The Beginning of an End: Children’s Rights on the Precipice of Wars
Statement by Iranian Jurists and Child Rights Activists
Addressed to the Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Executive Director of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF)
Excellencies,
As you are well aware, children constitute the focal point of human values and the core of human rights initiatives. Therefore, any violation of children's rights—whether overt or covert, and particularly in the context of armed conflicts and military aggressions—demands the utmost serious attention from international institutions. It is imperative to break the heavy silence, as its continuation will result in the trampling of the most sensitive frontline of human rights defense.
Today in Iran, a month after the unprovoked initiation of war by the joint forces of the United States and the Zionist regime—a notorious entity synonymous with the violation of children's rights globally—over 214 children under the age of 18, 17 children under the age of 5, and even unborn fetuses have been brutally killed. Nearly two thousand children have suffered physical injuries, and it is self-evident that the psychological trauma resulting from this insane volume of horrific explosions, destruction, displacement, and the distress of an unequal war has impacted millions of Iranian children. Regrettably, there is no visible will within international assemblies to seriously and effectively condemn these crimes or to arrange for the repulsion of these threats.
The blatant and brazen violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the fundamental rights of children—including the right to life, health, education, and other dimensions—following the ruthless military aggression against Iran by the United States and Israel, in which the most vivid of these crimes saw over 160 students drenched in blood, has more than ever sounded the alarm for the collapse of children's rights in the furnace of endless wars. This situation underscores the grave duty of activists and responsible institutions worldwide to fulfill their human and conscientious mission. Any negligence, dereliction of duty, or justification in this regard will strip the Convention on the Rights of the Child of its spirit of honor, reducing it to a shell of empty, symbolic slogans.
Unfortunately, the current war, dominated by terrorist characteristics and a terror-centric approach, leads to the trampling of children's rights more than any other conflict. Rather than military confrontations on the battlefield, homes, schools, streets, and markets have become the targets of brutal attacks. The continuation of this trend will push the depth of the tragedy toward an unprecedented collapse of children's rights and the disintegration of the very concept of human rights.
Therefore, this written statement, on behalf of two thousand jurists and child rights activists from the Iranian Scientific Association of Child Rights, and more than five thousand jurists from scientific associations affiliated with the Union of Iranian Legal Scientific Associations, is submitted to condemn the crimes of the United States and Israel against children—particularly the deliberate and barbaric massacre of students at the Shajareh Tayyiba School in Minab. Accordingly, we demand an immediate, serious, and effective investigation into this unprecedented and unbelievable violation of children's rights, as well as the implementation of special measures to compensate for damages and repel existing threats, within the framework of the inherent duties of the aforementioned institutions.
Dr. Mahmoud Abbasi
President of the Iranian legal scientific associations Union
The Former Secretary of the National Body of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Iran&
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