnoitre every subject.”
1998-09-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3932 (1998) · source
“UNICEF is a very small player; we know that. But we are always there - before the conflict, during the conflict and after the conflict. Children are our mandate. Children are always there. We hope these political deliberations will lead to ever bolder and more confident initiatives.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“Akashi noted. What has happened recently is only the latest example of this ugly phenomenon. So, too, do we endorse UNHCR's call for access in conflict situations as an absolutely indispensable component of delivering humanitarian assistance. These civil conflicts are so complicated, and they descend into such abattoirs of depravity, that even children are wilfully targeted and treated mercilessly. And it is getting worse. Somewhere the lines must be drawn. The Security Council is increasingly involved in support for humanitarian action. Military and civilian peacekeeping personnel are increasingly used to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance to civilian populations. It is the Security Council that will weave the web of human rights and humanitarian law into the political, security, developmental and humanitarian fabric.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“Yes, there are exemptions provided for the flow of humanitarian assistance, but, if this is not inappropriate, those exemptions are sometimes applied in a capricious and arbitrary fashion. The exemptions must be protected and we would suggest that a child-impact assessment before and during the application of sanctions should accompany the mandate for sanctions. I want to bring these remarks to an end. I should like to say that the links among political, security and humanitarian circumstances are seldom so vividly etched as in UNHCR's cri du coeur, which we share: that armed elements among refugees be separated out by the host country or by the international community - read: the Security Council - or we will reap the whirlwind as we have reaped it in the Great Lakes region, where heinous crimes are committed with impunity, as Mr.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“On landmines, it is UNICEF's view that all field operations should have a specific demining provision in the mandate which governs that operation - both in terms of mine clearance and mine-awareness education. And let me say rather forlornly that we are losing the battle against landmines. They are proliferating more speedily than they are removed. Between 5,000 and 8,000 children a year are killed or maimed. It is therefore, by explicit nature and by indirection, a Security Council issue. On sanctions, it is our respectful view that they are useful if they are carefully targeted. But that is not always the case. And the vulnerable populations - women and children - suffer.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“The Security Council will know that the Graca Machel report identified in six out of 12 country case studies a rise in child prostitution with the arrival of peacekeeping personnel. Fifthly, let me be even more specific in three areas. On the issue of child soldiers, our view is that peace agreements and peacekeeping mandates should specifically incorporate provisions for the demobilization and social reintegration of children below the age of 18 where they have participated in conflict. We have learned in post- conflict situations that this is the toughest part of the exercise of the mandate, because it takes rather more time than integrating adults into society and requires long-term support.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“But we would go on specifically to urge that knowledge of humanitarian and human-rights law be a distinct feature of induction training for all United Nations military and civilian personnel in field operations in a way which would permit them to understand the specific application of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1951 refugee Convention. Fourthly, on UNICEF's behalf, I would like to take it a step further. We welcome the code of conduct for United Nations peacekeeping personnel, consistent with humanitarian and human-rights law, and hope that it will be further elaborated. UNICEF is interested in the idea, which we think worth pursuing, of an ombudsperson within peacekeeping operations to handle any investigative and disciplinary procedures. Alas, from time to time that becomes necessary.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“May I be so bold as to suggest that UNICEF would therefore recommend that it is vital that the special protection needs of children be specifically considered in peacekeeping and demobilization mandates which issue from the Security Council. Thirdly, in that regard, resolution 51/77 was also a good signpost, by inviting Governments to integrate into training, for all potential peacekeeping personnel, a knowledge of their obligations to women and children in conflict - training which Governments would render.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“Political and, if necessary, military support must be provided. We cannot send our colleagues out to save the world and then have the world abandon them. We want to associate ourselves with the remarks of UNHCR and with Mr. Akashi. The United Nations Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel should be interpreted to cover the safety of civilian humanitarian staff and of the staff of non-United Nations agencies. We cannot wait much longer for this. The sooner it is done, the more secure all of the humanitarian staff will be. Secondly, last year the General Assembly passed a landmark resolution, a child-rights resolution, 51/77, based on the Graca Machel study. It said, in part, that humanitarian concerns regarding children in armed conflict should be fully reflected in United Nations field operations.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“Her recommendations are a Biblical text for UNICEF and I reaffirm what the Under- Secretary-General, Mr. Akashi, said earlier. As Graca Machel noted, in the last decade, 2 million children have been killed, 4 million to 5 million disabled, 12 million rendered homeless, 1 million orphaned, 10 million psychologically traumatized. Half or more of the refugees are children and so, too, the vast numbers of internally displaced. What Graca Machel did, of course, was to weave the links among the political, the military and the humanitarian in a unique way. And what she argued, given both the numbers and the circumstances, has now become an imperative. Let me therefore enumerate, specifically following from what I have attempted to say. First, we must find ways of protecting humanitarian staff. International norms cannot be jettisoned.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“And I think that all who were involved were similarly consumed by the predicament and the tragedy. The subject of these deliberations is further central for us, given the brutal assault on UNICEF staff in Goma scarcely two weeks ago. These horrific episodes happen to all of us and to our indispensable partners in humanitarian-assistance activities: the non-governmental organizations. So let me, on UNICEF's behalf, make some specific recommendations. Some will, I hope, be realistic, some perhaps lacking in trenchant plausibility, but all offered in good faith. And most important, all the suggestions are informed by and within the context of the Graca Machel study on the impact of armed conflict on children and the General Assembly resolution which followed it. Graca Machel's recommendations paralleled UNICEF's anti-war agenda.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“We have a vital role in these humanitarian interventions, but our role is very specific. It deals with children and women, children being our primary mandate. The subject of the Council's hearing is humanitarian assistance and, therefore, predictably close to our heart. And, if I may say so, the recent events in Zaire give it credence. The refugees in Kisangani give it a particularly dramatic note. Of those refugees, 9,000 are estimated to be and to have been unaccompanied children. I can remember, if I may be personal for a moment, standing at kilometre 41 on the Kisangani rail line looking out at those children - passive, traumatized, vulnerable, desperate - thinking that this was indeed a scene out of Dante, that it was a world of dementia, that it seared one's soul.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source
“We are honoured to participate in this debate and we hugely appreciate the opportunity. I want to begin, if I may, by associating the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) with the remarks which the representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) just delivered. We have an enormous regard and respect for the way in which UNHCR states and analyzes these extraordinary humanitarian-assistance dilemmas. I was reminded of the speech which Mrs. Ogata made to the Security Council on 28 April, which was, I am sure everyone will agree, a model of clarity. Everything is always so intelligently formulated and has such a persuasive integrity that UNICEF simply endorses the view. I therefore will not gild the polemical lily. UNICEF is not UNHCR.”
1997-05-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3778 (1997) · source