Memorandum submitted by Save the Children
UK
Recommendations
Introduction
1. Save the Children welcomes the invitation
to contribute evidence to the International Development Select
Committee in their inquiry on peacebuilding and post-conflict
reconstruction. The evidence from below is mainly from our original
research in West and Central Africa, as well as from around the
world.
2. In the UK Secretary of State's recent
remarks made on January 23rd 2006, we appreciate the
emphasis on conflict prevention, and disaster risk reduction and
we welcome his personal dedication and engagement in this area.
He is right to highlight some of the successes of last year, as
well as the changes that are needed. However, the international
community's failure to protect children and their communities
in Darfur, in DRC, in North Uganda, in Colombia, and in Afghanistan
are glaring.[135] If
post-conflict peacebuilding fails to address the specific vulnerabilities
of children, it fails to serve more than 50% of most refugee and
displaced populations.
3. The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC)
and the role of the UK
We endorse DFID's commitment to be a
leader in post-conflict peace building and to promote the security
of the poor. The UN High Level Panel in 2004 identified inadequate
peacebuilding as a major weakness in the international system.
The World Summit in 2005 committed world leaders to the establishment
of a new Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) and Peace Support Office
(PSO) to address this, an initiative which was partly driven by
the UK Government. In order to be able to promote lasting change,
there are a number of issues around the PBC that must be clarified.
4. NGO and civil society engagement
The PBC aims to bring together international
organisations such as the UN, the World Bank, and regional actors
with key roles to play in order to co-ordinate on peacebuilding.
However, the PBC shouldn't overlook the strategic role that local,
national and international NGOs play in supporting locally-owned
peace processes. Thus far NGOs have had little opportunity to
feed into discussions for the establishment for the Peacebuilding
Commission. Now that the UN General Assembly Resolution outlining
the modalities of the Commission has been passed, and the countries
for its implementation chosen, a UN-NGO forum must be set up in
each of the countries of implementation (Liberia, DRC and Sierra
Leone) to discuss function, modalities, and information exchange.
As yet there has been no indication as to how this will work.
5. The PBC has avoided articulating
the extent of the involvement of local civil society actors. This
is counterproductive; civil society involvement in conflict prevention
and peacebuilding is critical to its success, as no peacebuilding
work can be sustainable without substantial participation and
local ownership from the range of civil society groups. Mechanisms
should be set up at the local level to ensure civil society groups
are able to meaningfully shape the agenda of the PBC working in
their country so that community-led, livelihood-driven solutions
are arrived at.
6. Financing of peacebuilding
One of the expected outcomes of the
PBC is that more money will be leveraged to fund peacebuilding
activities, including DDRR programmes. As such, the PSO should
ensure that past mistakes are not repeated - for instance that
DD is funded to the neglect of RR. The full financial requirements
of the PBC and PSO must be realistically estimated if the bodies
are not merely being set up to fail.
- Political Pressure for political
problems
Conflict-related humanitarian crises
are never just about aid effectiveness, they are fundamentally
political. While prevention of conflict is the responsibility
of national governments, when this fails and conflict leads to
serious violation of human rights, the UK and other members of
the UN Security Council must not merely apply a "humanitarian
aid plaster" but must apply political pressure - both unilaterally
and through multilateral channels such as the UN -- to hold governments
to account for the protection of children and vulnerable groups.
In this vein, the PBC must make formal links with the UN Human
Rights Council to ensure that evidence is acted upon.
8. For example, the conflict in Northern
Uganda has continued for nearly 20 years with almost total neglect
from the international community. Over 1.7 million people are
currently confined to internally displaced persons camps. Up to
40,000 children are forced to commute nightly from their villages
to sleep in centres of town to avoid abduction by the Lord's Resistance
Army (LRA). In 2002 the Government of Uganda launched Operation
Iron Fist, arguing that the only way to end the conflict was to
defeat the LRA militarily. The military solution focuses on the
physical eradication of the LRA, whose ranks are made up of at
least 80% abducted children. Typically the newest abductees and
the youngest children are the most likely to be killed during
military action.
