The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has bemoaned the killing of 8,000 children around the world due to war in 2016, urging combatants to do more to protect the young ones.
In his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, Guterres said that the UN verified 3 512 child casualties in Afghanistan, over 40% of the total and “the highest number ever recorded” in the country.
He also noted that extremist groups including al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Islamic State and the Taliban had harmed more than 6,800 children.
The 68-year-old said the recruitment and use of children in conflict had more than doubled in Somalia and Syria, compared with 2015.
Guterrs also said that t UN verified 169 incidents affecting at least 1,022 youngsters in South Sudan, over 60% of them recruited and used by government security forces.
Conflict in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths around the continent, creating dire refugee crises around the continent.
The South Sudan war alone has forced more than two million people to flee their homes.
Earlier this year, the UN announced that the world’s youngest country had become the biggest refugee crisis in Africa, and third worldwide after Syria and Afghanistan.
The report contains a blacklist of government forces and rebel groups that recruit, use, kill, maim, rape, sexually abuse or abduct children in armed conflict or attack schools and hospitals.
