Protecting Children in Conflict

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of protecting children in conflict.

I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting me the opportunity to have this debate today, and to thank the Members from all parts of the House who supported my application for the debate. This is a great opportunity to hear the voices of those who are often not heard. Children whose lives are impacted by conflict are all too often voiceless. It is also appropriate that this debate should follow on from the conference in London that called for action to end sexual violence in conflict. I congratulate the Foreign Secretary, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), and the whole Department on holding that conference. Indeed, the Minister and I attended an event hosted by War Child, and I hope he will say what progress he believes will be made on these children’s issues. This is not just about ending sexual violence against children; it is about preventing children from losing their childhood.

One reason I am passionately and energetically campaigning in Scotland for a no vote in the referendum on 18 September is that we are better placed as Scots to be a force for good in the world as part of the United Kingdom. The humanitarian global summit in 2016 provides a further opportunity for the nations of the UK to work together and show leadership, and I hope the Minister will say today that the UK will continue to take a leading role in protecting children in conflict.

We need not only to protect children, but to be more active in promoting children’s rights within their own countries and their awareness of those rights. We should not just be promoting the UN rights respecting programmes in our own schools in the UK; we should be doing so wherever we are helping to fund education across the globe. Children need to learn that they have rights and that other children different from them have rights, too. Teachers and parents will then learn these rights and perhaps future generations will do a better job than this one of protecting children in conflict.

Children and youths constitute more than 50% of the populations of conflict-affected countries. As of 2010, more than 1 billion children worldwide lived in countries or territories affected by armed conflict. Sadly, changes in the nature of conflict have had profound consequences for children, who are being denied the special protections due to them under international law. Child injuries and deaths were traditionally seen as the collateral damage of war, but children are increasingly being targeted directly. Those trends need to be met with a renewed focus on how children can be protected in situations of conflict, alongside heightened scrutiny of duty bearers who are failing to safeguard children’s rights.

As a member of the Select Committee on International Development, I have been incredibly privileged to have seen with my own eyes the impact conflict has on the lives of children. The Committee’s most recent visit was to the middle east, where we saw how UK aid is working to support Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. Since the Syrian conflict began, more than 2.3 million people have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. In Lebanon, families are being settled in host communities. Although the vast majority of refugees in Jordan are in host communities, there are also large-scale camps, such as Camp Zaatari, which the Committee visited. The UK has pledged £600 million in aid and we can all be proud of that, but it cannot compare to the response from Lebanon and Jordan. It is almost impossible for us in the UK to imagine the scale of the challenges they face and the impact on their own country and people, be it on education, water security or employment.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern that in situations such as that in Syria early enforced marriage is seen as a way of escape for young girls? Does she join me in welcoming the Department for International Development’s upcoming summit on ending female genital mutilation and early enforced marriage?

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Absolutely. When we were in Camp Zaatari we heard about families who suddenly had no prospects—they do not know when they are going to return to Syria and they have no way to earn a livelihood—and we were told that if they have daughters the temptation is to marry them off early and, in order for those daughters to be as prized as possible, to consider awful, gruesome child abuse such as FGM. We also heard about an increased prevalence of domestic violence in those camps. That has an impact not only on the women, but on the children in those families. I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention.

Life for children can be very difficult in these situations, as many parents fled Syria with just the clothes on their back. At times, they live in horrific conditions, but even when the housing is of a satisfactory standard, children have needs, beyond the roof over their head, that are just not being met.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on securing this important debate. She describes a very terrible situation, but does she agree that it is wrong to incite to violence children in conflict situations? For example, a young boy who was speaking about a game being shown on Palestine TV in May said that Zion is Satan with a tail. Is it not terrible for someone to incite a young boy to make such a statement?

[Fiona O'Donnell]

If my hon. Friend bears with me, she will find that I come on to that matter later. I am not usually someone who speaks from notes, but I will today as this is such a complex issue,

On the IDC visit, we met a family living in an unfinished block of flats. Speaking to three generations of the family—children, mother and grandmother—living in that small space, I asked what life was like for the children. I was told that they were not attending school. The mother never took them out into the town and they were not allowed to play outside as she was worried that someone would complain about the noise. With no one able to say when the conflict will end, it is clearly unacceptable for children to continue to live in such a way. The family had sanitation, water, energy and food, but for children to grow and develop into healthy adults and to reach their potential, they need so much more.

I cannot say with any authority that the children in the camps had better lives, but there is an advantage in that services of scale can be delivered more easily. We saw evidence of that, with the delivery of psychological, health and education services. None of those services is a luxury that can wait to be delivered at some later date.

