Education and conflict: protecting civilians and protecting education (August 2020)
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KEY MESSAGES
Full protection of civilians should be conceived with a broad lens to include conflict prevention, protection during conflict, social cohesion and post-conflict societal resilience. With this view, education rests at the heart of civilian protection.
Education is an area where the long term and ‘reverberating’ effects of conflict can be clearly understood.
These effects have already been acknowledged by states through the Safe Schools Declaration, which acts as an example of how concern regarding longer term harm can be successfully integrated into policy responses seeking to improve protection of civilians.
Conflict-Affected Children at Heightened Risk of Grave Violations due to COVID-19, as 2020 Marked OPAC’s 20th Anniversary
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The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated children’s vulnerability to grave violations in situations of armed conflict and restricted the realization of their rights, highlighted the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict in her annual report to the Human Rights Council, which covers the period from December 2019 to December 2020.
While children continued to suffer the consequences of atrocious wars, the response to the outbreak often had an unintended adverse impact on children’s fulfilment of their rights to education and health, as well as their access to justice, social services, and humanitarian aid. School closures made children even more vulnerable to other grave violations, in particular recruitment and use, and children in camps for internally displaced people and those deprived of their liberty have bee
Human rights abuses escalate in Africa during the pandemic Governments on the continent should co-operate fully with the International Criminal Court 18 January 2021 - 14:21 Mausi Segun
To describe 2020 as a most unusual year would be an understatement. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which introduced us to a “new normal”, was soon followed by waves of almost worldwide protests on racial injustice and police brutality that resonated loudly in Africa.
Not long after the virus spread from China and other parts of the world to Africa in mid-February, reports hit the airwaves about incidents of Covid-linked discrimination and hate crimes, frequently targeting Asians in African countries, as well as discriminatory and xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. Misinformation, especially by government officials, in places such as Burundi and Tanzania undermined efforts to limit the spread of the virus, while internet shutdowns violated the right to life-saving inf