Definitions

Child: Any person below the age of eighteen years, unless the law applicable to the child determines that adulthood is attained earlier.

Child soldier: Any person under the age of eighteen years who is recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including both combat and support roles.

Trafficking of children: When a child is recruited, transported, transferred, harbored, or received by someone for the purpose of exploitation.

Goals of Protection of Children

The primary goal of protecting children is to ensure their safety, well-being, and development. This is rooted in the widespread understanding that children are amongst the most vulnerable members of society, holding unique needs and rights. Protecting children may serve to:

• Ensure Children’s Safety and Security: Ensure that children are adequately protected from physical, emotional, and psychological harm; exploitation; neglect; and violence.
• Promote Health and Well-Being: Children require support to access physical and mental healthcare, nutrition, and proper sanitation.
• Support Social Development: Protecting children enables them to access education and opportunities for intellectual, emotional, and social development.
• Uphold Human Rights: Protecting children safeguards their rights to dignity and life, and supports the human rights principle that demands that children’s best interests are prioritized in all decision-making processes that affect them.
• Build Stronger Communities and Societies: The protection of children contributes to ending cycles of poverty, crime, and endemic health problems by helping to ensure that children grow up as healthy, educated, and socially responsible citizens.

Why Include This Chapter

The inclusion of a Protection of Children Chapter in a peace agreement may serve to:

• Safeguard children’s rights, by upholding commitments in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;
• Dismantle structures, practices, and institutions that allow for the recruitment of child soldiers;
• Promote children’s access to essential services;
• Reunite families and communities;
• Promote sustainable peace, by ensuring that children have opportunities to thrive and contribute positively to post-conflict society;
• Encourage international support and legitimacy, by focusing on vulnerable groups and building trust in the peace process.

Implementation Notes

The severity, scope, and type of harm experienced by children will guide the focus of protective provisions. Peace agreements will usually provide more detailed provisions on the protection of children when the conflict is characterized by widespread recruitment of child soldiers, high rates of child casualties, significant loss of access to education and healthcare, and/or mass displacement and family separation. As with many peace agreement issues, international pressure and the feasibility of implementation, especially in states with weak governance structures, will also impact the way in which an agreement deals with the protection of children.

Core Issues Addressed

Most peace agreements address the following core issues in a Chapter on the Protection of Children:

• Protection from Violence and Exploitation: This section outlines principles for the protection of children from violence and exploitation.
  • Condemnation of Harm to Children: explicitly denounces the exposure of children to violence.
  • Prohibition of Child Recruitment: prohibits the recruitment and use of children in armed forces or groups, ensuring their immediate release where applicable.
  • Prevention of Exploitation: prohibits trafficking, sexual exploitation, and abuse of children, including when there are gendered elements to these crimes.
  • Demining and Explosive Hazard Removal: commits to prioritizing the removal of landmines and unexploded ordnance in areas where children live, attend school, and play.
• Access to Education: This section focuses on ensuring children’s right to education in conflict-affected and post-conflict areas.
  • Rebuilding Educational Infrastructure: prioritizes the restoration and construction of schools and learning environments.
  • Educational Reintegration: outlines principles and mechanisms for addressing situations where children have missed schooling due to conflict.
  • Equal Access: ensures non-discriminatory access to education for all children, including girls, refugees, minorities, and other marginalized groups.
• Health and Wellbeing: This section addresses the physical and psychological needs of children.
  • Healthcare Access: guarantees basic healthcare services such as vaccinations and treatment for conflict-related injuries.
  • Nutrition: commits to tackling food insecurity and malnutrition among children.
  • Mental Health Support: establishes programs for addressing trauma and psychological harm.
• Family Reunification and Reintegration: This section focuses on measures to restore family unity and facilitate care for minors whose parents or family members have died as a result of the conflict.
  • Return of Abducted Children: outlines parties’ commitments to return any children wrongfully taken during the course of the conflict.
  • Family Tracing and Reunification: commits to programs that trace and reunite children with their families.
  • Support for Orphans: establishes systems to support children who have lost caregivers, including through formal institutions and more informal community-based solutions.
• Justice: This section addresses accountability for atrocity crimes and human rights violations committed against children.
  • Accountability for Crimes Against Children: commits to addressing all crimes against children through justice proceedings.
  • Child-Friendly Legal Processes: outlines standards to ensure that any judicial processes are child-friendly and integrate safeguards to prevent re-traumatization.
• Rehabilitation and Reintegration: This section establishes mechanisms for reintegrating child soldiers, including providing psychosocial support, education, and vocational training for older youths.
• Participation of Children in Peacebuilding: This section establishes mechanisms for children to express their needs and priorities in post-conflict recovery.
• International Collaboration: This section encourages partnerships with organizations such as UNICEF and Save the Children to promote and strengthen respect for children’s rights.