9. In a recent manifesto produced by
Save the Children in Uganda and the Ugandan Parliamentary Forum
for Children, children were asked for their priorities for the
country's political candidates campaigning for the elections due
to take place in February 2006. The children's priorities were
overwhelmingly to allow for free and compulsory education for
all children in the country, and to end the war in the North.
10.There are common misconceptions that
the conflict in Northern Uganda is an internal problem for the
Government of Uganda. However, this is not just an internal conflict
but one with serious consequences for peace and security in the
region. The UK Government must push the Security Council to acknowledge
the fact that the conflict in Northern Uganda is a threat to regional
and international peace and security, endangering Southern Sudan's
peace and further destabilising Eastern DRC. Bringing the situation
to the agenda of the UN Security Council would allow for transparent
scrutiny and reporting on the political, military and humanitarian
situation in that country, and promote responsibility for action
rather than ignoring the problems any longer.
11. Applying lessons learned outside
of the country and across a region
The UK Government must more assertive
about ensuring continuity of learning from one DDRR process to
another, and developing mechanisms to ensure that all actors involved
- Donors, the UN Department of Peacekeeping, the World Bank, UN
agencies, International NGOs, local NGOs and community groups
- learn from previous mistakes. In West Africa, for example, a
region where the control of national borders is weak, and there
is a strong history of covert transport of arms, ammunition and
mercenaries, demobilisation and post-conflict reconstruction must
be designed with a regional perspective. If lessons from one process
are not applied, the problems will just keep shifting across borders
but conflict will remain ever-present. One of the reasons for
this lack of coherence is the carving up of West Africa donor
by donor, so that if the UK leads in Sierra Leone lessons will
not be transferred to the US who lead in Liberia.
12. Best practice for peacebuilding
The lessons from West Africa should
also be shared with planing for peacebuilding in other parts of
Africa and across the world. For decades there has been a large
gap in what constitutes best practice in post-conflict peacebuilding,
and what would maximise the chances for success. This is the role
of the Peace Support Office, which is set up partly to translate
best practice to the different actors involved, including donors,
the World Bank, and UN security, humanitarian and human rights
agencies. Donor governments must improve the joint analysis and
lesson learned amongst each other in-region. Meanwhile, the UK
government for its part, should also work to ensure that it is
better joined up between DFID, the Foreign Office, the Ministry
of Defence and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit.
13. Responsibility to Protect
Learning the lessons from failures in
Rwanda, the Balkans and elsewhere over the past decade, the Responsibility
to Protect principles were endorsed at the World Summit in September
2005. This has the potential to be real milestone in terms of
International Community being accountable for the protection of
civilians against war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
At present, it is still unknown how the Responsibility to Protect
principles will apply in practice. It is clear that the international
community has significant responsibility to engage with strong
diplomatic and political pressure to any situation where there
have been gross violation of human rights, or where large numbers
of children face an imminent threat of serious harm or deprivation.
There is a range of options the UN Security Council is obliged
to explore, and the appropriate response will vary according to
the situation. However, the declaration at the end of the World
Summit was that these crises should be ignored no longer.
14. Development must
be integral in successful post-conflict and peacebuilding work
One of the key roles in the work of
a conflict prevention or peacebuilding forum should be to build
sustainable livelihoods for the whole community. In research supported
by Save the Children, carried out by the Tufts Feinstein International
Famine Center (2005) in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo,
local perceptions of peace and security highlighted the importance
of development in the building of peace. "There is no peace
on an empty stomach", a respondent from Kosovo stated. Another
participant in Afghanistan echoed the perception to say "Peace
is jobs and electricity." Successful peacebuilding - and
local acceptance of the process -- goes hand in hand with building
up basic services such as health, education, and infrastructure
- and ensuring people have access to them.
