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| Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, while addressing Human Rights Council in Geneva [PHOTO: UNifeed] |
Geneva: The UN special envoy on children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that the threat of being indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is helping to deter warlords from recruiting child soldiers.
Zerrougui said the two verdicts passed by the ICC and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) this year against the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga and former Liberian President Charles Taylor, respectively, "set important international jurisprudence on the war crime of recruiting and using children".
She was presenting the annual report of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, which covers the period from May 2011 to May 2012.
The special envoy said "initiatives to combat poverty and to provide children and youth with alternatives through quality education, both formal and informal, and national programs for job creation and income generation for young people should be top priorities in national prevention strategies."
Zerrougui called upon the international community to support conflict-affected countries, saying that "international justice cannot replace, but rather complement, national accountability mechanisms, specifically where national authorities are unable or unwilling to bring alleged perpetrators to justice. The challenge in conflict-affected developing countries is not always lack of will, but often one of capacity." -UNifeed