Protection from Violence and Exploitation

Condemnation of Harm to Children

Note to Drafters: Parties may include an explicit condemnation of causing harm to children in recognition of children as being among the most vulnerable populations often exposed to long-lasting physical, emotional, and psychological impacts from violence. These provisions are designed to condemn and prevent all forms of harm to children during armed conflict. Collectively, these provisions reaffirm the parties’ shared commitment to the rights of children.

The Parties denounce all forms of violence perpetrated against children.

No child shall be subjected to physical, mental, or other forms of harm.

The Parties shall ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the survival, protection, and development of the child.

The Parties shall undertake to respect and ensure respect for rules of international human rights [and international humanitarian law], which affect children.

[No child shall be detained except as a measure of last resort, in which case the child may be detained only for the shortest appropriate period of time and shall have the right to be kept separately from detained persons over the age of [16] years and to be treated in a manner, and kept in conditions, that take account of her/his age.]

Prohibition of Child Recruitment

Note to Drafters: The recruitment and use of children in armed forces or hostilities exposes children to profound harm. In contexts where children have been used in hostilities, parties can explicitly prohibit any further recruitment of child soldiers.

No child shall be used directly in armed conflict, and children shall be protected in times of armed conflict.

[State] shall criminalize the recruitment of children or involvement of children in hostilities in other forms, including support roles.

[Designate party / the parties] shall immediately and unconditionally dismiss and release all child soldiers.

[State] shall take all necessary measures to ensure that former child soldiers are exempted from compulsory military service.

The government shall accord particular attention to the issue of child soldiers. It shall, accordingly, mobilize resources, both within the state and from the international community, and especially through the Office of the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, UNICEF and other agencies, to address the special needs of these children in the existing disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes.

Prevention of Exploitation

Note to Drafters: Agreements can recognize that protecting children from exploitation is essential for fostering long-term peace and community resilience.

Exploitation of children in all forms is prohibited and [state] shall take the necessary measures for their protection.

[[State] shall take appropriate measures to protect the child from the use of narcotics and illicit use of psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties, and to prevent the use of children in the production and trafficking of such substances.]

[State] shall take appropriate measures to ensure that children are not asked or allowed to perform any work that is inappropriate for their age or that harms the child’s interest, education, physical or psychological health, or puts the child’s intellectual or social growth at risk. [State] shall establish procedures for prevention and identification, monitoring and reporting referrals for investigation, and investigation into and follow-up of instances of child exploitation.

Demining and Explosive Hazard Removal

Note to Drafters: The parties may emphasize the threat that explosive hazards and unexploded mines pose to children and commit to prioritizing demining efforts in areas that would pose most danger to children.

Children shall have the right to be protected against the risks and dangers posed by the presence of military hazards in urban centers and other populated areas. The Parties shall prioritize the removal, disposal, or destruction of physical or military hazards, including unexploded bombs, explosive ordnance devices, minefields, booby traps, and wire entanglements, near residential areas and where children attend school.

Access to Education

Rebuilding Educational Infrastructure

Note to Drafters: The destruction of educational infrastructure results in a great developmental setback for states affected by conflict, in part because of years of lost schooling and vocational skills. There are many challenges faced by communities attempting to rebuild. For instance, there may be a lack of resources for construction and donors may be reluctant to designate emergency funds for long-term development. Nevertheless, reconstruction of educational facilities for children can be put as a priority. The reintegration of children in education facilitates their recovery, and this in turn facilitates the recovery of society as a whole as it returns to peace. Agreements may contain provisions that require portions of emergency funds to be allocated to rebuilding educational infrastructure.

[Donors]/[state] shall [extend the boundaries of]/[allocate] emergency funding to include support for education, including reconstruction of educational facilities.

Educational Reintegration

Note to Drafters: Children living in areas affected by conflict, including those that have had to flee, are likely to miss school for a period of time. Schools are common targets in armed conflicts, and even in the absence of direct targeting, conflict zones may discourage children and teachers from attending school. Reintegration of children in schools, including the establishment of mandatory schooling and establishing measures for returnees, promotes stability and a return to normal roles in the community.

[The government shall provide free compulsory education for the first [number of] years of schooling [and shall endeavour to provide free schooling for a further three years].]

[State] agrees to take steps and enforce measures to: Sustain education outside of formal school buildings until schools are available, including through the use of alternative sites for classrooms, such as community facilities and outdoor space;

Provide students with appropriate educational activities and materials required to recommence education;

Provide teaching aids and supplies to teachers;

Develop educational programs and curriculum, including those that address time missed from school and special needs of children, and including with the help of [international agencies] / [NGOs] / [other parties].