The children who manage to register for school in the community face many barriers to learning, such as social isolation, language difficulties, and, for those who had already started school in Syria, the problems of adjusting to a different curriculum. For children to be able to take advantage of the opportunity to learn, it is essential that they receive therapeutic services. When they are so traumatised, how can they possibly be expected to learn? Some 28.5 million children are out of school in conflict and emergency-related areas. The humanitarian response does not accord the same priority to education or child protection as it does to water, shelter and food.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She will be aware of the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) on safety in schools, particularly in Nigeria. Does she agree that that is a huge step forward, although, at the moment, the school girls are still missing? That initiative will allow other parents in the same state to send their children to school.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Absolutely. Just last night I attended a meeting in the House in which the Finance Minister of Nigeria talked about the campaign to build safer schools. As a fellow Scot, my hon. Friend will remember the awful tragedy of the shooting in Dunblane and the action we had to take to make our children safe in school. Children in Nigeria, and girls attending school, deserve the same protection. Such is the power of education that many people see it as threat.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I return to the hon. Lady’s important point about counselling. Does she recall the Committee’s visit to a centre in Jordan where we met some children who had recently come from Syria? The first things that they drew were AK47s and other terrible things to do with war. Now they are drawing pictures of homes and gardens and other things connected to a much more peaceful way of life.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman both for his intervention and for his comradeship—if he does not mind that term—during that visit to the middle east. He will also recall a visit where we saw children miming the experience of being refugees—how they were turned away from one country and then another before they were given refuge in Lebanon and Jordan, and just how moving that was. We also had a game on a 3G pitch. MPs, who are always competitive, managed to beat the refugee children 2-0. It was good to see the facility being used.

Analysis of the 2013 UN appeal tracking data shows that less than 2% of UN humanitarian appeal funds went to education and that only 40% of requests for funding for education were met. A coalition comprising non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and others under the banner of the “Education Cannot Wait” campaign is calling for education funding to be at least 4%, and I hope that DFID Ministers will support that campaign. Perhaps the Minister will give us an indication today of what he thinks about that.

I am pleased to see colleagues in the Chamber who have a record of defending children’s rights. I am sure that they will focus on individual countries, but I want to ensure that the debate today does not pass without our speaking up for the children of the Central African Republic The UN has reported “unprecedented” levels of brutality against children in the Central African Republic, including mutilation and beheading. Save the Children says that it is not aware of plans to deploy child protection experts on the new UN mission in the CAR, even though there is clear evidence of large-scale recruitment of children to armed groups and of other grave violations, including sexual violence.

The UK could and should be leading on such action by deploying its own experts on the mission or by insisting on pre-deployment training covering things such as how to work with children who have been recruited to armed groups. It should also be championing funding for child protection and education in the CAR. Will the Minister tell us what is being done as part of the preventing sexual violence initiative to ensure that there are experts in child protection in every team and that all staff have some training in child protection issues? Schools need to be safe places in which children can learn.

There is a rapidly growing international consensus in support of the Lucens guidelines, but so far the UK Government have yet to endorse them. By restricting the use of schools by armies in times of conflict, states can directly and substantially reduce the prevalence of violation of girls and boys in wars, and can facilitate the reintegration of survivors into their communities. Earlier this month, the Norwegian Government officially announced that they will lead in promoting the guidelines. Will the Minister commit the UK—and call for other states to do so—to adopting the Lucens guidelines on the military use of schools, amend the military codes of conduct and issue a clear and unambiguous prohibition of attacks on and military use of schools?

A 45% increase in the number of child casualties from explosive weapons use was recorded from 2011 to 2012. In November 2013, a report entitled “Stolen Futures”, which was released by the Oxford Research Group, identified explosive weapons as the primary cause of child casualties in Syria. It showed that of 12,000 then-recorded casualties, more than 70% of children died as a result of explosive weapons, illustrating the devastating impact that such use has on children.

The use of explosive weapons may not result in the killing or injuring of children, but its effects on their everyday lives are incredibly damaging. Such weapons may cause debilitating injury, displacement or long-term psychological scars and block life-saving humanitarian aid. It is time that states, including the UK, publicly recognised the humanitarian impact of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and championed moves toward an intergovernmental political declaration against such practice. Norway is providing leadership, and hosted a meeting last month to build consensus. I am not sure whether the UK was present, but will the Minister today commit the UK to being part of a global campaign to protect the innocent victims of war?

This debate is about not just children’s rights but the hope of a safer, more peaceful world for us and future generations. Children are exposed to high levels of violence in conflict, which can significantly impact on their beliefs, behaviours, future opportunities and aspirations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, beliefs, practices and habits that foster violence easily become deeply embedded and can fuel repeated conflict unless addressed. Every civil war since 2003 was a resumption of a previous civil war, and the majority of conflicts re-emerge within 10 years of a ceasefire.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes victims of children on both sides. The Leader of the Opposition was right to highlight the tragedy of Israeli children learning in schools which have to be able to survive rockets attacks from Gaza. What kind of environment is that for children to learn?

