Children in Armed Conflict

This Guide provides best practice measures for engaging girls formerly associated with armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who are often under-represented in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs. Based on workshops conducted with child protection officials, UN agencies, government agents, and NGOs, it proposes interventions to respond to girl soldiers' specific needs and experiences. This guide focuses on solutions which are inexpensive and community based, making them applicable in various contexts. Originally published in French, the first version can be accessed at: https://www.child-soldiers.org/shop/rsum-du-guide-pratique-pour-promouvoir-lacceptation-communautaire

This Framework is a practical resource that promotes accountability for serious violations of international law committed against children in armed conflict (CAC). It responds to the significant gap that exists in preventing and remedying these serious violations - and is designed to assist policymakers and practitioners working at all levels to bridge this gap. It provides individuals and organizations working in child protection, justice, peacebuilding, and related fields with a comprehensive definition and structure for understanding CAC accountability and practical guidance for developing well-informed, context-specific, and feasible options for advancing CAC accountability.

This resource is the Spanish version of the "Children in Armed Conflict Accountability Framework." El Marco de Rendición de Cuentas frente a los niños, las niñas y los jóvenes afectados por los conflictos armados es un recurso práctico que promueve mecanismos para abordar casos de violaciones graves derecho internacional cometidas contra los niños, las niñas y los jóvenes en situaciones de conflicto armado (rendición de cuentas sobre NNJ). Elaborado como respuesta al importante vacío existente en materia de prevención y reparación de este tipo de violaciones, este Marco aporta los siguientes elementos: 1. una definición completa y estructura para entender la cuestión de la rendición de cuentas sobre NNJ; 2. orientaciones metodológicas prácticas que pueden ser adaptadas y aplicadas en diferentes contextos con el objeto de aumentar las acciones de rendición de cuentas sobre NNJ.

This resource provides an overview of the UN's Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM), which documents the six grave violations perpetrated against children in situations of armed conflict. It aims to provide tools for non-governmental organizations participating in the MRM to mainstream their engagement. Tools include guiding questions, checklists, self-assessments and sample language. The resource also considers case studies from the Gaza Strip, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Colombia.

The checklist is intended to provide guidance and increase understanding for OSCE field staff and other OSCE actors working on displacement and protection in the conflict cycle. Throughout the resource, consideration is given to children in conflict and displacement. Stages in the conflict cycle include early warning and prevention, crisis management in acute conflict, conflict management in protracted conflict, and post-conflict transition and rehabilitation.

This resource outlines what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners should do to protect children from sexual violence. Action areas include legal and policy framework; knowledge and data; coordination; human and financial capacity; advocacy and awareness; and prevention and response.

This resource outlines what UNHCR and its partners should do regarding alternative care programs for children. Action areas include legal and policy framework; knowledge and data; coordination; human and financial capacity; advocacy and awareness; and prevention and response.

This resource lays out guidelines for implementing programs that protect education from attack. Included is a 10-step guideline for working in collaboration with local communities, examples for various case studies around the world, and strategies for staffing, working with local partners, and using child participation. The document uses Cote d’Ivoire as a case study of how communities worked with UN agencies and international NGOs and presents key findings.

A collection of successful initiatives by civil society organizations and government agencies, this resource provides examples of initiatives aimed at child protection. Part VI on page 90 examines child protection initiatives in situations of emergency and armed conflict, with examples from Iraq, Uganda, Gaza, Liberia, and Rwanda. Part VII on page 100 provides examples of child protection initiatives in the justice system.

This resource outlines the military use of education institutions and the consequences of such use on students, teachers, and scholars. It includes an overview a list of initiatives to address armed forces’ and armed groups’ use of education institutions, including the UN Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, Committee of the Rights of the Child, and voluntary commitments by non-state armed groups. It also provides relevant laws restricting the use of education institutions by armed forces and groups.

This resource is intended to provide training to armed non-state groups and civil society organizations on humanitarian standards and the relevant international legal framework regarding children and armed conflict. In an addition to providing an overview of key international laws and policies, this resource also explains the structure of Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment on Children and Armed Conflict and explores implementation measures to improve child protection.

