War Child demands G8 action
Current mood: determined
Category: News and Politics

With the G8 summit now underway War Child is calling on participants to set up a task force and long-term fund to protect children in conflict and post-conflict areas.

A G8 Child Protection Fund would fund protection, food, shelter, education and reintegration for children. Creating this fund would cost approximately US$ 10 per head of population in the G8 countries.

The Task Force would ensure that:

• the structures are in place to secure the required levels of humanitarian funding (which are not currently being met) from G8 countries and that disbursement is expedited in a responsive manner to conflict based humanitarian emergencies;

• G8 countries provide significant financial support for the deployment of peace keepers in conflict and post conflict countries with a robust mandate to pro-actively protect civilians, and especially marginalised communities, in order to avoid the levels of civilian casualties that have been experienced in places like DRC and Darfur;

• existing international agreements established to prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed forces - including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child's (CRC) Optional Protocol and the recently agreed Paris Principles - are reinforced by carefully targeted sanctions against those individuals who defy them. These sanctions might include denying individuals visas for travel, suspending their bank accounts, applying legal international instruments and using the media to expose their activities publicly;

• juvenile justice structures and systems are put in place and the skills to run them developed in conflict and post-conflict areas, and that where children are detained thorough protective and well being provisions are made while their release, rehabilitation and reintegration is planned and negotiated; financial and technical support is provided to the relevant and appropriate agencies in conflict and post-conflict areas to plan and implement the UN CRC;

• financial and technical support is provided to the relevant and appropriate agencies in conflict and post-conflict areas to plan and implement the UN CRC.

There will be huge pressure on the G8 leaders to address high profile issues such as climate change and extreme poverty and we support them in their efforts in this but we ask that they find time to consider the lives of children devastated by conflict.

Our parent organisation, War Child UK, along with its sister organisations War Child Holland and War Child Canada, we have written to German Chancellor and G8 Chair Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to urge them to consider our proposal. We hope they (and you) will support our aims.