Protecting children from the effects of war has high priority, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, has told a conference in Dublin.
The issue would be to the fore in Ireland's aid programme and it was an issue at the UN Security Council. "The statistics are horrific," Ms O'Donnell said in her keynote address to the Children of War Conference organised by World Vision Ireland. "In the past decade two million children have been killed in conflicts, over one million orphaned, over six million seriously injured or permanently disabled."
She said around 31 million refugees and displaced people - mostly women and children - had been caught in conflicts ravaging the world in the last year alone.
"We have and will continue to voice our strong support for international efforts to stop the use of child soldiers. Ireland has just signed the two optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child during the millennium summit in New York, including the optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict." Mr Stuart Maslen, a child rights lawyer, called on the Government to set an example by raising the minimum age for recruitment to the Defence Forces from 17 to 18 years.