No child soldiers in Lanka - UN closes dossier

by Manjula Fernando

The United Nations Security Council Working group on Children and Armed Conflict closed its dossier on Sri Lanka after deciding that children in armed conflict is no longer an issue here.

The Working Group had adopted the ‘Draft Conclusions on the situation of children and armed conflict in Sri Lanka’ on December 19, 2012 and were convinced that there were no child soldiers in the country.

Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Dr. Palitha Kohona in an email to the Sunday Observer yesterday said, ”Another reminder of a sad part of our recent history is now behind us.”

Prior to adopting the Draft Conclusions, the Working Group had considered the report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict in Sri Lanka, and its recommendations in accordance with Security Council resolutions 1612 (2005) and 1882 (2009).

The Sri Lankan mission had engaged a range of entities over the months on this issue. “This required continuous engagement with the UN Secretariat, members of the Security Council and other actors by the Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission,” Dr. Kohona said adding that there were efforts by certain elements at the Secretariat to keep Sri Lanka on the annex on the basis of ‘four children’ unaccounted for in the Eastern province.

The Sri Lankan mission had resisted this move with ‘tremendous effort’.

“The fact that there were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of children in armed combat in other parts of the world seemed to concern some of them less.”

In his opening remarks, Chair of the Working Group, Ambassador Dr. Peter Wittig, the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, said that this would be the last time Sri Lanka will appear before the Security Council on the issue of children and armed conflict and congratulated Sri Lanka on its success.

The SL Permanent Representative said the representations to get Sri Lanka off the list had been constantly made for the past three years, including representations to the Special Representative to the Secretary General who at the time was Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Sri Lanka’s rehabilitation and reintegration of former child combatants as well as the delisting of the TMVP and the Iniya Bharathi Faction from Annex II (Naming and Shaming List) of the Secretary- General’s annual report had contributed to this positive outcome.

The UN in June this year delisted Sri Lanka from the United Nations Secretary-General’s ‘List of Shame’ that lists countries where children are involved in armed conflict saying that the island nation “successfully completed Security Council-mandated programs to end the recruitment and use of children.”