New Delhi: India marked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his remarks to victims of children at J & K and other Indian countries when urging attention to “selectively” efforts to expand the mandate and politicize the agenda.
Participating in the UNSC debate about children and armed conflict, the Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla expressed concern that despite the mandate of the Board, the Secretary General of the Children in Armed Conflict included allegations that were not an armed conflict situation or threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.
“We must be careful when efforts to selectively expand the mandates that have a signaling agenda, diverting attention from the real threat to peace and international security and for children in armed conflict,” said Shringla.
According to sources, the basic position of India about this problem is that there are no armed conflicts in India as defined in international law.
In his report, the Secretary General has expressed concern for children’s victims in J & K and asked the Indian government to take preventive steps to protect children, including “by ending the use of pellets to children”.
Shringla admitted that the world was watching dangerous and worrying trends in global terrorism in the form of an increase in the number of children being recruited and involved in terrorism related activities.
The Foreign Secretary asked the state to show “a greater political will” to defend the actors of terrorism and their sponsors to take into account, and to fulfill the obligations of the protection of the Board of Children.
“The terror group utilizes the fact that children are the most vulnerable to manipulation.
School closure because the pandemic has provided a greater opportunity to these terrorist groups to target children,” he added.