The protection for children and efforts to ensure their rights in war zones and mitigate effects of war on them are given top priority, confirmed the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Tawakkol Karman.

Her remarks were made in a speech in Amsterdam during the ceremony of 2022 International Children’s Peace Prize awarded by the KidsRights Foundation.

“Children are our communities’ future. And if the child care and protection and provision of aid for children to overcome the war effects don’t become part of our primary objectives at both the local and international level, this future will be unknown and something like the ruins resulting from wars and armed conflicts”, said Tawakkol Karman.

She noted that millions of children in Yemen exist in areas experiencing armed confrontations and hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced, explaining that the state collapse has led Yemeni children to live in cities where state services, including health and education services, have collapsed, and under conditions where state employees are not paid, further complicating the living situation of the children's families and making them unable to meet even their minimum basic needs.

The war and the state collapse, she continued, are throwing millions of children in Yemen into the open to face their fate, without any protection, pointing out children are the most affected.

She added that UN and international initiatives to protect children from the effects of war and armed conflicts and to provide aid, nutrition and health care for children are not a sustainable solution, indicating that, in times of state collapses, wars and starvation, such initiatives remain an international humanitarian duty.

To listen and watch speech, click here