Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to improve the protection of children living in conflict.

The UK is committed to protecting children affected by armed conflict, including ending the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The UK is an active member of the United Nations Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict (CAAC), which leads the international response on the issue of child soldiers and child protection.

The UK is the largest single financial contributor to the office of the UN Security General's Special Representative (SRSG) for CAAC. The British Government has been funding the Office of the SRSG on CAAC for a number of years, and will contribute £100,000 per year for the next three years (2017/18 – 2019/20). Through DFID, we are the largest bilateral donor to “Education Cannot Wait”, which was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 to protect access to education for children in conflict zones. DFID’s education programmes have long addressed violence in schools and its Education Policy published in February 2018 (“Get Children Learning”) commits to focus even more on this in future. This includes supporting children’s psychological and social well-being and promoting inclusive education systems which minimise the negative effects of conflict and encourage reconciliation.

In 2018, the UK endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration as well as the guidance set out in both the Paris and Vancouver Principles which aims to ensure that child protection is an operational priority for UN peacekeeping missions. We press for the inclusion of child protection in peacekeeping responses through UN mandate renewals and resolutions. We call on other states to endorse and implement these instruments.

In November 2019, the UK will host an international meeting on preventing sexual violence in conflict. One of the key focuses will be how we can better support children born of sexual violence in conflict, including tackling stigma.