Human Rights Council Press conference: Commission of Inquiry launches report on children in Syria

Children in Syria have been “robbed of their childhood” and forced to “endure numerous violations” in more than eights years of conflict, according to the latest report by the independent body set up by the UN’s Human Rights Council to investigate violations during the civil war in Syria.

“Children have been denied the protection they are entitled to under international law, and victimized on multiple levels” said Paulo Pinheiro, Chairperson of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, on behalf of the three-member group. “Countless girls and boys have been killed and maimed in attacks carried out by all parties to the conflict,” he added.

The 25-page report, released today in Geneva, is entitled “They have erased the dreams of my children: children's rights in the Syrian Arab Republic”, and notes that attacks on civilian infrastructure have had an acute impact on physical health, in particular for those children who suffer from disabilities because of the war.

“Boys as young as six have been recruited to participate in hostilities by warring parties,” Mr. Pinheiro noted as he read one shocking part of the report, “while rape and sexual violence have been used against girls to punish, humiliate and instill fear. In detention, children have been used to extract confession from their parents, subjected to torture and ill-treatment, while consistently denied from accessing food, water and medical care.”

The report says that children’s right to education in Syria has been denied by all parties to the conflict as warring parties have looted and vandalized educational establishments and used schools for military purposes.

The conflict has left an enormous trauma on the physical and mental well-being of an entire generation of Syrian girls and boys but also destroyed the social, economic and cultural fabric required for Syrian communities to start healing, the report states. “Children are dying - many lack civil documentation and in the case of other camps for displaced civilians, are effectively stateless, with the majority of them having missed school for a number of years,” Pinheiro noted.

“Young children being made to hang other young children, to execute them in that way” said Karen Abuzayd, a member of the Commission, while calling attention to the difficulty of pursuing such crimes or tackling the issue of impunity. “Are the children responsible for war crimes? How are we going to handle this?”, she asked.

More than five million children have been displaced by the conflict in Syria, and have become increasingly vulnerable to violations as a result. These children are living in situations of protracted displacement, often with severed family ties, and are worryingly “being displaced again as the fighting has escalated,” according to Hanny Megally, also a member of the Commission.

The number of displaced children “has gone up to about 700,000 over the last ten days or so, which shows the level of escalation in the violence and there is a real concern that preventable deaths are going to be continuing to happen,” Megally said.

Among the recommendations to the Government of Syria and other key actors, the Commission urges respect for the special protection children are entitled to under international humanitarian and human rights law, and to ensure accountability for violations that have occurred. The Commission also makes a series of recommendations aimed at increasing the support for children who have suffered abuses.

Human Rights Council Press conference: Commission of Inquiry launches report on children in Syria

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