Tackling impunity for violations of children’s rights is a crucial element of peace and justice processes that has often been overlooked, agreed panellists at a webinar recently organized by Justice Rapid Response. The way crimes affecting children are addressed has a direct impact on the potential for long-lasting peace, they said.
The online discussion on 16 March 2021 – held on the sidelines of the 46th UN Human Rights Council and co-hosted by the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of Uruguay – featured three child rights experts and investigators from the Justice Rapid Response roster.
Accountability for crimes affecting children can only be pursued if judicial systems and human rights investigations have access to the tools and expertise necessary to accompany children in their fight for justice, the panellists said.
“Including children means documenting their story of conflict, their experiences and possible violations they have suffered,” said Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, Permanent Representative of Belgium to the UN in Geneva. “It also involves giving children a role in justice processes, while ensuring their protection.”
The consequences of not investigating child rights are far-reaching.
“The grave human rights violations and the persistent impunity that occur have a destructive impact on children’s lives that we all know will negatively affect the future and wellbeing of entire generations,” said Minister Alejandra Costa, Deputy Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the UN.
The risk and impact of impunity in conflict
In situations of conflict, it is even more important to ensure that violations against children are not ignored. Children often constitute a large proportion, sometimes even half, of the population in conflict contexts, said independent child rights expert Daniela Baro.
“It makes sense then that a thorough investigation looks at the impact of a conflict and the human rights situation on children,” said Ms. Baro.
Due to their young age, children also constitute a vulnerable population and are often a target in conflict situations. For example, Ms. Baro cited that in Libya, migrant adolescent girls have been targeted for sexual abuse because of their youth.
The same incidents or violations can impact adults and children very differently and can also impact boys and girls differently. It is therefore important not only to look at violations but also at the short- and longer-term impact on boys and girls of those violations.
Because children are generally not seen as key political or economic actors, violations against them have too often been neglected. If the trauma they experienced is not addressed, and they do not have access to justice or reconciliation, children are more likely to become actors in new cycles of conflict. This risk alone is enough to justify why commissions of inquiry should have a child’s rights focus when investigating, said Daniela Baro.
Reinforcing investigations with child rights expertise
Javier Pérez Salmerón, also an independent child rights expert, supports these statements and identifies the positive effects of child rights expertise on accountability processes. Adding child rights experts to a team, for instance, expands its capacity to fulfill its mandate in a meaningful way, he said. It also reinforces the team’s legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of victims and survivors.
“Having a child rights expert in a mechanism is a game changer for accountability for crimes against children,” said Mr. Salmerón. “This puts crimes against children higher on the agenda of the mechanism at all stages compared to mechanisms that don’t benefit from this approach and support.”
Challenges facing child rights investigators
Veronique Aubert – Lead on Children and Armed Conflict at Save the Children UK, and a child rights expert on the Justice Rapid Response roster – highlighted some inherent challenges surrounding the investigation of crimes affecting children.
Between 1998 and 2003, she documented the impact of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo on human rights. This conflict became notorious for the scale of sexual violence against boys and girls and recruitment of many children. Ms. Aubert and her partners engaged with the newly created International Criminal Court towards the indictment, and later conviction, of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga.
During the case, several testimonies were recanted after it was considered that some child witnesses may have given embellished testimonies. Despite being a milestone in the fight for child rights, the reluctance to use children as witnesses in future cases was an unfortunate consequence of the Lubanga case. While this challenge is still real, it is surmountable, and investigating children should not be conflated with interviewing children, according to Ms. Aubert.
“In the last two decades, insufficient attention has been given to ingraining the need to investigate, analyze, and prosecute crimes against children,” said Ms. Aubert. A new research study from Save the Children and the University of Oxford identifies barriers to accountability for crimes and violations against children in conflict, and proposes how to overcome them.
The study – Advancing Justice for Children: Innovations to strengthen accountability for violations and crimes affecting children in conflict – highlights that there is much to be learned from domestic justice systems and from the evolution of the use of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) expertise, which has become well established and more effectively resourced.
The report also explains how in a landmark judgement, the Congolese justice system has used innovative approaches to investigate and prosecute international crimes in national courts. These have mainly related to SGBV crimes where young girls make up a large subset of the rape and murder victims.
Bolstering international mechanisms to tackle impunity
Looking forward, Ms. Costa stressed the need to give specific mandates to Human Rights Council mechanisms to investigate and document violations, abuses and crimes affecting children, while considering children’s points of view as right holders in all accountability related efforts.
According to Javier Pérez Salmerón, there needs to be a system in place that includes mandates and resolutions under which child rights are a priority. Mechanisms should include strategies explaining how they will implement those resolutions and how children should participate. Finally, the community of expertise in child rights should share best practices and lessons learned.
Ms. Aubert recommended that the Human Rights Council member states ensure that UN human rights and judicial mechanisms strengthen child-specific expertise and its systematic use within accountability mechanisms. She also underscored the need to adequately resource pools of expertise, such as Justice Rapid Response’s roster, to support the documentation and investigation of crimes affecting children, including in domestic jurisdictions.
Along with its partners from Belgium and Uruguay, Justice Rapid Response expressed its commitment to maintaining a focus on the need for dedicated child rights expertise in international investigations.
“We will continue working to combat impunity for mass atrocities and serious human rights violations, with particular attention to the suffering of children,” said Nina Suomalainen, Executive Director of Justice Rapid Response. “There are many challenges to addressing impunity but there are also many opportunities for all of us to ensure that children are heard and that they are given a role in any and every peace and justice process.”