UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15: Pakistan on Tuesday called on the UN Security Council to take concrete steps for the “amelioration of suffering of children affected by armed conflicts around the world by first and foremost, exercising its responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Addressing the fist formal meeting of the UN Security Council after Pakistan assumed the seat as a non-permanent member for two years in the 15-member UN body, on the subject of “Children and Armed conflict”, the Ambassador of Pakistan to the United Nations, Munir Akram, said that the council had yet to fully explore and exploit the vast potential for conflict prevention and resolution specially under Charter 6 of the United Nations Charter relating to the specific settlement of disputes.

“In this context, it is essential to emphasize the central responsibility of the council to secure respect for and implementation of its own resolutions relating to peace and security,” said Mr Akram alluding to Kashmir and Palestinian issues.

He said that the council should also address seriously the growing deficit in respect for international humanitarian law and human rights, painfully visible in many armed conflicts.

“The atrocities of Rwanda and Srebrenica are still fresh in our minds. The civilian suffering in occupied Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir is going on.”

He noted that the emergence of the International Criminal Court, and the increasing willingness of the world community, to penalize gross violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, were welcome signs that atrocities in armed conflicts would not continue to enjoy impunity in future.

Akram said that Pakistan endorsed the secretary-general’s observation that international norms and standards codified for the protection of children should be applied through a strengthened monitoring and reporting mechanism to identify the violators. “We also agree with him that the era of application should encompass the key elements: dissemination, advocacy, monitoring and reporting. We trust that the council will agree to install such mechanisms.

“One way of doing so would be to appropriately extend the authority of existing UN peacekeeping or observer missions in various conflict areas to perform the task of such humanitarian monitoring and reporting.” he added.

He underscored that it was “appalling that, over the last decade, two million children have been killed in conflicts, over a million orphaned, over six million seriously injured and tens of thousands, specially girls, subjected to rape as a deliberate instrument of policy”. “As one of the six co-initiators of the 1989 Children’s Summit, Pakistan is committed to resolutely eliminating the pervasive suffering imposed on children in armed conflicts. We believe we could make an important contribution to this objective as a member of the Security Council and as a major troop contributing country to UN peacekeeping operations,” he said.

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in opening the council meeting, said: “The time has come to ensure that the hard-won gains in crafting a protection regime for children are applied and put into practice on the ground.”

“The tragic fact is that children continue to be victimized in the most cynical and cruel manner in conflicts around the world,” he said.

Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian UN observer, told the council that Israel’s siege of occupied territories not only resulted in deaths of children but also inflicted emotional trauma.

Annan and Olara Otunnu, his special envoy for children in war zones, last month listed 23 governments and insurgents that abused children in conflicts. But the report concentrated on those in Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Somalia and Afghanistan, areas where the Security Council is involved.

The activists from several major groups, such as Care, Save the Children and Human Right Watch, said all parties and governments, such as Myanmar, who continue to recruit or use child soldiers should be named explicitly.