UN: Children Abused, Killed in S Sudan... 84 Children Detained in Cameroon

Local Editor

The United Nations declared that scores of children had been abused and killed in the warring regions in South Sudan.

"Children have been tied together before their attackers slit their throats ... others have been thrown into burning buildings," said UN children's agency chief Anthony Lake in a statement released earlier this week.

Furthermore, tens of thousands were believed to have been killed in the 18-month war, although there was no clear toll. At least 129 children were killed in May in the northern state of Unity, scene of some of heaviest fighting in the civil war, UNICEF added.

"The violence against children in South Sudan has reached a new level of brutality," Lake added. Thousands of children have also been abducted to fight.

Lake continued, "children are also being aggressively recruited into armed groups of both sides on an alarming scale - an estimated 13,000 children forced to participate in a conflict not of their making."

"Imagine the psychological and physical effects on these children - not only of the violence inflicted on them but also the violence they are forced to inflict on others."

Though, a quarter of a million children face starvation, while two-thirds of the country's 12 million people need aid, with 4.5 million people facing severe food insecurity, according to the UN.

Hence, Lake urged that the ‘this violence against the innocent must stop."

In a parallel notion, human rights activists said that Cameroonian authorities had been holding 84 children in detention after they raised a series of schools accused of supporting Boko Haram.

Amnesty International said Friday that some of the children were as young as 5 years old, and had been held for months without any charges.

Moreover, authorities said the Quranic schools they were attending in Cameroon's far north were actually training camps for the Boko Haram Takfiri group.

Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for West and Central Africa, urged Cameroonian officials to release the children to their parents.

Nearly all the children are under 15, the age at which they can face criminal charges under a regional human rights charter of which Cameroon is a signatory.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team