This booklet covers legal accountability and the duty to protect. Explaining how and why attacks on education violate international law and have serious long-term consequences, this booklet gives an overview of the problem, potential responses, and guidelines to train others to protect education. This booklet is part of a series providing guidance and resources for field practitioners on critical protection-related issues. The booklets should be used alongside the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies "Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery." The compendium of booklets is available here: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/protecting-education-countries-affected-armed-conflict

Intended to emphasize programs on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) that include men and boys, this resource provides guidance on accessing survivors, providing protection, and delivering medical, legal, and social services. It contains key considerations for inclusive SGBV programming and a list of key resources.

This resource outlines types of programmatic measures to protect education from attack under four headings: protection, prevention, advocacy, and monitoring and reporting. Attacks against education include attacks against students, educators, and other educational personnel at educational institutions. Recommended programmatic measures range from local initiatives to systemic-level interventions intended to prevent conflict. The annex includes 20 country-specific examples.

This resource aims to clarify existing obligations of State parties, facilitate respect for existing obligations, and promote the implementation of relevant legal provisions. It contains recommendations by the ICRC for practical, regulatory, and legal measures to promote the effective domestic implementation of international rules to protect children affected by armed conflict. This resource considers specific issues such as recruitment, juvenile justice, preventative measures, reparations, transitional justice, and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs.

Intended for African governments, this resource aims to provide guidance on implementing African Union (AU) and other regional and international treaty bodies. The guidelines include a set of overarching principles, general measures of implementation, an overview of child friendly justice, fair trial rights for children in conflict with the law and for child victims and witnesses, and alternative care proceedings. This resource also discusses traditional justice and provides minimum standards for traditional courts.

This resource provides UN guidelines for the alternative care of children, which are intended to enhance implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This resource is intended to assist and encourage governments to implement their responsibilities and obligations towards children, including in situations of armed conflict.

This resource provides an overview of the international legal framework, and explains the practical applicability of the law and standards as they relate to children and armed conflict. This resource also discusses internally displaced children; sexual violence against children; child labor; children and landmines and cluster bombs; children and small armed and light weapons; child victims, witnesses and perpetrators of crimes; and the role of children in peace processes.

Intended for Save the Children staff at headquarters and field offices who work on children’s participation, this resource provides practice standards, a toolkit of activities, and guiding questions for planning participation activities. This resource also provides guides to including children in advocacy and campaigning, fundraising, media and communications, recruitment, governance, and emergencies.

A case study of Afghanistan, this resource provides an overview of threats and attacks on education, including the nature of attacks and risk factors. It concludes with recommendations about how to mitigate and prevent attacks on schools, paying special attention to the roles of communities.

This resource aims to assist donor governments, workers, employers and NGOs to combat trafficking in children for labor, sexual, and other forms of exploitation. Exploitation is defined to include the forced or compulsory recruitment of children. The training manual includes three textbooks, an exercise book, and facilitator’s guide.

This resource is a collection of training materials to help ensure effective child protection programming and protection systems. Primarily intended for facilitators and trainers, programmers who work on child rights or child protection, and members of child protection clusters, this resource pack includes a user guide, training manual, and facilitator’s toolkit. Foundation modules include topics such as participation and inclusion, advocacy, community mobilization, and psychosocial support. Also included are seven critical issue modules, with module 7 on children associated with armed forces or armed groups.

This resource outlines World’s Visions minimum basic expectations for upholding child participation. These guidelines may apply to activities such as focus group discussions and research, sponsorship activities, children’s clubs, children’s engagement in community activities, and child representatives participating in national or international decision-making events.

A companion to UN ECOSOC’s Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crimes, this resource is intended to assist the design or review of laws and practices regarding child victims and witnesses of crimes. These model laws can assist States in adapting their legislation to meet the provisions contained in the guidelines or other international instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The resource examines Mercy Corps’ best practices and lessons learned on its youth programming, including general program design and implementation. It also considers specific program areas such as economic engagement, political participation, youth-to-community connections, and youth-to-youth connections.