I would be grateful if the Minister commented on last year’s UNICEF report which stated that the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system was widespread, systematic and institutionalised. What discussions has his Department had with the Israeli Government and, given the recent loss of young Israeli and Palestinian lives, how is his Department working with the Department for International Development and NGOs to protect children, particularly in Gaza?

I have constituents who have spent time working in the west bank, ensuring that Palestinian children can walk safely to school. Sadly, the people from whom they need to protect the children are all too often other children. Israeli settler children are taught terms of abuse and encouraged to throw stones. That is a tragedy and an abuse not just of the Palestinian children but of the Israeli children. They are all victims. That is why I tabled an early-day motion and wrote to the Foreign Secretary asking him to reintroduce funding for Breaking the Silence so that ordinary Israelis can hear credible voices telling them what is being done in their name. Children’s involvement in violence goes far beyond that kind of activity, however.

[Mrs Ellman]

I take the point my hon. Friend makes very seriously; when wrongdoing occurs it must be put right. Does she agree with me that there is a consistent and relentless campaign of incitement to violence on the Palestinian media almost daily, which inevitably has an impact on young children who then start to commit acts of violence?

[Fiona O'Donnell]

My hon. Friend is right, and I saw that when I visited the area. As a mother, I thought how difficult it would be to raise children and try to prevent them from indulging in acts of violence while at the same time making them aware of their rights and encouraging them to challenge injustice. I welcome her contribution.

For children who have been involved with armed forces and groups, rehabilitation and reintegration tailored to their specific needs is essential. World Vision identifies the need for programmes targeting girls who have given birth during the conflict and their children. When children leave armed groups, reintegration cannot be seen as a short-term process to be completed in a few months. World Vision’s experience has shown that reintegration takes much longer and needs to be part of both peace-building and development work. It must be funded accordingly. We know that children’s involvement in violence goes beyond the kind of activity seen in the west bank. It is estimated that a quarter of a million children are active in armed groups. Work to try to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers must focus on stopping armed forces and groups recruiting and using children and on strengthening the systems that protect children, making them less vulnerable to recruitment.

As I draw my remarks to a close, I ask the Minister to support the recommendations from Save the Children, which could save the lives and outcomes of children in conflict. We need to mainstream child protection in conflict, ensuring that there are sufficient resources. Only 36% and 28% of appeal requests for child protection and education respectively are met in emergency responses. That is simply not good enough. The UN and regional peacekeeping missions must include adequate capacity to prevent and respond to the violation of children’s rights, including mandatory pre-deployment training. Governments and partners must provide co-ordinated assistance to children who are unaccompanied or separated as a result of armed conflict. Violations of children’s rights must be monitored and recorded and all reasonable steps must be taken to hold perpetrators to account.

Finally, I want to pay tribute today to the many NGOs who work in the most difficult and dangerous conflict zones, sometimes giving their lives to deliver life-saving aid to children. When we see the worst of humanity, they show us the very best.

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[Fiona O'Donnell]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Unfortunately, the Israeli authorities would not allow the Select Committee to travel to Gaza. Does he share my concerns about salt in the water? When mothers have to make formula with water that contains salt, that has huge implications for their young children’s physical and mental development.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I was a member of a delegation that visited the west bank, and we, too, were refused entry to Gaza. I have certainly heard from other right hon. and hon. Members who visited Gaza and can corroborate exactly what she says. I think that the Minister should make representations to the Israeli authorities on humanitarian grounds.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs has said that the blockade is

“a collective punishment of all those living in Gaza and is a denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law”.

I completely agree. There is no moral or legal justification for Israel’s collective punishment of over 800,000 children. Although they are kept apart by military checkpoints and separation walls—my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian and I were unable to gain access to Gaza because of the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities—the children of Gaza’s fellow Palestinians in the illegally occupied west bank and East Jerusalem, and indeed in the refugee camps, also suffer profoundly as a result of the conflict.

The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated as Israeli military detention fails to safeguard basic human rights or to adhere to international law in relation to detaining children. The most recent figures indicate that 196 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli military custody at the end of April, but I suspect that the number has increased dramatically in recent weeks. I am disturbed that the Israeli authorities are no longer releasing information on precisely how many children are being held in military detention.

My hon. Friend referred to the independent report “Children in Military Custody”, which was authored by seven senior lawyers from the United Kingdom and funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It highlights how two distinct legal systems are applied by the Israeli authorities to residents of the west bank depending on an individual’s race or national identity. When that policy was applied in South Africa, it was called apartheid, and international politicians, including John Kerry, have used that term with respect to what is happening in the west bank. That independent report by leading lawyers, commissioned by our own Foreign Office, concluded that Israel is in breach of seven articles of the UN convention on the rights of the child, including in relation to discrimination, the child’s best interests, premature resort to detention, non-separation from adults, prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles.

