*ISLAMABAD: At the United Nations (UN), Pakistan raised the Kashmir issueand called for effective new ways to protect children from atrocitiescommitted by the Indian occupation forces in Jammu & Kashmir, says a pressrelease received on Tuesday from New York.*

“Children are often at the heart of conflict and are in consequencedirectly targeted. Their homes and schools are destroyed and food and watersupplies deliberately cut off,” Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN MaleehaLodhi said while speaking in the Security Council debate on ‘Children inArmed Conflict’.

“Under foreign occupation, they are subjected to arbitrary arrests,detention and torture. And mass blinding too, as the use of pellet guns byoccupation forces in occupied Jammu and Kashmir testifies,” she asserted.

Pointing to the recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner forHuman Rights on the ‘Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir’, AmbassadorLodhi said, “There were multiple cases of children under 18 years beingarbitrarily detained and tortured under the garb of a black law,” the socalled Public Security Act.

The Pakistan envoy said that last year witnessed a significant increase inincidents of abuse of children worldwide, making 2017 another “nightmareyear”, for children trapped in conflict.

“The plight of children in Palestine, Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir,Myanmar and Yemen should galvanize the international community to find newand effective ways to protect those most vulnerable”, she asserted.

“In conflict zones and occupied territories”, she declared, “We arewitnessing a deeply troubling breakdown in humanity and diminishing respectfor human life and dignity”.

Children become victims of unimaginable horror every day, Pakistan’s topdiplomat said while referring to the secretary-general’s report thatconfirmed these horrors: children are killed and maimed, abducted to fight,sexually abused and denied humanitarian aid.

The goal of protection of children, she said, can best be achieved bypreventing the outbreak of armed conflict in the first place.

“The most effective way to protect children is by preventing and resolvingconflicts, ending foreign occupation and sustaining peace. This must be ourtop priority and that of this Council”, she stressed.

Ambassador Lodhi told the 15-member Council that Pakistan remained fullyalive to its commitments with regard to protecting children. Pakistan, shesaid, was one of the earliest signatories to the Convention on the Rightsof the Child and its two Optional Protocols.