By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, June 22 (Reuters) - Despite campaigns to protect civilians in war zones, progress is gradual and failure too obvious in many places in the world, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator said on Friday.

John Holmes told the U.N. Security Council that in many areas, such as Sudan's Darfur region, Somalia or Afghanistan, "We are still failing to make a real and timely difference for the victims on the ground."

"Lip service is easy. Effective action is much harder," Holmes told the council, which devotes a full session twice a year to the issue of protecting civilians.

Holmes said there were improvements that would have an effect over time, including indictments against killers by the International Criminal Court as well as more robust peacekeeping missions to help protect civilians.

But the statistics were still horrific, Holmes said.

In Somalia, fierce fighting in Mogadishu involving heavy weapons between March and early May resulted in the killing of over 400 civilians and the wounding of 700 more, including women, children and the aged. In Afghanistan, 18 children died as a result of attacks by insurgent and multinational forces.

In Iraq, the United Nations estimates 94 civilians died violently every day through 2006. In the first three months of 2007, 700 civilians were killed and more than 1,200 injured. This week, the bombing of a mosque in Baghdad resulted in the death and injury of over 200 civilians, Holmes said.

Not all the killing is accidental. Civilians are too often deliberately targeted to create a climate of fear.

"We see this in calculated attacks by Janjaweed and other militias on innocent villagers in Darfur and Chad; in brutal sectarian, ethnic and political violence in Iraq; in large-scale killing and abduction of civilians, particularly women and girls, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," Holmes said.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Too often rape is a weapon of war -- documented in Bosnia in the 1990s, in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, in Liberia in the 1990s and now in the Congo and in Darfur.

"Survivors are left with horrific physical and psychological scars," Holmes said. In the South Kivu province of the Congo, 27,000 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2005 and 2006 and in March and April this year, 6,000 cases were reported in the eastern region of Ituri.

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, reported 9.9 million refugees at the end of 2006, the first increase since 2002, primarily because of people leaving Iraq. A further 24.5 million lost their homes without crossing borders.

"Life in a camp, even when basic needs are met, is a life of misery: inactivity and boredom are profoundly debilitating, and commonly lead to increasing politicization and militarization of those concerned," Holmes said.

Jackie Sanders, a U.S. deputy ambassador, drew attention to Myanmar, formerly Burma, where "there are widespread reports of serious human rights abuses, including rape, by Burmese military personnel in conflict areas and other ethnic minority areas."

"Burmese refugees newly arrived in Thailand and internally displaced Burmese near the Thai-Burma border report that government soldiers in Shan, Karen, and Karenni states continue to rape women and girls there," Sanders said, adding the youngest rape victim was only 8 years old.

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