At least 100,000 babies die every year because of conflict

At least 550,000 babies are thought to have died as a result of armed conflict between 2013 and 2017 in the 10 worst crisis-affected countries, according to new analysis by Save the Children — an average of well over 100,000 every year.

The total number of deaths from indirect effects jumps to 870,000 when all children under the age of five are included. In comparison, it is estimated that nearly 175,000 fighters were killed in the conflicts during the same five-year period.

The infants and young children succumbed to indirect effects of conflict and war such as hunger, damaged infrastructure and hospitals, a lack of access to health care and sanitation, and the denial of life-saving aid, Save the Children says.

The numbers of indirect and direct child deaths are published in a new Save the Children report, Stop the War on Children, launched ahead of today’s opening of the Munich Security Conference. For the second year in a row, the report includes the most comprehensive collection of data on the number of children living in conflict-affected areas. It reveals that more children — almost one in five — are living in areas affected by armed conflict and war than at any time in more than 20 years – and that the risks they face are higher than ever before.

New research by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), commissioned by Save the Children, found that 420 million children were living in conflict-affected areas in 2017 (18 per cent of all children worldwide) — up 30 million from the previous year. Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Syria, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria and Somalia are the countries where children were hardest hit by conflict in 2017.

The Stop the War on Children report also features a breakdown of UN data on verified grave violations against children: a set of six violations that are among the worst impact of conflict on children, and all of which flout international rules and standards to protect children in war. These include: killing and maiming of children; recruitment into armed groups or forces as child soldiers; sexual violence against children; attacks on schools and hospitals; and denial of humanitarian aid. According to Save the Children’s analysis, these grave violations rose worldwide from just under 10,000 in 2010 to more than 25,000 in 2017—the highest number on record.

Bill Chambers, President and CEO of Save the Children Canada, said:

“Our report shows that the way today’s wars are being fought is causing more suffering for more children. Almost one in five children are now living in areas impacted by conflict – more than at any time in the past two decades. The number of children being killed or maimed has more than tripled, and we are seeing an alarming increase in the use of aid as a weapon of war.

From the use rape as a weapon of war, to the continued recruitment of children into armed groups and forces, girls and boys are being devastated by war – and the world is allowing this to happen. These and other crimes are being committed with impunity, and the basic needs of child survivors are largely going unmet.

Canada has demonstrated welcome leadership to protect children in conflict and ensure some of their basic needs are met, such as the focus on ending the use of child soldiers with the Vancouver Principles initiative, to the G7 commitment for girls’ education in conflict and crisis. But we have a long way to go – Canada must build on these initiatives to help ensure that girls and boys are no longer attacked, that perpetrators of these crimes are held to account for their actions, and that girls and boys alike are given the protection and support their need in conflict and beyond to survive and recover.”

Masika*, 15, from the DRC, is the youngest of seven children whose father died and left them unable to support themselves. She left school and joined an armed group to survive. “Everything I had thought I could do and could be one day now seemed impossible. I thought my only option was to get involved with armed groups. [The soldiers] wouldn’t stop asking me to satisfy their sexual urges and I found myself having to give in.”

To better ensure children’s protection and survival in conflict, Save the Children in calling on the Government of Canada to take the following five steps:

1. Build on existing Canadian leadership to protect children in conflict to facilitate dialogue between and amongst relevant states, the UN, civil society, and where possible relevant armed groups, to develop action plans, codes of conduct and policies to protect children from the six grave violations, including to implement existing or upcoming commitments such as those made by states endorsing the Vancouver Principles, Paris Principles and Safe Schools Declaration;
2. In line with Canada’s recent and welcome steps to join the Arms Trade Treaty, commit to regulate and improve transparency on international arms sales and transfers, and other forms of military assistance. Specifically, these should be conditional on respect for international humanitarian and human rights law, including protection of children from the six grave violations, and should be denied or suspended where there is credible evidence that the sale, transfer or assistance may be used to perpetrate rights violations, including against children;
3. Ensure Canada’s support for accountability within a rules-based international order (as recently demonstrated in the Rohingya crisis, in Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela), includes a commitment to consistently support international mechanisms to investigate and where relevant, prosecute cases of violations of children’s rights in conflict, including through championing the inclusion of children’s rights in mandate negotiations, and in resourcing dedicated gender-sensitive, child-specific expertise in international investigations.
4. Consistently champion the importance of both child protection and gender-specific expertise within UN missions, including as this relates to the UN’s monitoring and reporting of grave violations against children in conflict, to help ensure systematic collection of age and sex disaggregated data, and the complete, accurate and impartial naming of perpetrators.
5. Increase multi-year investment in gender-responsive humanitarian child protection programming, and leverage its leadership on child protection in armed conflict to help ensure the centrality of protection in humanitarian response across the humanitarian sector, bringing an age-sensitive and gender-responsive lens to protection in conflict.

Bill Chambers continued: “When the rules of war are broken, Canada must be clear and consistent that this will not be tolerated, and must build on existing efforts to hold perpetrators to account. For the girls and boys whose lives are wrecked by conflict, Canada must step up to ensure we collectively do all we can to protect these children from further harm and help rebuild their future.”

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Notes to editors:

• In a study published in The Lancet, researchers matched child-survival data to data on the intensity, scale and location of armed conflict in 35 African countries over the two decades to 2015. They found that exposure to conflict increased the average risk of death for children under the age of five by 7,7%. The risk was greatest for children under the age of one living in areas with exposure to more intense conflicts over more protracted periods. The deaths recorded by the Lancet study were due to the indirect impact of conflict, including the destruction of livelihoods and assets, of sanitation and food systems, of medical supply chains, and of access to basic services. We have applied the findings to the ten worst conflict-affected countries in which to be a child listed above and estimate that in the last five years alone 550,000 infants have died due to the reverberating impact of conflict. The total for children under five is 868,000. These estimates are imperfect – they are indicative and may be conservative.
• Between 2013 and 2017, around 331,000 people died on the battlefields of Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, DRC, Iraq Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This total is based on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Events Dataset (UCD-GED), with the exception of Syria where, owing to underreporting, we used Violations Documentation Center data. Of these 331,000 people, a total of 174,703 were combatants according to the same sources.
• Children living in conflict-affected areas are defined as children who live within 50km of where one or more conflict events took place in a given year, within the borders of a country.