When I was first elected, I had the opportunity to visit the west bank and see one of those military courts in operation. Some of the children are very young. Some are arrested in midnight raids. The crime for which they are most commonly arrested is throwing stones, and there is often little evidence that the arrested child is the one responsible. They are then shackled and blindfolded before being questioned without their parents being present and without access to any legal representation. There are extensive reports indicating that physical and verbal abuse by the Israeli authorities against those children is commonplace. They can be detained without charge for 188 days and then be made to wait two more years before the conclusion of their trial. They are often arrested in the refugee camps or the occupied territories, but they are held in military detention within Israel. Again, I am not a lawyer, but I believe that that contravenes a United Nations convention.

Most of those children are forced to sign confessions in Hebrew. They might have some understanding of Hebrew when it is spoken, but not when it is written. They often sign the confession in the hope of speeding up the trial. Unsurprisingly, given the flagrant disregard for international law, the overall conviction rate for Palestinian children in Israeli military courts—I should not laugh, but this number is like something from North Korea—is 99.74%.

I believe that a form of psychological warfare is being waged on an entire community and that it is children who are being made to bear the brunt of Israel’s punitive measures. I have witnessed those court proceedings while visiting Israel. Indeed, the image of a young boy the same age as my youngest son being marched along by soldiers with his hands and feet in shackles was truly shocking and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Recent events have served as a stark reminder of the brutality of life for children in conflict areas. As a parent, I wish that no mother or father had to experience the tragic loss of their child. For a serious commitment towards that end, we must understand that recent tragedies are rooted in a conflict that will not end until Israel acts in accordance with international law, United Nations resolutions and the overwhelming consensus of the international community in order to realise peace and justice in the middle east.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister, in conjunction with his ministerial colleagues, to press the Israeli Government to adhere to these international conventions, particularly in relation to the rights of the child.

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[Fiona O’Donnell]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. In looking at our record on international prosecutions for acts of sexual violence so far, would the suggestion made by one of his colleagues about having a local form of justice, rather the western developed world being seen to impose its standards on other countries, be a better way forward?

[Tim Loughton]

I absolutely agree. If there can be a home-grown solution—so that people have ownership of it, and it can be adapted to their cultures and to the baggage of tribal conflicts, histories and cultural identities that have been asserted through violence—that has to be better. Otherwise, there is a risk that the former colonial power is seen as trying to reassert its ways.

There are some common basic moral standards that we should not resile from asserting in the international context, including that children are children, not young adults to be sent into war zones or to become victims of war in all its ghastly forms. They are children, and we treat children differently—they need our protection and respect—whether they are in Khartoum, Boston, Worthing, East Lothian or anywhere else in the world. We should not resile from the expression of such international values, in which we should take pride.

The Government have already committed to providing more than £140 million to the survivors of sexual violence and their supporters. In the context of the many victims of historical cases of horrendous sexual abuse that have recently hit the headlines in the United Kingdom, a key factor is making sure that victims who have had the bravery to come forward get the support they need in order to come to terms with the trauma that befell them, often as children. In this debate, we are talking about victims who have perhaps seen their parents gruesomely killed in front of them, their homes burned, their sisters raped, or their brothers, sisters and school friends kidnapped and taken off into slavery or the sex trade. These children need our support, and they need rehabilitation to get over traumas caused by what happened in front of their eyes, which is why that project is so important. The Government have also called for all soldiers and peacekeepers to be trained not only to understand the gravity of sexual violence in conflict, but to help to prevent it and to protect people. Those are all practical measures that we can sometimes overlook.

The Government, particularly the Foreign Secretary, should be given great credit for the great initiative of the global summit to end sexual violence in conflict—quite rightly, it hit the media, including our television screens—which he co-hosted with the special envoy Angelina Jolie last month in the east end of London. It brought together more than 140 countries and more than 900 experts, making it the biggest global meeting ever convened on the issue. Let us hope that it was not just a talking shop, but that delegates from nations where such violence happens daily could take comfort, ideas and support, could make contacts and could engage with projects that will help them in the future.

The preventing sexual violence initiative—again, the Government are spearheading it—aims to strengthen and support international efforts to respond to sexual violence in conflict, including by enhancing the capacity of countries, institutions and communities to support survivors and to end impunity for perpetrators. A team of UK experts has been deployed to conflict-affected countries at the heart of the problem, such as Libya, Syria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Mali, to name but a few. The initiative provides good practical experience, and we should be proud that DFID, our Foreign Office and this Government are pioneering, leading and setting such an example on the global stage.

