India gets off UN report on impact of armed conflict on children after 13 years

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has axed India from his annual report on the impact of armed conflict on children, for the first time since 2010, after noting the steps taken by New Delhi to better protect children in conflict areas.

In his 2023 report on Children and Armed Conflict, the UN chief said: “In view of the measures taken by the government to better protect children, India has been removed from the report in 2023.”

The Indian government reacted immediately, saying it had been making consistent efforts to exclude the country from the UN’s annual report.

Guterres said in his report that he had welcomed the Indian government’s engagement with his special representative and noted it could lead to the exit of India as a situation of concern.

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He highlighted his team’s bid in July 2022 to identify areas of cooperation for child protection and also the workshop on strengthening child protection held in Jammu and Kashmir by the government, with UN participation.

Indian steps

In his latest report, he urged India to implement the remaining measures identified in consultation with his special representative and the United Nations.

These include training armed and security forces on child protection, banning the use of lethal and non-lethal force on children, including ending the use of pellet guns, ensuring that children are detained as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time, Guterres said.

He called for measures to prevent all forms of ill-treatment in detention.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, said that for the last two years, “we have been working very closely with India”.

She said India indicated it was ready to start engagement to see if it could put in place measures that could be sustained through time and would allow for it to be removed from the report.

In last year’s report, Guterres voiced concerned over the “increased number of violations against children in Jammu and Kashmir”.

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The UN chief had welcomed the legal and administrative framework for the protection of children and improved access to child protection services in Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha and Jammu and Kashmir.

New Delhi had expressed concerns that the 2022 report included situations that are “not situations of armed conflict” or threats to maintenance of international peace and security.

India reacts

The Women and Child Development Ministry said: “The ongoing engagement of the government of India with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General sped up after an inter-ministerial meeting in November 2021.”

The move led to an agreement to appoint a national focal point to identify priority national interventions to enhance the protection of children, a joint technical mission to hold inter-ministerial technical-level meetings with the UN to identify areas of enhanced cooperation for child protection, a statement from the ministry said.

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“A roadmap for cooperation and collaboration on child protection issues was developed by the ministry,” it said.

In his annual report on children and armed conflict released here Tuesday, Guterres said that globally in 2022, children continued to be disproportionately affected by armed conflict, and the number of children verified as affected by grave violations increased compared with 2021.

(With agency inputs)