Udenrigsudvalget 2018-19 (1. samling)
URU Alm.del Bilag 126
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STRICTLY EMBARGOED for 1000 GMT, Tuesday 29 January 2019
UNICEF appeals for $3.9 billion in emergency
assistance for 41 million children affected by
conflict or disaster
Millions of children without access to critical child protection services
GENEVA/NEW YORK, 29 January 2019
–
Millions of children living in countries affected
by conflict and disaster lack access to vital child protection services, putting their safety,
well-being and futures at risk, UNICEF warned today as it appealed for $3.9 billion to
support its work for children in humanitarian crises.
UNICEF’s
Humanitarian Action for Children
sets out the agency’s 2019 appeal and its efforts
to provide 41 million children with access to safe water, nutrition, education, health and
protection in 59 countries across the globe. Funding for child protection programmes
accounts for $385 million of the overall appeal, including almost $121 million for protection
services for children affected by the Syria crisis.
“Today
millions of children living through conflict or disaster are suffering horrific levels of
violence, distress and trauma,”
said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “The impact
of our child protection work cannot be overstated. When children do not have safe places to
play, when they cannot be reunited with their families, when they do not receive
psychosocial support, they will not heal from the unseen scars of war.”
UNICEF estimates that more than 34 million children living through conflict and disaster lack
access to child protection services, including 6.6 million children in Yemen, 5.5 million
children in Syria and 4 million children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Child protection services include all efforts to prevent and respond to abuse, neglect,
exploitation, trauma and violence. UNICEF also works to ensure that the protection of
children is central to all other areas of the organisation’s humanitarian programmes,
including water, sanitation and hygiene, education and other areas of work by identifying,
mitigating and responding to potential dangers to children’s safety and wellbeing.
However, funding constraints, as well as other challenges including warring
parties’ growing
disregard for international humanitarian law and the denial of humanitarian access, mean
that
aid agencies’
capacity to protect children is severely limited. In the DRC, for example,
UNICEF received just a third of the $21 million required for child protection programmes in
2018, while around one-fifth of child protection funding for Syrian children remained unmet.
“Providing these children with the support they need is critical, but without significant and
sustained international action,
many will continue to fall through the cracks,” said Manuel
Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes. “The international community should
commit to supporting the protection of children in emergencies.”
2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the landmark Convention on the Rights of the Child and
the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, yet today, more countries are embroiled
in internal or international conflict than at any other time in the past three decades,
threatening the safety and wellbeing of millions of children.