Education is absolutely vital in all this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned. That is why I welcome DFID’s pledge that by 2015 it will spend half of its direct educational aid on unstable or war-torn countries where more than two fifths of the world’s out-of-school children are found and where a lack of education can contribute directly to conflict. In such a revolving doors scenario, kids are indoctrinated to hate other kids and families from other tribes and religions in other parts of the country. If they are brought up to accept that as normal, it is little surprise that they are susceptible to taking up arms when a conflict happens. We have to start at the beginning, by educating against conflict and the mentality of vehement retaliation right at the outset. Education is so important. The United Kingdom’s commitment of up to £300 million for the Global Partnership for Education over the next four years is therefore particularly welcome.

Many children out of school are marginalised and hard to reach, and nearly half of them live in fragile and conflict-affected areas. Marginalisation affects children right through the education system, from early education to university level. In post-conflict environments and fragile states, getting children back into school and addressing out-of-school youth, some of whom may have been child soldiers or refugees themselves, helps to bring back a sense of equity, justice and cohesion to what can be a fractured society. That has to be the start.

Girls’ education is a big issue. The girls’ education challenge will give up to 1 million of the world’s poorest girls the opportunity to improve their lives through education. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford was important: if more women were doing the educating—and, indeed, the negotiating before or after a conflict, as well—there might be a better chance of avoiding the worst excesses of conflict in the first place.

We will perhaps think of places such as Afghanistan, where under the Taliban regime girls were excluded from education. Despite all the horrors that have taken place in that country, one great success that we should never cease to emphasise is that so many young women and girls in Afghanistan now have the opportunity to get an education in school and to go on to university. We should never underestimate the importance of that. However, there are other countries, which are not in such familiar conflict zones, where young women do not get access to education. There is so much more to do, particularly in parts of Africa. That is why DFID’s priority of concentrating aid on getting more girls into education across the world is a good one that many of us can support.

I have seen projects in places such as Ghana. In my constituency, I run the EYE project—it stands for Eco, Young and Engaged—and every year we have an eco-summit; recently we had our seventh. A very enthusiastic local man called Jib Hagan runs a charity called CARE—Collecting and Recycling Ecologically. He collects old computers that are being thrown out by local schools and businesses, takes them to Ghana and puts them in schools, pre-loaded with lots of information about how to be more environmentally friendly, how girls can get better education, engagement in the democratic process and so on. In return, he brings back lots of wonderful shopping bags made from old plastic carrier bags by some of the kids and the families out there.

A few years ago, we did a satellite link-up with the British Council between one school in a very impoverished area whose pupils were using those computers and the 250 local kids at my eco-summit. Incredibly, the technology worked. British kids and Ghanaian kids in completely contrasting environments spoke to each other, and understood and empathised with one another. It was a wonderful moment. To see the advantage that a bit of old technology that we were throwing out had brought to those kids—it was going to transform their educational opportunities and, I hope, keep that country out of conflict—was deeply humbling, and a very proud moment for those of us who had helped to make it happen.

Girls’ education is a particularly important part of preventing conflict in the future. I will draw on a couple of examples. I do not need to go over all the statistics about what is happening in Syria at the moment, but there are now 2.3 million children in Syria who are out of school or at risk of dropping out of school. Many hundreds of thousands are refugees outside Syria, as well. I am due to visit some Syrian refugee camps in Jordan later this month—they are vast camps—just as some years ago in Syria I visited what was then the largest refugee camp run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the world. It was for Iraqis fleeing conflict who had gone to Damascus. I saw the great efforts of the UNHCR and other charities, which were trying to make sure that there was some normality in the lives of those kids. Getting some ongoing education for them was absolutely key. We must make sure that children who are displaced because of the horrible war dragging on in Syria can at least have some semblance of a normal childhood by continuing some form of education. The crisis in Syria has placed many women and girls at risk of violence, exploitation and insecurity. We often forget that.

Drawing on some of my previous trips, the very first parliamentary delegation that I went on, some 15 or so years ago, was to Ethiopia. That country had been riven by civil war under a particularly nasty Marxist regime. People had been driven out of their properties and sexual violence was part of the conflict. I remember visiting the Fistula hospital in Addis Ababa. It is a charity set up by some wonderful medics, where visiting clinicians go to help out. Daily I saw 12-year-old, 13-year-old and 14-year-old women—in some cases they had walked hundreds of miles—who had had bad experiences of giving birth because they had been too young. They were victims either of conflict, of misguided forced marriage or of being raped, effectively under the noses of their families in their villages, and had then been cast out. The only sanctuary and help they could get was by walking literally hundreds of miles to that wonderful hospital in Addis Ababa. The war in Ethiopia did huge damage but the country is, I hope, on a better path now.

