Roadmap for protecting children in conflict areas: Rights and Commitment.
The Citizen:
Report by:Haffiya Elyas.
Child soldiers are children (individuals under the age of 18) who are used for any military purpose. Some are in their late teens, while others may be as young as four. They are not only boys – many are girls.
Some child soldiers are used for fighting – to kill and commit other acts of violence. Others are used as cooks, porters, messengers, informants or spies, or in any other way their commanders want. Child soldiers are also used for sexual purposes.
A two day consultative workshop was organized yesterday by the National Council for Child Welfare to review the road map for protecting children from grave violations in areas of armed conflict in Sudan, which comes in partnership with UNICEF, in the presence of national and international partners and representatives of armed struggle movements.
Secretary General of the National Council for Child Welfare NCCW, Dr. Abdul Qadir Abdullah Abuh, affirmed the government’s commitment to protecting children and thanked the regular forces, rapid support and armed struggle movements, and praised their cooperation in the matter of visits and investigations and their reception of members of the Road Map Committee, expressing the Council’s readiness to move forward until reaching an end to the involvement of children in Armed conflict
The NCCW Secretary General indicated that Sudan’s report on the involvement of children in armed conflict will be submitted to the Sudan Mission to the United Nations today , in preparation for handing it over to United Nations officials concerned with the file of involving and using of children in areas of armed conflict.
The Action Plan for the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict which was signed by the Government of Sudan and the UN on 27 March 2016 is considered one of the important steps in child protection, the Action Plan set out a series of measures to enhance the overall protection of children affected by armed conflict, including the cessation and prevention of child recruitment.
The Government has shown serious commitment to fully implement the Action Plan. Several steps have already been taken by the Government to ensure its implementation, including establishing relevant structures at the national and state level for its implementation, providing access for verification, sending command orders and undertaking steps to access age verification mechanisms.