According to UNICEF, 2017 was one of the worst years for children caught in conflicts and besieged areas. From being deployed as human shields to acting as suicide bombers, children have become targets on a huge scale.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Badra
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Warring parties in 2017 had a blatant disregarded for international law when it came to the protection of children, an official from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday.
A UNICEF report found that in conflict-ridden regions across the world, high numbers of children had been killed, used as human shields and recruited to fight.
"Children are being targeted and exposed to attacks and brutal violence in their homes, schools and playgrounds," Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF's director of emergency programs, said. "As these attacks continue year after year, we cannot become numb. Such brutality cannot be the new normal."
Going to school in wartime
With several countries in the Middle East in the grip of conflicts, children there are not only in danger but often miss out on schooling. Efforts are made to keep lessons going, even under dire conditions.
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Lessons continue despite destruction
These girls are attending a class at their school in the Yemeni port city of Hedeidah despite the fact that a wall has been almost completely taken out by a Saudi-led air strike. The country has been enmeshed in a bloody civil war for three years now, and the conflict shows no sign of ending. Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015.
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Learning in a barn
Syria is another country in the Middle East wracked by civil conflict, with millions displaced and hundreds of thousands killed. Some of the displaced children are seen here being taught in a barn for lack of school buildings in the rebel-held area of Daraa in southern Syria. Chairs are also in short supply, meaning several of the children have been forced to sit on stones instead.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Abazeed
Failed deal
Although Iran and Russia, which both back the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, made a deal with rebel backer Turkey to make Eastern Ghouta a "de-escalation zone" from July, the agreement has been repeatedly violated. This school in the Eastern Ghouta village of Hamouria did not escape damage, and humanitarian workers have warned of a dire situation inside the enclave.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Almohibany
Makeshift school
Syrian children are seen here attending classes in improvised conditions in a rebel-held area of the southern city of Daraa. Although many countries are determined that children in Syria should not become a "lost generation" for lack of schooling, the war is making it difficult and sometimes impossible for lessons to continue.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Abazeed
Return to normality amid signs of war
This wall at a school in the Syrian village of Hazima, north of Raqqa, is full of bullet holes from the war. The extremist group "Islamic State" closed the school and many others in northern Syria when it took over the region in 2014. Now it has been driven out, children can go back to learning normal subjects instead of the extremist propaganda taught by the hardline Islamists.
Image: Reuters/Z. Bensemra
Games amid ruins
"Where do the children play?" British singer Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his former stage name of Cat Stevens, once asked in a song. These children have found their playground in this damaged school in al-Saflaniyeh in eastern Aleppo province. But one can only wish they had nicer, and safer, surroundings for their games.
Image: Reuters/K. Ashawi
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Children in Africa particularly vulnerable
The report highlighted the long-running conflicts in Africa as among the worst places where children were increasingly chosen as deliberate targets.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region, almost a million children were displaced in the past year alone, while more than 400 schools were intentionally attacked.
In Nigeria and Cameroon the jihadist group Boko Haram used around 135 children as suicide bombers — over five times as many than the year prior.
In Southern Sudan, as many 19,000 children have been forcibly recruited as soldiers since 2013.
Crises in the Middle East
In war-torn Yemen, UNICEF estimated that some 5,000 children had been killed or injured since the outbreak of civil war in the country in March 2015. A worsening food shortage in the country has left almost 2 million children suffering from malnutrition.
In Iraq and Syria, around 700 children were reportedly killed in the year to September, while UNICEF reported numerous instances where young people came under sniper fire and were even used as human shields.
The UNICEF reports follows a bid to draw attention to the plight of children in besieged areas by Pope Francis in his annual Christmas message. "We see Jesus in the children worldwide wherever peace and security are threatened by the danger of tensions and new conflicts," Francis said.
