BEVERLY HILLS, February 19, (THEWILL) – Save the Children International (SCI) has estimated that over 72 million children in the world are living in proximity to armed groups that use sexual violence against minors.
The Chief Executive Officer, Inger Ashing, in a press statement on Thursday lamented that sexual violence against children in conflict, which includes the very first analysis of the risk of the reprehensible practice between 1990 and 2019, shows that nearly 10 times more children are at risk now than three decades ago (8.5 million in 1990).
Ashing said: “According to report, in the last seven years, a bigger proportion of armed groups that carried out sexual violence in conflict also targeted children.
“Of the 54 conflicts globally, 22 involve reported use of sexual violence against civilians, while 15 involve armed groups explicitly reported as having perpetrated sexual violence against children.
“While boys only made up 2% of UN-reported cases of sexual violence in 2019, they have been strategically targeted during the last years in conflicts in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Syria.
“Sexual violence is often used as a weapon of war against children and other civilians to terrorise them, spread fear and intimidation for political and military gain, to ethnically cleanse or humiliate an ethnic group, or to punish civilians for suspected support of opposing forces.”
He urged the international community to do more by calling on world leaders, security experts, donors, members of the UN, and NGOs to put children at the centre of any international action against sexual violence in conflict, which includes boosting services and programmes that acknowledge and meet their special needs.
Ashing further called for and end to the impunity of sexual violence against children by strengthening laws and enforcing them, while holding perpetrators to account by strengthening and better coordinating of the collection of data on sexual violence against children in conflict.
“The aid organisation also calls for increased funding to ensure these demands can be met,” SCI’s report said. “The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is abhorrent. Survivors of these atrocities deserve more from the international community.”
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