Children’s vulnerability to conflict, particularly to recruitment and use by parties to conflict is well recognised.
Some progress has been made in addressing the overall issue of recruitment and use of children through a range of legal and normative frameworks as well as several UN Security Council Resolutions. However child protection and other humanitarian agencies are increasingly challenged to adequately address grave violations of children’s rights and respond to child protection needs, in an environment where the nature of conflict is increasingly complex with transnational influences, and where the forms of violence are increasingly violent and extreme.
This event provided a much needed opportunity and space for humanitarian, development practitioners, policy makers and child protection specialists to come together to examine the issues of extreme violence and how greater understanding of the issue and it impact on the rights and protection of children can inform future programming approaches and policy.
As such the event will have three main outcomes:
- Informing programmatic guidance on addressing recruitment and use of children, including for extreme violence, currently being developed by the Paris Principles Steering Group and its members
- Informing recommendations for actions in support of addressing the recruitment and use of children, particularly for extreme violence, as part of the 10th Anniversary of the Paris Principles and Commitments, to be held in February, 2017
- Gaining evidence to inform member states to take pragmatic approaches in responding to the needs of children and young people when developing legislation and policy around extreme violence
Video
We asked four participants ‘How can the resilience of communities be improved to protect children from extreme violence?’
