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Press Release

UNICEF SAYS SMALL ARMS AND LIGHT WEAPONS TAKE YOUNG VICTIMS: CHILDREN

Child Deaths, Disabilities and Displacements Run to Tens of Millions

NEW YORK, 11 July 2001 - UNICEF today declared as "intolerable" the increase in young lives lost or maimed due to small arms and light weapons and called for immediate action to protect children from access or exposure to these arms.

At the UN conference on small arms, UNICEF today reminded delegates that children and young people are the principle victims of violence fuelled by the proliferation of light weapons. "All wars are wars against children," UNICEF said, urging the adoption of strong measures to curtail illicit arms trading.

UNICEF said that small arms and light weapons are now the favored instruments for use in war and post-conflict situations. In addition, their use and abuse leads to the direct or accidental death and injury of thousands of children worldwide.

Since 1990, UNICEF estimates that more than 2 million children have been killed,
6 million have been disabled and 20 million have been forced from their homes by armed conflict. Nearly 300,000 children worldwide are currently involved in conflicts where small arms and light weapons - cheap and easy to use - are put in the hands of children who are then forced to fight adult wars.

"We recognize the realities of the arms trade and the nature of war," said Kul Gautam, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. "However, the world can no longer ignore the disastrous impact of light weapons on the lives of children and young people. We must do more to protect them."

UNICEF called on the UN Conference to address the following issues in its deliberations and in its final document:

• Laws and regulations to protect children from access or exposure to small arms
• Recognition of the urgent need to bring any recruitment of child soldiers to an end and, where child soldiers exist, their immediate and unconditional demobilization and reintegration into society
• Establishment of binding Codes of Conduct to better regulate the transfer of small arms and light weapons, particularly to conflict zones where children's rights are violated and children are used as soldiers
• Full compliance with arms embargoes, including the criminalization and punishment of violators
• Promotion and support of community programmes for weapons collection and destruction
• Promotion of an integrated approach to the question of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, recognising the demand side by promoting confidence building, peace education and awareness raising programmes
• Recognizing the supply-side of the small arms equation by adopting measures that target manufacturers and those trading and benefiting from the sale of small arms.

UNICEF noted that protection of children is an area in which relatively little concrete progress has been made over the last decade. "Protection of children has finally made its way onto the global agenda," Gautam said, "but we have much more work to do to fully achieve it." He called attention to a recent report by the UN Secretary-General, entitled "We The Children," that details progress made for children over the past 10 years and lays out areas for improvement in the present decade.

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The UN General Assembly will hold its final Special Session of 2001 in September, focusing exclusively on children. At least 69 heads of state and government have so far confirmed their attendance at the Special Session on Children, with another dozen having expressed firm interest, making it by far the largest summit of world leaders this year.

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