African leaders are not doing enough for the reconstruction of Africa, says Olara Otunnu, the United Nations special representative for children and armed conflict.
Otunnu, who was in South Africa for a brief visit, told the Mail & Guardian: ”The primary responsibility of protecting the children of Africa doesn’t lie with the United Nations or the international NGOs — it lies with the African people, beginning with the African leaders.”
Otunnu spoke about the stark contrasts between the living conditions of children in countries affected by conflict and those in the rest of the world. ”I visit other parts of the world — the children, the youth, are in their classrooms. They are cruising on the information highway, while in countries in conflict, particularly those in Africa, children are in refugee camps — they are on battlefields learning to kill and be killed. This is a process of self-destruction — the leaders claim they are waging a war to create a new future, when they are destroying those who can ensure there is a future.”
In Johannesburg after a visit to Angola, he warned of a humanitarian crisis of tragic proportions looming in that country ravaged by 30 years of civil war. He painted a gloomy picture of hospitals and transit camps in former Unita-controlled areas packed with hundreds of malnourished children, many dying from curable diseases, such as malaria and pneumonia, because of a lack of medication and water.
Of the four million people who have been displaced by the civil war, 50% are children, 100 000 of whom have been separated from their families. More than 50 000 children have been orphaned, more than 60% of them are unable to attend school.
Otunnu said 5 000 schools and 60% of hospitals and health centres have been destroyed in the course of the unrest in Angola.
Since taking over the interests of children and armed conflict at the UN in 1997 the former Ugandan foreign minister, who had played a leading role in fighting the Idi Amin regime, has been instrumental in bringing about international and national legislation to improve the plight of children, especially girls in conflict situations.
Notable among the achievements of his relentless lobbying is the UN treaty banning children below 18 years from being drafted into combat. It came into effect earlier this year. It is believed that there are 300 000 child soldiers fighting wars in more than 35 countries across the globe.
As his most horrific encounters with child abuse Otunnu lists the atrocities committed by the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the recruitment of children, especially girls, as suicide bombers by Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and generations of child soldiers found within Colombia’s Fuerzas Armadas Revoluionarias de Colombia (FARC). He said he saw a baby whose leg had been chopped off at eight months old by the RUF as a punishment for wanting democracy. He spoke of the lines of graves of child soldier ”martyrs”, who had given their lives as human bombs in the valleys of Sri Lanka and the generations of child soldiers recruited by FARC, who have grown to become generals in the conflict, which has lasted for almost 40 years.
After months of negotiations with various rebel groups, Otunna has managed to elicit commitments from many of them to not recruit children younger than 18 and, in some instances, 15 years.
He has already condemned the use of children as suicide bombers in the Middle East and hopes to visit there soon.
Donations of food, books and toys for Angolan and other children can be dropped off at the UN offices in Pretoria or at local embassies.