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| Sunday, 28 December 2003 |
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Security |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Stop recruitment of child soldiers in North-East by Shanika Sriyananda The United Nation's International Children's Educational Fund (UNICEF) last week renewed its call to the LTTE to stop recruiting child solders in future and asked parents to submit more details of missing children. " We want to create a peaceful world for children in the North and East, where they can go back to school", Sarah Epstein, UNICEF Communication Officer said. According to her, over 1252 children below the age of 16, are still in LTTE training camps and the UNICEF has evidence to show that the LTTE recruited children even after signing the Action Plan for Children Affected by War (APCAW) between the Government and the LTTE to end underage recruitment. "Eighty children have been recruited by the LTTE in October and 10 in November. From the beginning of the year 2002, over 470 child solders have been released by the LTTE", she said. According to UNICEF data base, the LTTE had recruited a total of 1896 underage children. The highest number (529) recruitments were reported from Batticoloa followed by Jaffna 493, Vavuniya 269, Trincomalee 144, Mullaitivu 137, Mannar 122, Ampara 109 and Killinochchi 93. According to Epstein, there is an improvement in reporting about missing children to UNICEF, UNCHR and other NGOs working for children. Forty-nine children were released at the transit centre and another batch of 19 were handed over to their families in October. " UNICEF monitors each child from the point of release", she said. She said that the UNICEF had started several programs to integrate the released children back to the society and provide them with counselling. " We will visit each of these children to see the best way to help the child return to normalacy", she said. |
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