(212) 854-6579 Feb. 1, 1999

smt4@columbia.edu

On Feb. 12, on the Columbia campus in New York City, Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and Stephen Lewis, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, will join representatives of child health, human rights, and international relief organizations an d academic experts at a day-long conference that will develop strategies for helping children who are victims of war. The conference is organized by the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia.

The conference participants also will hear from a young man who became a victim of the war between the Ethiopian army and liberation forces in his native Eritrea. Abraham Gebreyesus, now 28, lost his sight and his right forearm in a land mine expl osion outside his village when he was 11 years old. Gebreyesus, who is studying to become a disability rights lawyer, is a respected advocate for the rights of land mine survivors worldwide.

Recommendations will be prepared at the end of the conference in two key areas: ending the use of child soldiers and rehabilitating children who emerge from deadly conflict. Working groups will be formed among the participants, including Colonel Tor Lovest of the Norwegian Army; Dr. Felton Earls, a child psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School; Jo Becker, an activist for Human Rights Watch, and Richard Garfield of Columbiaâs Mailman School of Public Health, an expert on the special needs of chil dren in armed conflicts.

According to the Swedish Save the Children organization, children under 18 participate as combatants in conflicts in more than 30 countries worldwide. A report to the U.N. General Assembly in 1996, ãThe Impact of Armed Conflict on Childrenä (http: //www.unicef.org/graca/), reported that in the previous decade about two million children had been killed in armed conflict.

The conference, ãThe Protection of Children in Armed Conflict: Strategies for the Professionals in the Field,ä will take place from 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. in the Dag Hammarksjold Lounge, 6th floor, School of International and Public Affairs, 420 West 118th St. at Amsterdam Avenue.

According to Olara Otunnu, the U.N. Secretary-Generalâs Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, there is a clear and alarming trend in armed conflict around the globe. Children are increasingly recruited as combatants and targeted as victims, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan, Uganda, Burundi and elsewhere. According to Mr. Otunnu, in todayâs conflicts 90 percent of the casualties are women and children, a new development in the history of warfare. In World War I, only about five per cent of the casualties were civilian; by World War II, they had risen to 48 percent.

ãIn almost one-third of the worldâs countries, children are both targets and instruments of armed conflicts as combatants,ä said J. Paul Martin, executive director of Columbiaâs Center for the Study of Human Rights at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. ãIt is our goal, with the Canadian government, to make these deliberations among activists, academics, and field workers produce new energy and ideas to save not only children but all civilians from the horrors of war.ä

Canada is working to develop international standards to apply to war-affected children, including child soldiers. Canada is part of a coalition of countries that advise Mr. Otunnu and supports projects aimed at demobilizing and reintegrating child soldiers in Uganda, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The conference is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights, the School of International and Public Affairs, the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbiaâs Mailman School of P ublic Health, the U.N. Studies Program at Columbia and the Canadian Consulate General.

2.1.99 19,466