World Children’s Day | It is time to spare and protect children from all conflicts

Despite all international conventions, which were signed by Syria decades ago, regarding efforts to improve the living conditions of children to match the UN standards, those conventions remained on hold, especially with the expansion of the Syrian conflict, prevalence of violence and proliferation of arms. Syrian children have been impacted greatly by the ongoing war in Syria, while all conflicting powers have never cared about improving the situation of children or keep them away from the bloody conflict.

 

All international reports have confirmed that Syrian children have been affected the most by the Syrian crisis, mainly the state of disorder and bombardment, which forced many to drop out of schools and let them fall victims to illiteracy, marginalisation, poverty and hunger. Meanwhile, the holders of different meetings and forums about the situation of Syrian children seem satisfied with eliminating the Syrian children’s ambitions to enjoy freedom, democracy, pluralism, free and evolving education away from violence and bloodshed.

 

UNICEF statistics show that 12 million Syrian children need humanitarian assistance, while nearly 2,450,000 children inside Syria and 750,000 others in neighbouring countries, 40% of them are females, have dropped out of schools or failed to attain education. Furthermore, over 5,700 Syrian children, some of whom aged under seven, have been recruited to military formations. Also, over 1,300 educational and medical institutions and facilities have been attacked.

 

On the other hand, UN reports have confirmed that most of Syrian children live on less than two US dollars a day, and they are struggling with hunger, thirst and diseases which have alarmingly prevailed because of the lack of food in general, particularly healthy meals, and clean drinking water, as well as poor medical care in refugee camps, both the UN-sponsored and makeshift camps.

 

We, at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), stress that the cause of protecting Syrian children and highlighting their plight tops SOHR’s priorities, so that the international and regional communities can help them to improve their social and economic situations. We see that time has come to address the cause of Syrian children more seriously, and we stress the importance of intensifying visits to children in refugee camps to check their disastrous situation and work on improving it.

 

We also call upon the international community to pay more attention to the cause of children in Al-Hawl camp, including the foreign children who have been abandoned and have not been repatriated by their countries, and exert diligent efforts to help them, especially since they have been victims of extremist and violent ideologies which must be countered by raising awareness and advice. We affirm the need to setting an international strategy to repatriate foreign children in Al-Hawl camp and follow up their psychological situation until they can overcome the crisis.

 

SOHR also demand Syrian authorities apply and activate the international conventions which designed to protect the rights of children and spare them from all social, tribal and political conflicts.

 

On the World Children’s Day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights would like to bring to mind the catastrophic situation of Syrian children, while the ongoing war, which is the most violent in the 21^st Century, has deepened their sufferings further.

 

We have been all along warning against a looming starvation in light of the almost-complete suspension of support, at a time when some conflicting powers have been impeding the arrival of assistance to beneficiaries as a part of the pressure they exert on the other powers.