Address challenges associated with age composition of temporary classrooms, including safety concerns; Encourage regular attendance at schools and reduce drop-out rates;

Promote the safety and security of educational spaces and routes thereto to incentivize attendance; and

Organize alternative pathways of education, such as tutoring, catch up classes, and accelerated learning programs to address challenges resulting from time spent away from school.

[A program of assistance for children admitted in the educational system shall be established and tailored in such a way as to cater for school fees, funds for the purchase of uniforms and school equipment [for number of years].]

[The program for the reintegration of returnees shall provide additional school facilities, by expanding existing schools or creating new infrastructures to accommodate the returnee children already at school or of school age.]

Equal Access

Note to Drafters: For children to receive a quality education, they need to feel safe and included in school. Agreements can include measures to ensure that all children have equal access to education and are not subject to discrimination.

[State] agrees to take steps and enforce measures to: Establish non-discriminatory access to education for all children, including girls, refugees, minorities, and other marginalized groups; Work with [school authorities] / [teachers] / [other education administration officials or entities] to eliminate any existing discriminatory school policies that would serve as a barrier to enrolling in or resuming education; Ensure accessibility for students with disabilities.

[[State] shall promote the use of all indigenous languages in the educational system, to enable children to read and write in their own tongue or in the language most commonly spoken in the community to which they belong and, in particular, protect bilingual and intercultural education and institutions.]

Health and Wellbeing

Healthcare Access

Note to Drafters: The destruction of healthcare facilities and diversion of healthcare services during war can have severe effects on healthcare for children. Conflict can impact general healthcare for children, such as vaccination programs, as well as treatment for children injured due to conflict. Provisions can focus on ensuring protection of healthcare services for children.

The Parties recognize the right of children to access the highest attainable standard of health and facilities for the treatment of illness and health.

The Parties agree to respect health facilities as safe environments for the care of patients and workplaces for health workers, and not prevent or obstruct the delivery of medical assistance.

[State] will take measures to ensure:

- No child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services;

- The availability of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children;

- The maintenance of basic health systems and services, with special attention to primary health of children and care of children with chronic or acute conditions; and

- Reduction of infant mortality rate;

- Adequate rehabilitative care for children.

Nutrition

Note to Drafters: Children in conflicted areas can suffer from malnutrition as a result of disruption of food supplies, particularly food supplies that are nutritionally adequate. Children are particularly vulnerable to mortality and morbidity as a result of malnutrition. Malnutrition may also impact their cognitive development.

The Parties agree to refrain from the destruction of food crops, water sources, and agriculture infrastructures in order to cause minimum disruption of food supply and production capacities.

[State] shall take measures to diminish child mortality and morbidity related to malnutrition.

[State] shall take measures to ensure that the population in [geographic area] has sufficient access to and availability of the foodstuffs they need for proper nutrition, in terms of opportunity, quantity, quality and price, especially in the case of children, prioritizing the production of food and the generation of income.

The Parties agree that every effort should be made to deliver humanitarian assistance to all communities of [state], particularly children, who are malnourished and suffering from related diseases. Convoys of humanitarian assistance should travel to all areas of [state] through the most direct routes.

Mental Health Support

Note to Drafters: War and armed conflict affects the mental development and health of children. Agreements can address the loss, grief, and fear children experience during war by including mental health support measures.

The Parties agree to give priority to preventing further traumatic experiences for children.

[State] shall establish special programs for the psychological care of children, especially orphans, to help them overcome the trauma caused by the conflict.

Family Reunification and Reintegration

Return of Abducted Children

Note to Drafters: Children can be abducted during conflict for a number of exploitative purposes, including sexual violence, labor, retaliation, and ransom. While abduction may take place within a state or territory, a child may also be taken across borders.

All [child abductees] / [forcibly displaced children] shall be released immediately and unconditionally by [both parties / party].

[The parties / party] agree to:

- Implement operating procedures for the safe and expeditious handover and release of [abducted children] / [forcibly displaced children;]

- Take measures to end and prevent the [abduction of children] / [forcible displacement of children;]

- [Criminalize the abduction of children and hold perpetrators accountable;]

- [Provide victims of child abduction with support and reparations due to harm].

Family Tracing and Reunification

Note to Drafters: Children separated from their families due to conflict are typically deprived of care and protection and highly vulnerable to neglect, violence, military recruitment, and abuse. Family reunification is generally the first priority for separated children.

The Parties will take steps and enforce measures to conduct assessments that establish the extent of family separation and the situation of the affected children.

The Parties will develop frameworks to trace and reunify unaccompanied children with their families.

Each Party will assign [a lead agency] / [government entity] with overall responsibility for the protection and assistance of displaced children.