I visited schools in the drought-affected areas, and, as I said earlier, kids were walking 10 miles or more each day to and from their homes to attend school, because it was such a big deal. They loved it. Nobody was playing hooky there; no truancy officer was needed. They went to school because their parents wanted them to go, as they could see it was a good thing. The kids themselves wanted to go to school and get an education, because that was their ladder out of poverty. It would stop them getting sucked into the conflict that so often happens in these impoverished zones, where people will fight over a little dustbowl of land.

I remember going to Mozambique—again, a country riven by vicious civil war over many, many years. There were many displaced kids who had fled parts of Mozambique and had gone to what they thought was the relative safety of South Africa, but had ended up in the sex trade. I worked with some hugely dedicated charities in Mozambique that were trying to rescue those kids.

A few years ago I went to Tajikistan, where I was taken to a school in Duschanbe, because I wanted to see some of the refugees from Afghanistan—there were a lot of them there. They asked me to give a class to kids of all different ages. They spoke wonderful English and were really enthusiastic about being there. They were there because they had been driven out of Afghanistan. There had been a big spate of kidnappings: brothers and sisters had been kidnapped; indeed, the teacher’s own children had been kidnapped and she had never seen them again. Tajikistan was giving them sanctuary, and had given them a school and some teaching resources, because the way forward is education.

There are many other subjects that we could mention in this debate. Forced marriages are another form of conflict, frankly. Female genital mutilation, of which we have been hearing so much recently, is another form of violence inflicted on children. It is not acceptable in the modern world, and we should not be afraid of saying so, whatever cultural differences might separate us from those people who say it is all right. It is not all right. It is not acceptable in this day and age. It is violence against girls and women.

There is no excuse for children being caught up in war and conflict. Children are different and special, and as adults we have a duty to do whatever we can to protect them, in this country or in any far-flung corner of the globe in which they are involved in conflict. In many of the countries that we are talking about, almost half the population is under the age of 18, so we are talking about huge numbers of people who are the future of those countries. If we do not get it right for those war-torn countries now, we will not get it right in the future. If they get back on the road to peace and prosperity, their kids might at last get an education and a chance to prosper.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) on securing this important debate and on the passionate, informed and articulate way in which she introduced it. She was right to highlight some of the complexities of these important issues, and I will come to some of the very specific points that she asked about later.

It needs to be said that the subject has been at the forefront of the Government’s agenda, coming as it does after the recent global summit to end sexual violence in conflict. The hon. Lady was right to congratulate the Foreign Secretary and all the officials who were involved in organising the summit, which was the largest ever held on the issue. It set in motion a series of unprecedented practical steps and commitments, such as the first ever international protocol on how to document and investigate sexual violence in conflict, and a statement of action, uniting Governments, UN agencies, civil society, experts and survivors in a shared determination to tackle sexual violence.

When it comes to children’s lives, all efforts must be made. That is why I am personally committed to tackling this issue, not least as the father of three children. I am concentrating my efforts on raising awareness and helping to prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict, focusing on demobilising child soldiers and preventing sexual violence against children, working with multilateral agencies and encouraging those with successful track records to assist those who still have challenges.

During visits to Somalia, South Sudan and the DRC, I have witnessed at first hand the devastation that conflict causes not just to children, but to whole communities. I have also seen the excellent work of NGOs such as War Child, which make a real difference to children’s lives on the ground. I take the opportunity to join other Members of all parties in acknowledging and thanking all the NGOs involved in the issue for their tireless commitment and energy.

As several hon. Members highlighted, on the fringes of the ESVC summit, I held and spoke at a meeting on children and armed conflict in front of a knowledgeable and large audience. There were powerful testimonies from a survivor of the war in Sierra Leone and a child soldier from Uganda, both of whom spoke bravely and articulately about their experiences. Closer to home, a very brave lady, who was affected by the conflict in Bosnia, spoke. That collectively underlined the grave dangers that children face during conflict and the need for us to take urgent action to prevent this from affecting a greater number of children around the world.

In addition to that fringe meeting in the ESVC summit, I also brought together Ministers from the DRC and Somalia along with countries that have experience of successfully tackling the issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) rightly mentioned Sierra Leone, whose Minister underlined the importance of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes to ensure that children have crucial access to education and training. As other hon. Members have highlighted, that is vital in ensuring that children become less vulnerable to recruitment and sexual violence. As the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) rightly said, those who have made progress more recently, for example, Chad, have a significant role to play in assisting others.

