The ongoing invasion on Ukraine by Russia and the continuing use of force on different illegally occupied regions of the world has exposed children to deteriorating and devastating situations. Education always remains at stake, while psychological disturbances, sexual abuses and harassments deepen the hostile environment they are constrained to live in. Conflicts have led to different ways in which children are exploited, abused and made vulnerable to any war-crime. So far, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified a total of 1,232 civilian deaths during Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, of them 112 being children. Furthermore, 1,935 people were reported to have been injured. However, OHCHR specified that the real numbers could be higher since the beginning of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
In view of the recent danger and grave threats to the life and dignity of the children in Ukraine, apart from the enslavement of women in such regions, the psyche and the life of children are put into forcible subjugation by the authoritarian powerful agents. The unchecked and unauthorised brute force which remains an administrative policy at such places always stunts the development of children.
The world has witnessed devastating and disparaging wars and the routine violence and damage which is being inflicted on children in conflict regions is beyond repair. In this series the most disturbing and destructive images are emerging from the different regions of Ukraine.
In the UT of Kashmir, which is engulfed in inexorable violence in a long-drawn conflict, children’s development has been adversely affected. The violence has consumed their lives drastically and they always are at the receiving end in between the two giants who confront each other. Between 2003 and 2017, Jammu and Kashmir witnessed at least 318 killings of children, according to a report by the civil-society group Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. Of these, the report noted, “extensive use of tear-smoke shells and pellet shotguns resulted in killings of at least 16 children.”
In 2012, a study was carried out by the United Kingdom-based charity ‘Save the Children’ that found Kashmir valley has 215,000 orphans, “out of which 37% have lost one or both parents to the prevailing conflict.” This hostile environment breaks down children mentally, psychologically and physically.
It is indeed criminal injustice to children when they work out of their sheer poverty or out of ignorance and in the absence of parents. Hundreds of thousands of children work in handicrafts (shawl embroidery, wood-carving paper-machie, Gabba and NambaSazi), other cottage industries, hotels and eateries, auto workshops or other vocations. At a time when a child ought to be playing or studying in a school, many children carry too heavy a burden on their frail shoulders. What a waste of young human resources!
The report says there are no legal and normative processes or practices protecting children’s rights in Jammu and Kashmir as hundreds of minors have been booked “under the repressive Public Safety Act (PSA), with total disregard to the fact of their being children.” According to data attached to the report filed by the four-judge Juvenile Justice Committee of the Jammu and Kashmir High court, 144 children less than 18 years of age had been picked up by police between August 5 and September 23 in 2019. A grave transgression of the basic rights of children occurred very recently, post the abrogation of Articles 370 & 35A, when several number of children were jailed under preventive detentions laws and were taken far away from the valley to the jails of Amritsar and other states of the country, which is itself a vilification of being a human, moreover the being of a child.
There is a medical study on the psychological impact of the conflict on children in Kashmir wherein the doctors have warned of an emerging “epidemic of psychological disorder” in children, as they are more vulnerable to the ongoing trauma. On this point, the IMHANS-K has already seen around 200 mental trauma cases for study and analysis of the changing psychological trend among children, whose psyche was marred by the frequent crackdowns by security forces, encounters and funerals in J&K. Of the 200 cases, the said data reveals that 65%-70 % of the affected children were from south Kashmir and around 80% belonged to pre-adolescence and early adolescence age groups.
This psychological trauma due to the conflict has led to grave drug abuse and addiction among children in order to escape the stress and hard situations around. Official figures provided by IMHANS show a rapid rise in addiction from 2016 to 2019. In 2016, just 489 people were treated for drug abuse, by 2017 that number rose to 3,622, and to 7,420 by 2019. Around 4,000 patients were treated in 2021. The growth of drug abusers is exponential and depicts an abnormal increase which is a sorry state of affairs.
Apart from other issues, children have been robbed of their education. As per official figures, since 1990 Kashmir has lost significant school working days due to conflict. As reported, 207 working days were lost in 1991, 112 in 2010, 130 in 2016 (accounting for nearly 60 per cent of total working days). From August 5, 2019, until recently, the offline education was far away and still off, with educational institutions closed down. Due to the ongoing conflict, which in practice translates itself to conflicts on the streets and clashes with security forces, parents have been reluctant to send their children to school. In fact, the lack of safety has led some parents to state that education is less important than the safety of their children. For education it is always essential and inevitable that there must be security first. Without security there is no quality education, if at all. Children need a safe environment in which they feel comfortable in order to attend school and be in a learning environment.
The most unfortunate and disturbing trend is children getting recruited in armed groups as combatants, which is yet another brute impact of conflict on children. According to data accessed from the J&K Police, at least 24 children below the age of 18 were recruited by various militant groups from 2010 to July 2018. The youngest ones are compelled to grow in such an environment wherein they become the victims themselves.
Children in Kashmir are living in a state of confusion and chaos, where excessive obsession breeds fear and nervousness, where physical, mental, cultural, intellectual or emotional well-being is endangered and where forces of bigotry and hegemony have claimed the lives of thousands of children.
Children living in countries at war have come under direct attack, have been used as human shields, killed, maimed or recruited to fight. Rape, forced marriage and abduction have become standard tactics in conflicts from Syria to Yemen, and from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Nigeria, South Sudan and Myanmar and Palestine to Afghanistan.
Over the course of 2018:
• In Afghanistan, violence and bloodshed remained a daily occurrence, with some 5,000 children killed or maimed in 2017 and the first three quarters of 2018, and children making up 89 per cent of civilian casualties from explosive remnants of war.
• In Myanmar, the UN continued to receive reports of ongoing violations of the rights of Rohingya remaining in northern Rakhine State, which include allegations of killings, disappearances and arbitrary arrests.
• In Palestine, over 50 children were killed and hundreds more injured during the year, many whilst demonstrating against deteriorating living conditions in Gaza. Children in Palestine and Israel have been exposed to fear, trauma and injuries.
• In Somalia, more than 1,800 children were recruited by parties to the conflict in the first nine months of the year, with 1,278 children abducted.
• In Syria, between January and September, the UN verified the killing of 870 children – the highest number ever in the first nine months of any year since the start of the conflict in 2011.
• In eastern Ukraine, more than four years of conflict have taken a devastating toll on the education system, destroying and damaging hundreds of schools and forcing 700,000 children to learn in fragile environments, amidst volatile fighting and the dangers posed by unexploded weapons of war.
• In Yemen, the UN has verified 1,427 children killed or maimed in attacks during the year.

The writers are students of Law at University of Kashmir. [email protected], [email protected]

Aabid Mushtaq & Tajamul Islam