Pakistan has once again sought highest body’s (UN) attention towards the simmering situation in Indian held territory of Jammu and Kashmir calling for effective ways to protect children from atrocities committed by the Indian occupation forces in the region. “Children are often at the heart of conflict and are in consequence directly targeted. Their homes and schools are destroyed and food and water supplies deliberately cut off,” Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi said while speaking in the Security Council debate on “Children in Armed Conflict”. “Under foreign occupation, they are subjected to arbitrary arrests, detention and torture. And mass blinding too, as the use of pellet guns by occupation forces in occupied Jammu and Kashmir testifies,” she asserted. Pointing to the recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the ‘Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir’, Ambassador Lodhi said, “There were multiple cases of children under 18 years being arbitrarily detained and tortured under the garb of a black law,” the so called Public Security Act. “We are witnessing a deeply troubling breakdown in humanity and diminishing respect for human life and dignity”, she said adding that children become victims of unimaginable horror every day. The goal of protection of children, she said, can best be achieved by preventing the outbreak of armed conflict in the first place.
Protection of children in conflict zones is no doubt a global concern, Ambassador Lodhi had rightly pointed out that the most effective way to protect children is not only preventing the outbreak of conflicts but resolving conflicts, ending foreign occupation. So the Council must realize this bitter reality and take some concrete steps in this regard. At a time when UNSC is holding open debate on this critical issue a comprehensive mechanism should also be evolved whereby implementation of Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols, which offer specific protection to children during armed conflicts, could be implemented in letter and spirit. As per the international covenants the rights guaranteed to children are almost universally accepted and are applicable during armed conflict. Though, there are certain mechanisms and international institutions/tribunals in place whereby the governments or individuals, who violate international law, could be held accountable at global level. But it is quite unfortunate that India that has broken all records of barbarism and brutality and violated every rule and law of the Geneva Convention has been denying access to the international human rights organizations in the region. Now that the UNHCR has published a comprehensive report on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir it is the moral and legal responsibility of the UN and other influential governments to impress upon India to implement the recommendations of the report and provide an unhindered access to global human rights watch dogs in Kashmir to assess the on ground situation.
