2024-05-10 02:19:09
“The international community has a duty to take firm and urgent measures to protect children, in all regions of the world, against the dispossession of their childhood, the deprivation of their basic rights and their military enlistment by armed groups. , including that of the +polisario+, so that the children of the child soldiers“>Tindouf camps of today do not become the extremists or terrorists of tomorrow”, underlined Mr. Hilale during the international conference in Oslo on “The protection of children in times of armed conflict.
In a written contribution to the debates of the second interactive panel of the Conference entitled: “Engaging with armed actors to protect children”, the Moroccan ambassador indicated that it is dismaying to see that armed groups continue, in complete impunity, forced recruitment and indoctrination of children for terrorist and military purposes.
“This is the case of the armed terrorist groups of Daesh, Al Chabab, Boko Haram, as well as the +polisario+, who continue to violate all international instruments of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and impose their obscurantist ideologies and their military indoctrination of children in several regions of the world,” he said.
He noted that children targeted by these terrorist groups are deprived of their childhood, their most basic rights, their education, their protection and their well-being, as well as being condemned to live with the serious physical consequences and psychological after-effects of their enlistment by armed groups.
Mr. Hilale wished to recall, in this context, that children in the Tindouf camps live at the mercy of an armed separatist group, the “polisario” and suffer all forms of abuse and exploitation, recruitment and enlistment as child soldiers, noting that social networks “have contributed to exposing these barbaric and criminal practices, and to lifting the veil on what has been going on in the Tindouf camps for decades”.
“This armed separatist group is fully responsible for the enlistment of children from the Tindouf camps, which constitutes a war crime,” he noted, stressing that international law stipulates that the use of , the conscription or enlistment of children in armed forces, or in armed groups, or making them actively participate in hostilities, constitutes a serious violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
The ambassador permanent representative of Morocco to the UN recalled that the direct responsibility of the armed separatist group the “Polisario”, for the violations of the rights of children in the Tindouf camps, is indivisible from that of the host country, the Algeria.
“This country shelters the +polisario+, finances it, arms it and has transferred to it, de facto, its military, security and jurisdictional powers. This allowed him to continue, with complete impunity, violations of the rights of children in these camps,” said Mr. Hilale, adding that by not opposing the abuses of the armed separatist group “Polisario”, the host country “has failed in its international obligations arising from the instruments to which it is a party, and which grant a right of protection to children, considered by international law to be an intrinsically vulnerable category”.
The ambassador considered it important to emphasize that the responsibility of any country sheltering armed groups is engaged when it violates the provisions of the “Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning the involvement of children in armed conflicts”, in particular article 6 which stipulates that “Each State Party shall take all measures – of a legal, administrative and other nature – necessary to ensure the effective application and compliance with the provisions of this Protocol”, and Article 7 which provides that the “States Parties cooperate in the application of the (…) Protocol, in particular for the prevention of any activity contrary to the latter”.
This panel was marked by the participation in particular of the Colombian Deputy Minister for Defense and Security Policies, Alberto Lara, General Mutombo Katalay Tiende Joseph, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Director General of the NGO Geneva Call, Alain Deletroz and the head of the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Cordula Droege.
Organized by the government of Norway, the international conference in Oslo brings together more than 400 people representing around a hundred member states, UN organizations and civil society. Its objectives being to reflect on the ways and means allowing concrete international mobilization, with tangible actions, to protect children, prevent them from being recruited illegally and sent into combat, and ensure that their fundamental rights are no longer violated in times of war.
2024-05-10 02:19:09