In a news release, UNICEF said it had clear evidence of continuing recruitment of children, and warned that such practices represent a grave violation of international law.

“Recruiting children is both morally unacceptable and prohibited under international law,” said UNICEF’s Representative in the country, Souleymane Diabaté. “We have called on the new leadership in CAR to ensure that all children associated with armed groups should be released immediately and protected from further violations.”

Diabaté said the new authorities in the capital, Bangui, have shown their intentions to identify and release children among the ranks of armed groups, and stressed that UNICEF is committed to working with them to ensure that new recruitments stop immediately and that child soldiers are returned to their families.

UNICEF underlined that the current tension, insecurity and a lack of access by humanitarian workers to large parts of the country means that children are at greater risk than ever. However, it noted that only 25 per cent of the funds required to respond to the crisis have been received so far.

At least 4.1 million people, almost half of whom are children, have been directly affected by the crisis. Since December, 1.2 million people have been cut off from essential services, and human rights violations have continued even after the Séléka rebel coalition seized power on 24 March.

In addition, more than 37,000 people have fled the country in the past four months due to the violence. Most displaced persons have found asylum in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while other have gone to Chad and Cameroon.

The High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres visited CAR refugees in a remote area of northern DRC, where his office (UNHCR) and its partners are providing assistance and protection.

“The needs of the refugees are significant, but access to the area is difficult,” UNHCR Spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva. “We have been registering the refugees, distributing aid, setting up emergency shelters and working with partner organizations to provide health and education support.”

Fleming added that UNHCR is extremely concerned about regional stability, given the situation in eastern DRC and the crises in the CAR and Sudan’s Darfur region.

“While it is difficult to establish the precise figures, reliable sources have stated that numbers [of children] involved are in the hundreds and appear to be escalating,” UNICEF said in a news release.

“UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict, leaders and community members to ensure that children are protected from the harmful impact of armed conflict and do not participate in hostilities,” it added.

Last month, the agency had reported that at least 175 boys, between the ages of 12 and 18, were directly associated with armed groups in the north, where fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels broke out in January.

The insecurity resulting from the renewed clashes, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region and political instability in the wake of a military coup d’état in March, have led over 250,000 Malians to flee to neighbouring countries. Some 174,000 Malians are estimated to be internally displaced.

The recruitment and use of children under the age of 18 by armed groups is prohibited by international law, and constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity if children are recruited and used under the age of 15.

UNICEF also warned of the deteriorating conditions in northern Mali, where the malnutrition rate is among the highest in the country. Schools have been closed for much of the year and cholera has surfaced along the Niger River.

“Community coping mechanisms are being stretched to the extreme and risk failure, with negative consequences for children and women,” UNICEF said, adding that it has received only 28 per cent of the $58 million it seeks for an emergency appeal to help Malian children this year.

“The signature of the action plan will be critical for the professionalization of the security forces, and will contribute positively to the ongoing stabilisation of Somalia,” the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), Augustine Mahiga, said in a news release.

The action plan, signed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Somalia, taking place in the Italian capital of Rome, outlines concrete steps to be taken by the Government to ensure a child-free national army. The ICG is composed of representatives of the United Nations and its diplomatic partners in support of efforts to restore peace and stability in Somalia.

“I strongly urge the governments present here at the ICG to come forward and provide the necessary funding for the release and reintegration of these children,” Mahiga said.

According to UNPOS, the plan was signed by the Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia, Mr. Hussein Arab Isse, and, on behalf of the UN, by Mahiga. The Somali minister also committed to sign an action plan to protect children from being killed or maimed, and this second action plan will be signed later this month in Mogadishu, Somalia.

In the plan, the Somali Government commits to end and prevent recruitment of children in Somalia’s National Armed Forces; reintegrate all children released from the armed forces with the support of the UN; criminalize the recruitment of children through national legislation; and provide the UN with unimpeded access to military installation to verify the presence of children.

Since 2007, the Transitional Federal Government has been listed on the UN Secretary-General’s list of parties to conflict who recruit and use children. Full compliance with the action plan will result in the Government being removed from the list.

“I am encouraged to hear that the Government has committed to sign a similar agreement to end the killing and maiming of children,” said the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy. “Somalia must now sign and ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols.”

After decades of warfare, Somalia has been undergoing a peace and national reconciliation process, with the country’s Transitional Federal Institutions currently implementing the so-called Roadmap for the End of Transition in Somalia, devised in September last year, that spells out priority measures to be carried out before the current transitional governing arrangements end on 20 August.