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| Sunday, 31 July 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Bashing LTTE for child soldiers: no solution by Ranga Jayasuriya
Among those sharing the list with the LTTE are Lords Resistance Army of Uganda, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de, better known as FARC from Colombia, Janjaweed from the Sudan, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) from Nepal, Karen National Liberation Army from Myanmar and government forces from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Uganda. The Security Council resolution, marking a ground breaking development, introduced a series of measures including the setting up of a monitoring and reporting mechanism to ensure the protection of children exposed to armed conflict, and ordered the offending parties already in the list to prepare and implement time-bound action plans to end violations against children. The monitoring mechanism will report on child rights violations by both the state and non-state actors, specially killing or maiming of children; recruiting or using child soldiers; attacks against schools or hospitals; rape or other sexual violence against children; abduction of children; and denial of humanitarian access for children. The Security Council has also ordered the UN peace keeping forces and UN country teams to enter into dialogue with offending parties on the preparation and implementation of plans to end the exploitation of children. The important point is that failure or the insufficient progress in ending the practice of child conscription, would bring targeted measures against offending parties. Such measures might include travel restrictions on leaders, and their exclusion from any governance structures and amnesty provisions, the imposition of arms embargoes, a ban on military assistance, and restriction on the flow of financial resources to the parties concerned. UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu must be a happy man now. At last, the resolution he campaigned so hard has got through the Security Council. The resolution, for the first time, has set up a UN mandated formal, time-bound structure with necessary powers to fight the exploitation of children affected by armed conflict. As for Sri Lanka, during the third round of peace talks, the government and the LTTE invited the UNICEF to help child combatants re-integrate to society. On the request of the two parties, the UNICEF prepared an action plan to re-integrate ex-child combatants with their families. The understanding was that the LTTE would disband its child brigade and send them to the transit homes run by the UNICEF. Unfortunately, While co-managing transit homes with the UNICEF, the LTTE returned to its old practice. The UNICEF itself has accused the Tigers of abducting children to prop up its ranks. The UNICEF has documented over 60 incidents of abductions of children by the LTTE since the December 26 tsunami. Ironically enough, perhaps the biggest event of demobilising LTTE baby brigades was stage manned by the renegade LTTE Eastern commander, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna before he went under ground. That hasty disbanding carried out, simply, to deprive the mainstream LTTE of its man power, indeed, was a receipt to disaster. Children who lived with arms were sent to their poverty stricken homes, some threw their weapons on their way and poor parents, who spoke to media, could not comprehend what to do with their sons and daughters returning home after spending years as combatants. Then came the bad news, that the mainstream LTTE was looking for recruits among the disbanded Eastern child soldiers. In 1998, when Olara Otunnu visited Sri Lanka, the Tiger supremo gave him an undertaking to end child conscription. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy met the Tiger chief three years ago to receive the same pledge. But it was an undertaking that was never respected. But, for years, LTTE, while continuing the practice, has been campaigning to rid its reputation which has now put it along with insurgents and governments drawn from 11 conflict zones. "Child Soldiers: A distortion of ground reality to vilify the Tamil liberation struggle" was the headline, the LTTE's official web site had a few days before the UN Security Resolution on an article, denying charges of child conscription. "It is very unfortunate that the very much- hackneyed term: "child soldiers" is being used very loosely for the Tamil children who seek refuge with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for umpteen number of reasons and a social background for which they are not responsible," stated the article, adding "...to trace the background of the conditions that existed, one need to revisit the early seventies when the Tamil children were shamelessly told by the then government that they belong to a second class of citizenry, in that they have to pass more hurdles than their counterparts in the South to gain admission to the halls of learning". Having tried to redeem itself before human right activists, the LTTE web site then returns to the square one, justifying the conscription of children as combatants. "This, among other indignities perpetrated on their brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers, motivated those children to join the freedom struggle". So, the Standardization of the University Admission, as pointed to by the LTTE web site was one reason why Tamil boys took up arms. But, Standardization, while necessitating students from resource rich Colombo and Jaffna to take higher marks for the university admission, favoured students from lesser developed Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, rural south and Up Country districts, who, without this kind of affirmative action, would never have an opportunity to enter the halls of higher learning. The web site added:"Children who have lost their parents in carpet bombing and shelling, children who have lost their parents in the tidal wave disaster continue to seek refuge with LTTE, for that is the only place that provides them security from hunger, want and anti social elements that tend to abuse these children" . This sounds a plausible argument. And there is an element of truth in it. The LTTE, though guilty of its practice, is not the only culprit. It is true that the Tigers have heavily relied on child combatants during the ethnic conflict. According to the Directorate of Military Intelligence, about 60 per cent of the LTTE combatants are underaged children. Even if this is considered as an exaggeration, Army's Directorate of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in a recent report states that given the figures of LTTE fighters killed in combat, over 40 per cent were children aged between nine and eighteen. However, one could argue that given the ground realities which existed during the war and, of course, the failure to address its aftershocks have given little choice to children to decide their future. And, in the monolithical set up forced on them, the LTTE still remains, perhaps, the only place to seek refugee. The LTTE continue child conscription, but also there are still children seeking refuge in the LTTE, fleeing abject poverty at home. According to a Need Assessment report, 50,000 of school age children are out of the school system. That is the sordid truth. Reintegrating child combatants to society would not be an easy task unless there is a genuine commitment from the parties concerned, including the government, backed by finance resources and a concrete action plan. And, bashing the LTTE for every child joining their ranks may not be the solution to the problem. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
For the LTTE, the UN Security Council Resolution (1612), which was voted
unanimously this week was no good news. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
shares the list with 54 non-state armed groups and governments, accused of
conscripting children as child combatants.