The Parties will take steps and enforce measures to:

- Identify affected children;

- Register key personal data for children for the purpose of establishing identity facilitating tracing;

- Search for parents or other close relatives of children with the goal of reunification;

- Ensure close coordination, cooperation, and joint planning between [the governments] and the [ICRC] / [UNHCR] / [UNICEF] / [other implementing agencies] in [all states concerned;]

- Verify the relationship with located family member(s) [and assess the willingness of the children and family member(s) to be reunited]; and

- Reunite children with family member(s) for long-term care. [Where possible, unaccompanied children will be cared for by extended family and community rather than in institutions.]

Support for Orphans

Note to Drafters: Provisions can focus on ensuring adequate support for orphans, including by providing basic necessities. Provisions can also establish formal institutions for the care of orphans and implement community-based solutions.

[State] shall ensure the protection, rehabilitation, and advancement of orphans.

[State] agrees to take steps and enforce measures to:

- Provide basic necessities for orphans, including food, shelter, and access to educational opportunities;

- Establish formal institutions for the temporary support and shelter of orphans with the ultimate goal of establishing long-term care;

- Mobilize community-based organizations, such as local religious centers and women’s groups, to administer programs that provide support to orphans;

- Assist orphans with asserting inheritance rights; and

- Ensure psychological support for orphans.

Justice

Accountability for Crimes Against Children

Note to Drafters: It is often difficult to achieve reconciliation without justice, and such justice requires the apprehension and punishment of individuals guilty of crimes against children. By holding perpetrators accountable, parties can foster deterrence and end renewed cycles of violence.

Formal criminal and civil justice measures shall be applied to any individual who is alleged to have committed crimes or human rights violations against children in the course of [the conflict]. The [Accountability Mechanisms] established in [this Agreement] shall be utilized to address such crimes and violations against children.

Where the individual alleged to have committed crimes or human rights violations against children is under the age of [18], the relevant legal proceedings pursuant to the [Accountability Mechanisms] shall take into account the individual’s age as well as his or her emotional, mental, and intellectual maturity. Children deemed criminally responsible should be treated with dignity and shall have rehabilitation and reintegration needs and interests taken into account and addressed through the [Accountability Mechanisms].

Child-Friendly Legal Processes

Note to Drafters: The inclusion of children in legal processes concerning crimes committed during conflict is critical to restoring and achieving sustainable peace. Children are among the primary victims of conflict, and their involvement in delivering justice is essential in promoting reconciliation. Provisions can set forth child-friendly measures to ensure that children feel safe when recounting their experiences and that children are protected and treated with dignity.

The Parties note that any criminal and civil justice proceedings concerning crimes or human rights violations against children may require the participation of children. As such, the Parties agree that any such legal proceedings shall be modified to address the special needs of children and to adopt child-sensitive approaches. Such legal proceedings shall accord with international law, standards, and norms as well as principles of justice for children.

Rehabilitation and Reintegration

Note to Drafters: Armed conflict affects all aspects of child development. The peace agreement may include provisions that focus on rehabilitation of former child soldiers, including providing psychosocial support, education, and vocational training, among other things, with the aim of building confidence in children and among citizens and institutions and achieving peaceful coexistence within communities.

[State] shall take appropriate measures to promote the psychological recovery and social reintegration of former child soldiers, including through the provision of assistance programs for such children.

Participation of Children in Peacebuilding

Note to Drafters: Agreements and strategies that systematically try to prevent future violations against children and consider children’s rights and concerns can contribute to long-lasting and more sustainable peace, and children’s experiences and voices are key to developing such agreements and strategies.

Children [including former child soldiers and victims of [the conflict]] shall be engaged, voluntarily and upon informed consent, in the mechanisms and efforts contemplated herein to build and maintain peace, and to voice their needs and priorities. [State] shall create dedicated [mechanisms] for children to voice concerns and needs.

International Collaboration

Note to Drafters: Child protection is a collective responsibility and, therefore, international collaboration can help promote and strengthen respect for children’s rights.

[State] shall mobilize resources, both within the country and from the international community, and especially through the Office of the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, UNICEF, Save the Child, and other agencies, to address the special needs of children.

[State] shall respect, encourage, and extend appropriate support to governmental and non-governmental organizations, including private development organizations and institutes, that carry out programs, projects and activities that promote and protect the rights of children.

[State] shall, when necessary or appropriate, seek international community expertise and support in the implementation of provisions aimed at addressing the special needs and rights of children.

Further Readings

• UN, Practical guidance for mediators to protect children in situations of armed conflict
• Sean Molloy, Child Protection Provisions and Peace Agreements
• UN, UN Documents for Children and Armed Conflict
• Ilene Cohn, The Protection of Children in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping Processes