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UNICEF condemns civilian killings in Algeria

Tuesday, 18 November 1997: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy today denounced the ongoing violence in Algeria, as the toll of child victims continued to mount.

"The world must not permit the sickening regularity with which we learn of these horrific acts to dull our capacity for outrage," she said "It is time that the international community rose up as one to demand that these flagrant abuses of human rights -- particularly the rights of children -- are halted immediately."

Ms. Bellamy issued the statement as the human rights group, Amnesty International, estimated that up to 80,000 men, women and children have been brutally slain in Algeria, many of them "slaughtered, decapitated, mutilated and burned to death" in an unrelenting cycle of violence and human rights abuses that began in 1992.

In the latest reported massacre, at least 26 Algerian civilians, including 11 children, were murdered on 8 November in the village of H'Malite near Blida, 30 miles south of the capital, Algiers.

The Amnesty International report, entitled Algeria: Civilian Population Caught in a Spiral of Violence, made public in New York today, states that "extra-judicial executions, deliberate and arbitrary killings, torture, 'disappearances', abductions, arbitrary detention and death threats have been part of the daily reality in Algeria for the past six years."

Ms. Bellamy said UNICEF fully supported Amnesty International's call for concrete action, including the report's recommendation for an independent and impartial investigation into human rights abuses. Such an investigation would form the basis of a long-term human rights plan, including bringing the perpetrators of violence to justice.

She called for special protection measures for children and women, insisting that schools, health centres and places where children congregate must be designated and respected as zones of peace.

Schools have been attacked and teachers murdered in front of their pupils. Many children have watched their parents kidnapped or brutally killed. Women and girls are frequently raped or forced into sexual servitude and later murdered. Children who survive attacks are likely to remain deeply traumatized by what they have witnessed.

Ms. Bellamy called on the Algerian Government and all armed opposition groups operating in the country to respect the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Algeria in April 1993, and the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts. She pointed out that UNICEF has an obligation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to speak out on all situations in which children are brutalized by armed conflict, and she made it clear that UNICEF's voice would not be stilled as long as the massacres in Algeria continue.