Женщины и дети-беженцы в вооружённых конфликтах

Abstract

The article explores one of most important problem areas of the Beijing Platform of Actions which concerns the influence of armed and other types of conflicts on the situation of women, including those who stay under foreign occupation, women-refugees and forced migrants. It is specially pointed out that the achievement of peace is strongly connected with the ensuring of equality between men and women and that the aggression, foreign occupation, ethnic and other conflicts are today's reality that affects men and women practically in every region. Systematic ignoring of international humanitarian law per se can be sometimes observed, the law which forbids attacking civilians. Frequent violations of human rights take place during armed conflicts which affects civilians, especially women, children, old people and the disabled. The article indicates that though whole communities suffer from terrorism, women and girls experience the consequences most strongly because of their social position and sex. The research of the U N High Commissioner for Refugees is also discussed in the given article. The research was carried out in 1992 in Croatia in the group of 5825 kids at the ages between 6 and 15, among whom there were children from areas which were not strongly affected by the crisis, children who were witnesses of cruel combat action, displaced children and children-refugees. According to the information by the UNHCR, on average displaced children and childrenrefugees were more often than others in traumatic situations even more so than the children who live in the areas of increased risks. Displaced children and children-refugees more often experienced the state of emotional distress and every fourth child among the displaced children and every third among the children-refugees belong to the group of children suffering from deep emotional stress. The article also noted that the number of victims among the civilian population, mostly women and children, exceeds the losses among the combatants.