15. Youth unemployment, particularly
among people aged 15-35s, and the disaffection of youth was an
important contributing cause to the momentum of war in Sierra
Leone, as it has been in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire and around
the world. A meaningful approach to post-conflict peacebuilding
will go beyond limited exercises in military disarmament to address
some of the critical issues of structural poverty in order to
ensure that the populations - especially vulnerable groups such
as children - are served with basic services and market opportunities
to improve their lives.
16. In the case of Sierra Leone, DFID's
work has recently changed to also look at social development,
anti-corruption, private sector regulations, and justice reform.
This longer-term support to systems to protect people's rights
is welcomed. This kind of approach should be part and parcel of
any DDRR planning process in the initial stages, in any future
peacebuilding work.
17. Take a long-term approach to
reintegration
Roughly half of the countries that emerge
from war fall back into violence within the first five years.
The successful demobilisation of fighters has emerged as one of
the most important aspects to secure post-conflict peace. However,
as of yet, the international community's approach to disarmament,
demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) has been
ad-hoc, and at times so disorganised and underfunded as to be
counter-productive. Reintegration requires long-term planning
and a minimum five-year investment on the part of donors. As of
2005 the DDRR programme in Liberia faced a 63% shortfall, in Afghanistan
this was 51% and in DRC a shocking 88%.[136]
The gap is particularly apparent when it comes to the demobilisation
of children associated with fighting forces.
18. Do not overlook children in reintegration
processes
300,000 children have been identified
as child soldiers.[137]
The number is probably far higher - in at least 60 countries children
have been recruited into armies, militias and rebel factions between
2001 and 2004.[138]
Children associated with armed forces serve not only as active
combatants (often in front-line/pawn roles) but also as porters,
cleaners, cooks, mine-layers or used for sexual exploitation .
Nearly half of these children -- some 120,000 - are girls, who
face atrocious abuse and intense stigmatisation. Many are killed
in fighting; most are raped and sexually abused.[139]
19. The importance of education
In addition, nearly all of these children
miss out on education, which serves both as a risk factor and
as an incentive to fight. Hundreds of thousands of children who
miss out on education in the first year of conflict will never
go back to school. This leaves them without access to the protection
and sense of normality that school affords and severely limits
their options for the future. Education must be integral to initiatives
for resolution and prevention of armed conflict, post-conflict
resolution, peacebuilding and the promotion of security. The UK
government should commit to providing education for children as
an integral component of every humanitarian response and
use the minimum standards for education in emergencies as the
framework for ensuring quality.
20. Education programmes should benefit the whole
community. Donor's strategy on education should addressing the
educational needs of younger children as well as building livelihoods
for adolescents, particularly girls with babies, in order to prevent
exploitation and re-recruitment of children either nationally
or across regional borders. Rather than targeting education of
individual children from particular groups, implementers should
take measures that will benefit a wider range of children in the
community for instance by re-building school infrastructure, initiating
teacher training and providing free school meals. Accelerated
learning programmes must be set up for children who have missed
out on schooling, and educational options provided for girls with
childcare responsibilities. Skills training meanwhile can be used
to improve household livelihoods. However it's vital while doing
this that a wide range of skills training is addressed and such
programmes are founded on sound market research on the demand
for the skills developed. Start-up kits should be followed-up
with continued support.
21. Prevention of Recruitment
As the Secretary of State has rightly
emphasised, the prevention of conflict is much more cost - effective
than putting off the engagement until after the fighting has erupted.
The UK Government should build on the investments made to date
on early warning functions and focus on how to prevent the conditions
for recruitment of children, particularly child soldiers. In Save
the Children's research from West and Central Africa, addressing
both voluntary and forced recruitment, hundreds of children and
associated adults identified the strategies for preventing this
recruitment. Six priority areas for the UK government and international
community should be:
- Ensuring children remain with their
families where possible.