At this stage let me tackle head-on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about the role of the United Nations. It has been 15 years since the Security Council recognised children in armed conflict as an issue of international peace and security, with the adoption of resolution 1261. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly pointed out, the United Kingdom continues to play a leading role at the United Nations and internationally on that issue. I was therefore pleased that under the UK’s presidency of the Security Council in July last year, the UN adopted a strong presidential statement to protect the robust mandate of the UN special representative for children affected by armed conflict, as well as introducing steps for tackling persistent perpetrators. That was followed by UN Security Council resolution 2143 in March this year, which outlines practical steps for combating violations against children, while drawing attention to attacks on schools.

I commend the efforts of the United Nations in tackling that issue, and in particular the excellent UN special representative of the Secretary-General for the initiative Children, not Soldiers, which is designed to end the recruitment and use of children by Government armed forces in conflict by 2016. As a result of the SRSG’s excellent work in that area, more than 20 countries have agreed action plans with the UN, and to halt the recruitment and use of children—including, most recently, the Government of Yemen. Those action plans play a crucial role in putting pressure on the perpetrators of those abhorrent violations against children.

In Africa, as I mentioned, we have seen progress in Chad with a completion of its action plan, and a recommitment from South Sudan this month to the action plan it signed in 2012. We must be clear, however, that this issue does not only affect African countries. As we saw in the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, which was released on Tuesday, grave violations have been committed against children in 23 countries, including Iraq, Syria and Burma, and all those countries have been rightly mentioned in this debate.

In Syria and the wider region, 5.5 million children are in need of education, and more than half are out of school. There is danger of a “lost generation” of Syrian children experiencing trauma, displacement and missing out on education, which is the cornerstone for brighter futures. Their lives have been disrupted and potentially wasted. That is why the UK is supporting UNICEF and others in Syria and the region through the No Lost Generation initiative, which aims to increase support for education, psychosocial support, and protection for Syrian children. In addition to education, support partners are running child-friendly spaces that provide a safe place for Syrian children to play and study. This is therefore a global issue that requires a global solution. I highlight to the House the importance that the Prime Minister and Government attach to the girl summit that will be held in July in the United Kingdom, which will hopefully mobilise domestic and international efforts to end female genital mutilation, and early and forced marriage.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

To return briefly to the Minister’s comments about Lebanon and Jordan, does he recognise a possible future problem in that our aid is supporting refugees whereas the Jordanian and Lebanese populations are struggling as rent prices are forced up? We must guard against that possible tension in the future.

[Mark Simmonds]

The hon. Lady is right to make that point and there are huge challenges, primarily because of the scale of what is happening in Syria and the displacement of people, both inside Syria and across geopolitical boundaries. In a moment I will detail some of the support that the Department for International Development is providing to people still within Syria, and those who are outside.

Let me use this opportunity to respond to some of the important points that the hon. Lady raised. Hopefully, she will be aware that the UK is an active member of the UN working group on children and armed conflict, and right at the forefront of the international response to issues of child soldiers and child protection. The UK pushes at multilateral level for the inclusion of child protection in peacekeeping responses through UN mandates, both as they are renewed and initial resolutions. Child protection advisers are currently deployed through the UN missions in Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Somalia, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The hon. Lady was right to ask forcefully about child protection training for front-line staff, and the UK is providing £232,000 for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations to develop pre-deployment child protection training modules for military and police peacekeepers who encounter children affected by armed conflict. She mentioned the draft Lucens guidelines, and the Department welcomes that those underline existing rules for international humanitarian law to promote better understanding and implementation of the Geneva conventions and their protocols. The draft guidelines form part of our wider protection of civilians approach. A decision on UK Government support for those guidelines needs cross-Whitehall agreement, and we are engaging with our colleagues across Departments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made an excellent speech that articulately and strongly highlighted the terrible events and crimes that affect children. I know he has been to the DRC, and he will therefore be aware of the funding that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office provides to a project in that country led by War Child. I recently visited Goma and saw for myself the excellent work being done by the UN on disarmament, demobilisation and the reintegration of children back into communities. It must also be acknowledged that authorities in the DRC have made good progress in removing children from the ranks of the Congolese army, and they are significantly committed to implementing their action plan, which they discussed in the ESVC summit and the fringe meetings that took place.

My hon. Friend also, quite rightly, mentioned the importance of education, and as part of the package to support the Nigerian Government after the terrible events that have occurred in northern Nigeria, DFID, along with the United States Agency for International Development, is hoping to put in place policies and funding that will draw back into education more than 1 million children in northern Nigeria. DFID is the largest bilateral education donor. Some 11% of its funding goes on education aid, half of which is committed to being spent in fragile and conflicted-affected states. The UK funds partners to provide education supply kits in refugee camps in Syria, and is committed to providing packs of textbooks to benefit 300,000 Syrian children and to funding programmes in Syria to provide basic education. I inform my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) that an open working group at the UN will conclude a report on post-2015 goals for discussion at the General Assembly. Education will clearly form an integral part of that, and those discussions are ongoing.

