Red Hand Day, February 12 each year, is an annual commemoration day on which pleas are made to political leaders and events are staged around the world to draw attention to the fates of child soldiers, children who are forced to serve as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts. The aim of Red Hand Day is to call for action against this practice, and support for children who are affected by it. Children have been used repeatedly as soldiers in recent years including armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, Philippines, Colombia, and Palestine. Estimates on the number of children engaging in armed conflict around the world show no change between 2006 and 2009. Rehabilitation for child-soldiers returned to their communities ranges from inadequate to non-existent.
Red Hand Day was initiated in 2002 when the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict entered into force on February 12, 2002. This protocol was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in May 2000 and currently has signatures from over 100 different states. A number of international organizations are active against the use of children as soldiers. These organizations include, for example, the United Nations Child Fund (UNICEF), Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes or the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The work of these organizations can be summarized by the abbreviation DDR: Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration.
Read more about Red Hand Day: Child Recruitment, Legalities, Red Hand Campaign, After Child Recruitment
Famous quotes containing the words red, hand and/or day:
“Now wait a minute. You listen to me. I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex- wives, and several bartenders dependent on me. And I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)
“The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)