One-third of all Syrian children were born in the five years that conflict has convulsed their country, the United Nations said on Monday in a report that suggests a new lost generation.

More than 300,000 of these children, who total about 3.7 million, were born as refugees, according to the report by Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the New York Times reported.

It said their lives had been “shaped by violence, fear and displacement.”

In all, Unicef estimated that 8.4 million Syrian children, or 80 percent of Syria’s 18-and-under population, are in urgent need of humanitarian aid either in Syria or in neighboring countries.

The report added to a body of measurements about the Syrian war’s destructive effect, particularly on children, as many grow into adolescence and adulthood orphaned, uneducated, unemployed and hungry.

Unicef said some of the war’s worst excesses had taken place in 2015. Its report documented nearly 1,500 “grave violations against children” last year, more than half of them instances of killing and maiming from explosive weapons in populated areas.

The report estimated that more than 2.1 million children in Syria were out of school last year, and that cases of child and adolescent recruitment by militant groups was up sharply.

“These children are receiving military training and participating in combat, or taking up life-threatening roles at the battlefront, including carrying and maintaining weapons, manning checkpoints, and treating and evacuating war wounded,” the report said. 
“Parties to the conflict are using children to kill, including as executioners or snipers.”

In Syria’s neighbors, the report said, the number of refugees is 10 times higher than it was in 2012, and half of all refugees are children.

While Unicef and other aid groups have welcomed a partial cease-fire that has reduced violence in many areas since it took effect on Feb. 27, their assessment of the humanitarian crisis remains uniformly grim.

Source: MENA