[child-rights] Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict to address West African Heads of State Summit

UNITED NATIONS
Press Release
27 January 2003

Under-Secretary-General Olara A. Otunnu, the Special Representative
of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, has been
invited to address the twenty-sixth ordinary Summit of the Authority
of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) in Dakar, Senegal, on 31 January, on the
issue of the protection of children affected by armed conflict in the
West African subregion.

Children and youth in the subregion have been particularly victimized
during the civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and, more recently,
Co^te d'Ivoire. They have been abducted and forcibly conscripted by
armed groups and have suffered from displacement and deprivation of
education and basic health care, and from sexual exploitation and
abuse. They have also been used as forced labour in the extraction of
natural resources.

The Office of the Special Representative has worked to bring the
issue of children affected by armed conflict to the forefront of
concerns in regional and subregional organizations. An initiative
promoted by Under-Secretary-General Otunnu to integrate child
protection concerns in the work of ECOWAS, proposed during the Accra
Conference on War-Affected Children in April 2000, resulted in the
establishment in April 2002 of a Child Protection Unit in the ECOWAS
Secretariat - the first such office to be set up in a subregional organization.

In his address to the ECOWAS Heads of State, the Special
Representative will highlight the situation of war-affected children
in the subregion, assess progress made in their protection, and
propose concrete actions for further integrating the issue at the
subregional and national levels.

The Special Representative serves as international advocate for
children affected by armed conflict by promoting standards and
measures for their protection in times of war, as well as their
healing and social reintegration in the aftermath of conflict.
For further information, please contact: Jean-Victor Nkolo,
Communications Officer, OSRSG. Telephone: +1-212-963-9879; Fax:
+1-212-963-0807, e-mail: nkolo@un.org.

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