What happens to the children when a country unrecognized by the world is torn apart by war?” This is the unique focus of the CHILD-WAR project, a study on the rights of children in de facto states during and after the war. This one-of-a-kind project has received a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and is a continuation of our previous research on children’s rights in de facto states. Below I will first explain what de facto states are and what general issues exist around monitoring children’s rights in these entities, before explaining the specific content of the CHILD-WAR project.
What are de facto states?
The starting point of the human rights issue is that human rights are universal, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is applicable to all children worldwide. The reality in the international system is not, however, straightforward. There are children who do not enjoy international legal protection because the states they live in are not recognised as states. De facto states, also called unrecognised states, contested states, and breakaway regions, among a list of names, are not accommodated by the international human rights framework. They are not able to ratify human rights treaties because of their status.
Our previous project defined defines de facto states as “political entities that possess all four criteria for statehood as laid down in the Montevideo convention: (1) a permanent population, (2) a defined territory, (3) a government, and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states, who have declared independence, yet who are not a member state of the United Nations.”
Child rights monitoring in de facto states
It's important to note that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child does not currently monitor children living in de facto states. This means that they are excluded from regional and international human rights monitoring mechanisms. This situation is exacerbated when a de facto state is engaged in armed conflict. The CHILD-WAR project will delve into the legal questions surrounding these complex situations and provide data on the children’s rights situation in three de facto states that have recently experienced or are experiencing war.
The CHILD-WAR project
The CHILD-WAR project studies the rights of children who are living in de facto states that have recently experienced, or are currently experiencing, armed conflict. In addition to the legal analysis of the issue, the project includes three specific cases where a de facto state was or is involved in war: Gaza, Las Anod and Nagorno Karabakh. The control of these places changed recently or may change because frontiers are not fixed in active wars. For example, Somaliland, a de facto state, was recently involved in a war in Las Anod city. Today, it is no longer in control of this area. The war in Gaza is still active. Azerbaijan obtained control of Nagorno Karabakh (previously the Republic of Artsakh) in 2023. This research is not about who is in control or who has a legal claim, but it is about the rights of the children in these areas in relation to the de facto state that was part of the armed conflict and the involved actors. For example, who of the actors involved carries legal obligations under international humanitarian law? In these wars, children were killed, wounded and displaced. Thousands of children missed school. We hope this research will make contributions to the protection of the rights of children who are in armed conflict involving a de facto state.
The research project will start in January 2025 and will take two years. We hope to shed light on these children’s experiences and influence global policy to protect their rights and contribute to the knowledge production on the issue of children’s rights.
We will conduct a webinar to introduce the project. The time will be later announced through the below social media outlets.
If you would like to follow this project, you can sign up for our newsletter HYPERLINK "https://childrensrightsresearch.com/conference" or follow our project on social media here.
