Global conflicts claim ‘three times’ more child lives in 2023: UN report

AFP | Geneva

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Global conflicts killed three times as many children and twice as many women in 2023 than in the previous year, as overall civilian fatalities swelled 72 percent, the UN said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the UN rights chief, Volker Turk, said that humanitarian aid faced a $40.8-billion funding shortfall across the globe, leaving appeals funded just 16.1 percent on average.

“Contrast this with the almost $2.5 trillion in global military expenditure in 2023, a 6.8 percent increase in real terms from 2022,” Turk told the opening of a United Nations Human Rights Council session in Geneva, pointing out that “this was the steepest year-on-year increase since 2009”.

Warring parties were increasingly “pushing beyond boundaries of what is acceptable - and legal”, Turk said.

They are showing “utter contempt for the other, trampling human rights at their core”, he said. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence. Destruction of vital infrastructure a daily occurrence”. “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed.

Heavy artillery launched on entire communities. All along with hateful, divisive, and dehumanising rhetoric.” The UN rights chief said his office had gathered data indicating that last year, “the number of civilian deaths in armed conflict soared by 72 percent”. “

Horrifyingly, the data indicates that the proportion of women killed in 2023 doubled and that of children tripled, compared to the year prior,” he said.

‘Death and suffering’

In the Gaza Strip, Turk said he was “appalled by the disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law by parties to the conflict” and “unconscionable death and suffering”.

Since the war erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7, he said “more than 120,000 people in Gaza, overwhelmingly women and children, have been killed or injured ... as a result of the intensive Israeli offensives”.

“Since Israel escalated its operations into Rafah in early May, almost one million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced yet again, while aid delivery and humanitarian access deteriorated further,” he said.