13 July 2011 - Schools and hospitals must remain zones of peace to be respected by all conflict actors the United Nations Security Council ruled Tuesday in a new resolution intended to protect children and young adults caught up in armed conflict.

“Places of learning and healing should never be places of war,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during an open debate in New York on children and armed conflict.

The new resolution intends to hold accountable those who attack schools and hospitals, publicly naming and shaming them in its annual report. It marks the culmination of a campaign that has seen 15 action plans signed covering nine conflict arenas.

Last month, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict visited Afghanistan and condemned the ‘disgraceful” act of using unsuspecting young children as bomb-carriers. Her condemnation came in the aftermath of an incident in which an 8-year-old girl was tricked into carrying a bomb close to a police car that a remote operative detonated.

In another incident, a car bomb exploded outside the maternity ward of a hospital in eastern Afghanistan’s Logar Province June 25 resulting in at least 20 dead, including several women and children. The ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, condemned the attack as “despicable.”

The State of the World’s Mothers report, published by NGO Save the Children one day before the attack, revealed that Afghanistan is already the worst place in the world in which to be a mother with indicators showing that the country has the highest maternal mortality rate risk and the lowest female life expectancy in the world
“Let us resolve to keep up the pressure on all who violate the rights of children in conflict, whether it is in conscripting child soldiers or threatening schools and hospitals,” said Mr Ban.

Ambassador Peter Wittig, the Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN and current President of the Security Council, visited Afghanistan in June as chair of the Council’s committee on children and armed conflict in order to see for himself the impact of conflict on children in one of the world’s most damaging conflicts prior to the debate on resolution 1998.