29 June 1998
Portugal fully subscribes to the statement made earlier by the Presidency of the European Union.
The Graí§a Machel report about the impact of armed conflicts on children, submitted to the General Assembly in 1996, revealed to the international community the extent of suffering by children victims of armed conflicts throughout the world.
The painful awareness of this scourge led the Members of the United Nations to request the Secretary-General to name a Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict - Ambassador Olara Otunnu. I thank and welcome his presence among us here today.
The need for collective action to overcome this scourge led Portugal to propose that Members of the Security Council hear the Special Representative, which occurred in informal consultations on the 1 1 th of this month. And it was the impact of what he reported to the Council Members that gave birth to the idea to hold this debate here today, open to all Members of the United Nations. Portugal listened carefully to his forceful statement today and will spare no efforts to translate into action his specific proposals.
The Security Council is, on a daily basis, called upon to deliberate on situations and conflicts that illustrate the perverse development in the conduct of war in recent years, which is, civilian populations - above all women and children increasingly affected by armed conflicts and transformed into the targets and tools of war. It is disheartening to compare, as Ambassador Otunnu did, the numbers of victims of current conflicts with those of the World Wars of this century.
On the one hand, technological advances explain that abhorrent development, by permitting, for example, the production of small arms, which are easily manipulated by child soldiers, and in turn stimulates the recruitment of children into armies and armed groups. Those same technological advances permit the manufacture of mines, chemical and biological weapons, which blindly victimize the non-combatant population.
On the other hand, despite the existence of normative international instruments the Convention on the Rights of the Child, drawn up by the United Nations, and the Geneva Conventions - and the extremely important role played by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the minimum standards in the respect for human rights in situations or times of war are systematically ignored and violated by both governmental forces as well as by non-state actors. And Ambassador Otunnu calls our attention also to the failure of systems of traditional values that, locally, in any society, culture or region, have always prevailed in the defense of the innocent, of the most vulnerable, especially the children.
We have however made some important progresses. The convergence of the efforts of all allowed us to take the significant step in this struggle last year that was the Convention against the Indiscriminate Use of Land Mines, which my country has the honour to have subscribed. Alongside other countries and in a similar partnership with various NGO'S, Portugal is now committed to bringing about the adoption of a Convention to control the use of small arms.
It is however paradoxical that practically every Member State of the United Nations has subscribed to the Convention on the Rights of the Child - the most inclusive of all instruments of international law, ratified by 191 countries - and yet, every day, we see a rapid increase in the number of children killed, injured, violated, exploited, uprooted and without support, in great part due to the effects of armed violence. On the threshold of the new millennium, despite the achievements of our species in many fields, that which distinguishes us from other creatures is at risk: the very essence of humanity, the respect for the dignity of the human being - and, in this case, of the most vulnerable of all human beings.
We in the United Nations have to act to stop or minimize the suffering of children in armed conflict. We cannot continue to overestimate certain principles for relationships between states and governments at the expense of the rights of citizens, whom those states and governments are supposed to protect - and exist to protect. Peace and security, stability and prosperity, even national sovereignty, these goals are attainable only if human security is also assured. Including that of children. Especially that of the children.
Children affected by armed conflict is one of those problems that, because of its seriousness, scope and nature, is relevant to the entire United Nations system and, directly or indirectly, falls into the area of competence of various departments, organs, programmes, funds and agencies:
The Security Council, in the exercise of its functions and responsibilities and when deliberating what action it will take in any conflict, cannot fail to participate in this collective effort by the United Nations system.
Above all, however, the Council should combat, through its action, the sense of impunity in those belligerents responsible for the atrocities and abuses committed against children, whether they happen to be acting on behalf of governments or not. The Council can concede neither credibility nor legitimacy to such criminals, regardless of the part they might play in the resolution of the conflict.
And I am referring to concrete situations under the consideration of the Council: the monstrous mutilations on children committed by the leaders of the FARC/RUF in Sierra Leone; the cruel abduction of Ugandan children to reinforce the ranks of the Lord's Salvation Army, or the decisions taken in Afghanistan who prevent girls from attending school or having access to hospitals.
The Security Council clearly has a political and ethical role to play in putting a stop to that impunity. Complementary to the role of tribunals which must be assured at the national and international levels. In this context I recall a joint statement issued on the 17th of this month, by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General Ambassador Otunnu, the Director of UNICEF, the High Commissioners for Refugees and for Human Rights and the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance, and I quote: "the perpetrators of these atrocities are deaf to appeals from the international community ... we believe that much of the criminal violence in armed conflicts and rebellions is the result of impunity".
To that end, the creation an International Criminal Court, which Portugal wishes to see come to fruition in Rome, will be of decisive importance; an independent and well-equipped court to try and punish war criminals and those responsible for crimes against humanity; a court that will have the protection of the rights of children as an integral part of its statute and mandate; that will take into account as a mitigating factor the young age of the accused while considering an aggravating factor to the behaviour of adults when children have been involved in committing the crime.
The exposure of children to the consequences of armed conflicts is made banal by the recruitment of individuals below 18 years of age to their regular armies. Young men and young women that are not allowed to vote but are considered fit to combat.
This is what Ambassador Otunnu told the Council on the 11th, defending his belief that it is necessary to establish internationally a minimum age of 18 years for military recruitment, through the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Portugal hopes that the Working Group of the Human Rights Commission established for that purpose will soon complete its work successfully.
It is a fortunate coincidence that this debate among Members of the United Nations promoted by the Security Council precedes by a day the launch of the global campaign called "Stop Using Child Soldiers" by a coalition of NGO'S, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Jesuit Refugees Service, the Quaker UN Office, the Radda Barnen - Save the Children, and the Terre des Hommes. The general mobilization required to combat the use of children in armed conflict will obviously need to awaken public opinion, from that which is before their television sets to those who are grass roots combatants. The partnership of the United Nations and its Member States with civil society, namely the NGO's and the Media, is vital to eradicate this scourge.
As the Nobel prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: "it is immoral that adults should want children to fight their wars for them... There is simply no excuse, no acceptable argument for arming children."
I conclude reaffirming the strong support of Portugal for the mandate of and the action being developed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. I hope that this open date and the Presidential Statement that will be delivered later on will represent useful tools to assist his endeavors to protect children in situations of armed conflict all over the world.