- Ensuring children have proper care
and protection at a national level.
- Reducing the household poverty that
pushes many children into armed forces or groups.
- Giving children viable options such
as schooling or skills-training.
- Provide adequate assistance and
security to lessen people's vulnerability to attacks and forced
recruitment.
- Develop community and household-level
emergency preparedness plans so that strategies are in place for
responding to attacks and safely escaping if necessary.
22. In places where children are at
risk of forced recruitment, the International Community has responsibility
on two levels. First, any international interventions in development
or humanitarian aid must be designed to ensure that they
build upon the children's and the community's established coping
strategies. One example of this would be assistance to radio broadcasts
and other means to establish good information networks; this would
allow prior knowledge of troop movements or attacks to be quickly
shared with communities, enabling them to plan departures if necessary.
Here, involvement of community leaders, teachers, parents and
the children themselves are key. Another example is to develop
programming to reinforce the security in places to which people
flee, such as funding child rights training for local police enforcers
and peacekeepers charged with securing camps for displaced people,
or ensuring peacekeeping mandates address civilian protection
from the point of view of human security. The provision of adequate
levels and standards of humanitarian aid are key to these efforts
to avoid putting people in a position where they are vulnerable
to exploitation.
23. National governments in particular
have the responsibility to ensure the safety of all children in
their country, particularly those who might become vulnerable
due to displacement, separation, marginalisation or extreme poverty.
In the case of a national government being unable or unwilling
to protect their populations from forced recruitment and attacks
-- or when the government is complicit in the abuses -- then the
international community, led by the members of the UN Security
Council, has the responsibility to protect the most vulnerable.
Strong political pressure in a range of forms must come to bear
on governments or armed groups who continue to engage in tactics
that violate humanitarian law or trample on the rights of children.
24. Demobilisation: Reintegration must be
planned and resourced beforehand
The success of current DDRR programmes
is still often measured by the number of weapons collected rather
than the successful reintegration of former combatants. The reintegration
of children is usually left to NGOs and UNICEF, and is invariably
underfunded. Donors tend to fund 'DD' but by the time that the
'RR' phase comes along, the money has run out. This is counterproductive,
as ex-combatant's dissatisfaction with the process and their economic
marginalisation are two key reasons why conflict flares up once
again.
25. It is important for Donors to recognise
that children need reintegration regardless of formal DDRR processes.
Children leave armed forces all the time - whether or not a formal
international DDRR process is underway. In Northern Uganda for
instance, children are continually trying to escape the clutches
of the LRA. Donors must invest in long-term reintegration activities,
regardless of a formal DDRR process.
26. Differentiate DDRR: particularly
addressing the special need of girls
Children's needs will vary according
to factors such as gender, age, disability, ethnicity, and experiences
during the war. DDRR programmes must recognise that different
groups of children have particular needs that must be addressed
in the reintegration process, including the different needs of
boys and girls. Despite research showing that girls make up to
40% of all children involved with armed groups, only a few girls
participate in formal DDRR processes. For example, in Save the
Children's child reintegration programme in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) fewer that 2% of the participants have been girls.
In Sierra Leone, just 4.2% of the girls known to have been in
fighting forces went through the formal DDRR process. In interviews,
girls said that they were put off by the military orientation
of the DDRR process. Moreover, they believed that involvement
in the process would highlight the fact that they were in an armed
groups and increases the chance that they will be stigmatised.
With little support and intense resentment from the communities,
many girls are forced to turn to sex work, making them even more
stigmatised and isolated.[140]
27. Girls in interviews have identified
a number of ways that the international community can better help
them. At the top of the list is mediation with their communities
and families to explain that the girls were coerced into joining
the group; this understanding would greatly help reunification
with the community. Close behind in priorities were assistance
in establishing and maintaining livelihoods, based on an analysis
of local markets, and access to schools and skills training. Medical
tests and assistance - especially related to reproductive health
and sexually transmitted diseases were also considered very important.