In order to support implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), this resource examines constitutional and legislative reforms in favor of the rights of children. Taking a human rights-based approach, it considers various guiding principles, rights of victims, prevention, criminalization, and processes and entry points for constitutional and legislative reforms.

Chapter 11 of this resource examines protection of persons with specific needs in a camp setting, including boys and girls, youth, women, and persons with disabilities. Each chapter includes a checklist for a camp management agency and a list of tools. This resource also considers camp issues such as participation and community involvement, protection, gender-based violence, education, and livelihoods.

Section 5 of this resource focuses on psychosocial support for children in emergencies. It includes materials necessary for a two day training course on psychosocial support for children in an emergency. Documents include a training schedule, worksheets, handouts, and exercises.

This resource identifies issues related to children who have been associated with armed forces and groups and have then been released and reintegrated into their families or communities. It highlights several important points such as successful reintegration techniques, special consideration for girls, and a child rights approach to reintegration. It also gives consideration to preventing re-recruitment, community-based initiatives, and increasing children’s livelihood and vocational training.

This resource is intended to assist field practitioners responding to humanitarian emergencies in meeting standards for integrating gender issues. It offers checklists for monitoring gender equality programming and focuses on major cross-cutting issues such as camp coordination and management, education, food issues, health, livelihoods, non-food items, registration, shelter, and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene).

This resource aims to provide guidance for local grassroots organizations in the protection of children from sexual violence and sexual exploitation. It explores relevant legal and policy frameworks and existing protection frameworks. This resource also includes key actions to minimizing the risks of sexual violence, such as advocacy and campaigning, protection committees, creating safe spaces, and psychosocial support and education. The annex includes checklists for action.

Using case studies from Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, this resource focuses on strategies to prevent children’s recruitment in armed forces and groups. Strategies to prevent recruitment include developing targeted messages, avoiding separation, providing alternative care, schooling and skills training, and improving livelihoods. Intended to inform initiatives by governments, the UN, and non-governmental organizations, this resource also provides an overview of what constitutes voluntary and forced recruitment.

This resource provides best practices and lessons learned in programming for children affected by armed conflict, with a focus on child soldiers. In addition to an overview of the relevant international legal standards regarding the recruitment and use of children, this resource also provides a grid to evaluate proposals or design programs to support former child soldiers. Other tools include a risk probability and impact matrix and checklists on prevention, demobilization, and reintegration.

This resource provides a thematic overview of key child protection concerns, including international law and policy instruments, and guidance on programming in emergencies. The appendix includes sample forms and assessment questions. The annex includes sample forms to use with separated children and assessment questions.

This resource aims to help child protection actors within governmental and non-governmental organizations advocate for the ratification and implementation of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC). This resource emphasizes the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

This four-hour training module is designed to introduce individuals or groups to the principles of child protection in armed conflict and displacement. It reviews types of threats experienced by children and potential actions for improving protection. Activities, a final quiz, and sample feedback form accompany the module.

This resource provides guidance for protection of refugees against sexual and gender-based violence. It provides guiding principles and considers prevention strategies through transforming socio-cultural norms, rebuilding community support systems, improving accountability systems, and monitoring and documenting of sexual and gender-based violence. The annex includes a code of conduct and sample report forms.

This resource is a compilation of legal standards and norms regarding children and armed conflict, including the rights of the child, international humanitarian law, law on refugees and internally displaced persons, international criminal law, and UN Security Council resolutions.

A fact sheet developed by the ICRC’s advisory service on international humanitarian law, this resource explains the general and special legal protection afforded to children during armed conflict under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols and the role of States and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in upholding these protection standards.

Drawing on case studies from Angola and El Salvador, this resource provides examples, techniques and checklists on prevention, demobilization, and reintegration of child soldiers. It considers issues such as family reunification and community-based networks, psychosocial and traditional healing, and education and economic opportunity. It also includes checklists, lessons learned, and the international legal framework.

Intended for UNHCR staff and its operational partners, this resource provides guidelines on the protection and care of refugee children. It includes an overview of treaty standards, cultural considerations, psychosocial well-being, personal liberty and security, legal status, education, and unaccompanied children. The Annex provides UNHRC’s policy on refugee children.