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made a powerful contribution discussing primarily the challenges that are raging in the middle east, particularly as they relate to the Israel-Palestine conflict. I reiterate that we utterly condemn the appalling murders of both Israeli and Palestinian children, and we stand ready to help bring those responsible to justice. We are concerned about the recent increase in violence in Gaza and the risks to children. Rockets coming from Gaza into Israel must stop. We call on Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to work together to allow for the legal use of the Gaza strip for innocent people. I also inform the hon. Gentleman that DFID has a number of initiatives to protect children specifically in the region, including psychosocial support and clearing schools of unexploded devices.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has knowledge of, passion for and interest in Africa. He was right to highlight the appalling actions there, including women being raped and then prosecuted, and ending up in prison, as I have seen for myself, and the extraordinary challenge of child soldiers. He was right to suggest that progress can and is being made in reconciliation and rehabilitation. Like the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), I saw for myself the displaced peoples camps up in Gulu in northern Uganda—it sounds as though we were there at a similar time—and the extraordinary work being done by NGOs such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, not just on assimilating people back into communities, but on forgiveness in such difficult and challenging areas.

My hon. Friend may also be interested to know of the significant progress that has been made by Chad, Sierra Leone and Liberia on stopping recruitment in the first place by putting in place policies on, for example, birth registration. The safer schools initiative is important. Hopefully, he is aware that the UK has invested in that initiative in northern Nigeria, which is being ably led by our ex-Prime Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was right to crystallise some of the horrific events we have seen recently. Hopefully, he is aware of the support that the UK Government are providing to the Nigerian Government specifically to deal with the challenges in northern Nigeria. He was right to highlight the fact that the UK is leading in that area, whether on ending impunity, building capacity, training, assistance for rehabilitation or allocating funding.

My hon. Friend was correct, as he concluded his remarks, to highlight the importance of forced marriage and female genital mutilation. In July, the Prime Minister will host the UK’s first girl summit, but I should take this opportunity to be unequivocal on the UK position on FGM and forced marriages. In the UK, both are criminal offences, and they are child abuse when minors are involved. We are fully committed to tackling those issues, for example through the work of the joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Home Office forced marriage unit, and through providing funding for NGOs.

The hon. Member for Bristol East, who spoke for the Opposition, was right to mention the challenges and the horrific events that have taken place in the Central African Republic. We have contributed £23 million to the CAR, providing emergency health care and support for hundreds of thousands of people. The CAR interim president has rightly referred the situation in the country to the International Criminal Court, which has the scope to investigate the allegations, but the situation is dire, particularly outside the capital, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that UN Security Council resolution 2149, which was adopted earlier this year, is deployed by 15 September.

I recognise the hon. Lady’s points on Burma, but I want to ensure that the House understands that the Burmese Government are committed to ending the practice that she mentioned, building on the progress since signing the action plan with the UN in June 2012. Some child soldiers have been released in Burma, but we are working closely with the Burmese authorities to ensure that releases continue.

All parties to armed conflict, state and non-state alike, must abide by international law. The protection of civilians during armed conflict is a priority for the United Kingdom and forms an integral part of our building stability overseas strategy. We therefore remain committed to making progress. I believe that such abuse of children, wherever it is in the world, but particularly in conflict areas, should not and must not be tolerated. The words “children” and “soldiers” should not and do not belong in the same sentence.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

I thank all hon. Members for taking part in the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, we might not have had quantity, but we have certainly had quality in the contributions. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) was right to say that the situation regarding protecting children in conflict is getting worse. I was pleased that my hon. Friend drew attention to the UN report published on Tuesday that makes that clear.

There was hope in the debate. If we had had a debate before the Syria crisis, we would not have emphasised education as much as we have today. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), in an in-depth, considered and informed contribution—it was not lengthy—told us of his personal experience of the benefits that education can bring. It is not an add-on, but an essential part of our response to humanitarian crisis. The difference is that the Syrian refugees are not people for whom conflict was the last straw. Those people had quite good lives by middle eastern standards—in many cases, they are professional people.

For children who have seen and experienced things that no child should ever see, there is not a loss of hope, because children have a wonderful quality—resilience. All we need to do is give them that bridge to a life that was good. That can mean education or an attachment to one person in their lives who makes them feel valued. I presume the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was talking about going to the Zaatari camp. One amazing thing that struck me is that families there now have a supermarket to go to. It would be the most amazing therapeutic experience for a child to be in a supermarket trolley, because it is a bridge to a life in which that child was a happy child. We need to offer children all the time those bridges and opportunities to a better and happier time, and to a childhood.

I thank the Minister for the work that he and his Department are doing. He has the support of Members on both sides of the House. Today, it seems that we are all comrades.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of protecting children in conflict.