Few of these services are currently provided for girls in standard
DDRR projects. A special pool of funding should be established
to meet girls' specific needs during demobilisation and reintegration.
Such funds must be independent of any formal DDRR or political
processes.
28. DDRR benefits must be inclusive
All children associated with armed conflict should
be made eligible for DDRR, whether they have served as combatants
or not. Boys and girls suffering similar deprivation to children
who have served as combatants must receive comparable benefits.
In some communities, ex-child soldiers are treated with a degree
of hostility, often enhanced by resentment about benefits from
the DDRR process. Reintegration should be as inclusive as possible,
building on children's strong desire to be reunited with their
families once more. Donor's programmes should be carefully designed
at the reintegration phase to ensure that ex-child soldiers are
not favoured to the extent that they are resented by others in
the community. It is essential that any reintegration programmes
are seen to benefit the community as a whole.
29. Involve communities and children in
planning
Research undertaken in Sierra Leone in 2004
indicated that children defined reintegration as being loved and
cared for by their families, being accepted and welcomed by the
community, living in peace and unity with others, having their
basic needs, such as food, shelter and water, met, and being able
to make productive contributions through skills training, school
or work.[141]
Family and community support are vital to ensure children get
the necessary help to reintegrate after conflict. Research suggests
that particularly girls are better reached by addressing community
needs for reasons related to their testimonies above - for establishing
community protection networks, reintegration into schools, skills
training, and avoiding stigmatisation. Save the Children's research
into children who resist recruitment highlighted the essential
role played by parents and community leaders on many levels. Donors
such as the UK Government should ensure that reintegration packages
engage a range of stakeholders in shaping and supporting them,
including the children themselves, community leaders and teachers.
Children's views should be taken into consideration at all times.
Community leaders and teachers should become positive forces in
shaping attitudes towards ex-child soldiers and single mothers.
Donors should also support NGOs in work with communities in order
to address social stigmatisation.
30. Follow-up protection for demobilised
or separated children
Children face a number of problems in
the reintegration into their communities. Save the Children's
experience has highlighted the need for children to be provided
with follow-up protection and monitoring in the months and years
following reintegration. All efforts should be made to reunite
a separated child with one or both of their biological parents.
Where this is not possible there needs to be careful placement
and follow-up support for children in extended family care, including
assistance with livelihoods and schooling. However, assumptions
should not be made that reunification with relatives means that
children are automatically protected. Boys and girls who return
to live with extended families can still be highly vulnerable
to neglect and abuse. Meanwhile in the case of children who have
been fostered by other families, they risk being marginalised
or abandoned if the household experiences a change of circumstances
or economic hardship. Children who are separated from their families
may have lost their registration papers, their birth certificates,
their access to school, with few defenders in the face of increased
risks. This can leave them vulnerable to street gangs, trafficking,
and to exploitative labour practices.
31. Public Information Campaigns
In a precarious post-conflict situation,
rumours and misinformation can set off riots, population movements,
or even spark new violence. Donors should do more to support public
information campaigns that creatively and directly transmit key
information, such as outlining all of the steps involved in rehabilitation
and reintegration. The provision of accurate and timely information
about reintegration programmes would help to ensure that children
receive the benefits they are eligible for, and avoid engendering
disappointment. Donors and implementing agencies must be honest
about the limitations in service provision; they must not make
promises that can't be kept, as this can feed cynicism and resentment,
possibly contributing to attitudes towards re-recruitment of child
soldiers.
Save the Children Emergencies Section
January 2006
135 Save the children defines "child" as
any person below the age of 18 years. Back
136
Save the Children UK: Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in armed
conflict, 2005 Back
137
UN Office of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Back
138
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Back
139
Save the Children UK: Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in armed
conflict, 2005 Back
140
Save the Children UK: Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in armed
conflict, 2005 Back
141
Save the Children UK: Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in armed
conflict, 2005 Back
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