Equity for Children would like to take a moment in observance of the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression. Following global attention drawn to the heightened impact of armed conflict on children, the UN General Assembly adopted the 51/77 Resolution on the Rights of the Child in 1997. This milestone effort to protect children in conflict situations marked the beginning of a new commitment to advocacy efforts at a global level to take account of the special vulnerability of children in crisis situations.
Violations against the rights of children have increased in recent years, and 250 million children living in conflict zones need structures of accountability and defenders to advocate for their rights against violence and denial of humanitarian access.
At the General Assembly’s emergency special session Palestine in August of 1982, the body decided to commemorate 4 June of each year as the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression as an opportunity to raise awareness and advocate for change surrounding this issue. The work of the UN, as well as practitioners in the field of child rights and welfare research and advocacy, is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified human rights history in existence. We must therefore take today especially to give recognition to children suffering physical, emotional, and mental abuse, as well as any deprivation, discrimination, inequality of access, or rights violation. The fight to remove children from situations of aggression must succeed if we are to achieve target 16.2 of the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals, which calls for an end of all forms of violence against, and exploitation of, children everywhere.
© Image from Khalid Atif Hasan.
