News

On 28 September, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius, who is visiting New York, met with Leila Zerrougui, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. The conversation focused on ways to protect children in armed conflict and to ensure those responsible for crimes against children were brought to justice.

“The international community has to make every effort to effectively protect children from exploitation by terrorists and extremist groups, as well as to find ways to ensure that offenders are brought to justice for such crimes,” said Linkevičius.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister thanked the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for her activities - assessing the situation of children affected by armed conflict, cooperating with the UN Security Council’s Yemen Sanctions Committee and the Central African Republic Sanctions Committee - which are currently chaired by Lithuania.

During the meeting, the officials drew attention to the risks posed by the conflict in Ukraine to children. According to Linkevičius, about 1.7 million Ukrainian children are directly affected by the two-year-old Russian aggression, nearly 200,000 of them have been forced to flee their homes and the conflict zone.

Zerrougui thanked Lithuania for its active work within the UN Security Council framework to raise the issue of the protection of children in armed conflict.

The protection of civilians, in particular women and children, in armed conflict is one of the priorities of Lithuania’s membership of the UN Security Council. Lithuania, which was elected as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for the term of 2014-2015, actively raises issues of the protection of children in armed conflict, especially of combating violence against children, child abuse and exploitation in situations of conflict, the military use of schools, and ensuring that there is liability for these offences.