A/RES/62/126 prevention, support and treatment, information and legal protection, while respecting their privacy and confidentiality and developing strategies to combat the stigma and social exclusion connected with the epidemic. IV. Armed conflict 43. Development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. The scale of the violence perpetrated against civilians, including youth, in the past couple of decades is extremely worrisome. Armed conflicts have resulted in killings, the massive displacement of people, including youth, and the destruction of communities, which has impacted negatively on their development. 44. Youth are often among the main victims of armed conflict. Children and youth are killed or maimed, made orphans, abducted, taken hostage, forcibly displaced, deprived of education and health care and left with deep emotional scars and trauma. Children illegally recruited as child soldiers are often forced to commit serious abuses. Armed conflict destroys the safe environment provided by a house, a family, adequate nutrition, education and employment. During conflict, health risks increase among youth, especially young women. Young women and girls face additional risks, in particular those of sexual violence and exploitation. 45. During conflict, young men and women who are forced to take on “adult” roles miss out on opportunities for personal or professional development. When conflict ends, many of the young people who must make the transition to adulthood while dealing with the traumas of war are at the same time required to adapt quickly to their new roles, often as parents and caretakers of the victims of war. Without services to help them to deal with their situation, youth and young adults may fail to integrate into society. Proposals for action Protecting youth under age 18 from direct involvement in armed conflict 46. Governments should ensure that children benefit from an early age from education about values, attitudes, modes of behaviour and ways of life in order to enable them to resolve any dispute peacefully and in a spirit of respect for human dignity, with tolerance and non-discrimination. Governments should promote a culture of peace, tolerance and dialogue, including in both formal and non-formal education. 47. Governments should consider, as a matter of priority, the ratification and effective implementation of the Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999 (Convention No. 182) of the International Labour Organization. 48. Governments should take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take direct part in hostilities and that those who have not attained the age of 18 years are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces. 49. Governments should take all necessary measures, in accordance with international humanitarian law and human rights law, as a matter of priority, to prevent the recruitment and use of children by armed groups, as distinct from the armed forces of a State, including the adoption of policies that do not tolerate the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict, and the legal measures necessary to prohibit and criminalize such practices. 13