THERE IS NEED to protect children in armed conflicts to ensure effective implementation of existing policies and legal framework on child protection.

The Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, Oda Gasinzigwa, on Monday, made the remarks while opening a two-week training of trainers (ToT) on child protection in armed conflicts at Rwanda Peace Academy in Musanze District.

The training brought together participants from military, Police and civilian institutions from Rwanda, Ghana and Uganda.

Participants included those from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Centre, Nigeria Army Peacekeeping Centre, Rwanda Peace Academy, Eastern Africa Standby Force  (EASF), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and from African Peace Support Trainers Association (APSTA).

According to Methode Ruzindana, the director of research and training at Rwanda Peace Academy, the training aims at reinforcing and increasing knowledge and skills among the officers in peace support operations.

It will also equip peace support operations actors with appropriate knowledge and skills on child protection, share best practices and experience while taking stock of current efforts to build strong child protection systems.

It was jointly organised by Rwanda Peace Academy in partnership with Save the Children International and the International Bureau for Children’s Rights (IBCR).

Minister Gasinzigwa said the training was crucial as it comes when the the continent is experiencing a spike in violent conflicts.

"Since the children are the future of our nations, the continuous existence of such threats against their lives call for combined efforts of both security organs and civilians to have a violent free Africa,” said Gasinzigwa .

She noted that the policy and legal frameworks for children protection  in peace keeping operations exist but their effective implementation  still faces some challenges  such as compliance, inadequate resources, failure to delineate clear roles and responsibility of various actors involved in the protection of civilians  and specifically  lack of proper training.

The minister urged participants to use the training to ensure that the rights, protection and well being of all children are priority throughout peacekeeping process, the consolidation of peace and rebuilding of war affected countries.

She also urged them to be advocates for the rights of children.

"Whenever there are armed conflicts, it is common practice that civilians in general and children, in particular, have deliberately been the prime targets, resulting into other human rights violations such as gender-based sexual violence, loss of lives and psychological trauma among others,” she added.

Nigeria, Burundi, DR Congo, Central Africa Republic, Ivory Coast, and South Sudan are experiencing violent conflicts which have left thousands of children among the victims.

Barbara Schuler, Save the Children representative in East and West Africa, said protecting children in armed conflict situations has become a global issue and is included on the agenda of the United Nation Security Council.

She said Save the Children has trained over 90,000 peacekeepers in Africa in the last 15 years.