Politics
07:51, 07-Oct-2017
UN: Over 8,000 children killed, injured in conflicts in 2016
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The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said it's "unacceptable and appalling" that more than 8,000 children were killed and injured in conflicts across the world last year, urging combatants to do more to protect the young ones.
In his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, Guterres said that the UN verified 3,512 child casualties in Afghanistan, over 40 percent of the total and "the highest number ever recorded" in the country.
He also noted that extremist groups including al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, ISIL and the Taliban had harmed more than 6,800 children.
A man holds the body of his infant after the child was pulled from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Aleppo, Syria. /AFP Photo
A man holds the body of his infant after the child was pulled from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Aleppo, Syria. /AFP Photo
He said the recruitment and use of children in conflict had more than doubled in Somalia and Syria, compared with 2015.
Guterres also said that the UN verified 169 incidents affecting at least 1,022 youngsters in South Sudan, over 60 percent of them recruited and used by government security forces.
Conflict in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths around the continent, creating dire refugee crises around the continent.
The South Sudan war alone has forced more than two million people to flee their homes. Earlier this year, the UN announced that the world's youngest country had become the biggest refugee crisis in Africa, and third worldwide after Syria and Afghanistan.
The report contains a blacklist of government forces and rebel groups that recruit, use, kill, maim, rape, sexually abuse or abduct children in armed conflict or attack schools and hospitals.