Killing children in war zones is a crime

The Geneva Conventions and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibit attacks on children and schools. The ICC treats the same as a war crime

Children are the worst sufferers in conflicts. Yet, the February 28 attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Iran that resulted in the death of 170 people — a majority of them girls aged 7-12 years, shook the world. A Tomahawk missile destroyed the building situated close to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps facility, but both Israel and the US denied complicity in the attack. US President Donald Trump even alleged that Iran owned Tomahawks and had orchestrated the attack. Western media outlets (The New York Times and BBC) have now found that the US was indeed behind the attack, and outdated “targeting data” may have led to the firing of the missile at the school, which was confused for a military facility.

The suffering inflicted on children should be reason enough to end wars. International humanitarian law is clear about what is to be done. (AFP)

The Geneva Conventions and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child categorically prohibit attacks on children and schools. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treats attacks on schools as a war crime. None of this has stopped warring parties from turning children into targets. Earlier this week, a drone attack in Southern Sudan killed 17 people, most of them children. Close to 20,000 Palestinian children were killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, and the IDF’s ongoing bombings in Lebanon have killed close to 100 children. In Ukraine, during the Afghan conflict, and in multiple conflicts in Africa, children suffered, with their childhoods snuffed out in wars orchestrated by those responsible for their safety.

The suffering inflicted on children should be reason enough to end wars. International humanitarian law is clear about what is to be done. Attacks on schools and children should be treated as war crimes and perpetrators punished; no one should be allowed any leeway under the criminally lazy pretext that it all happens in war.