UNSC calls for demobilising child soldiers in Nepal, Sri Lanka

By Staff
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New York, May 13 (UNI) The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has asked the LTTE and Maoists in Nepal to demobilise all child soldiers without delay.

It also examined new reports on children caught up in fighting in Uganda and Somalia.

In messages to the LTTE and the Karuna faction which split from the LTTE and formed an independent group the UNSC's Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict called for cessation of child recruitment, respect for safe zones for children and guarantees of humanitarian access to all areas, according to the Office of the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

Addressing the Government of Nepal and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the Working Group called for immediate liberation of child soldiers without waiting for further stages in that process.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy said the recommendations send a strong message to the LTTE and the Karuna faction.

''They have to stop grave violations of children's rights, especially the recruitment and the use of children in the conflict in Sri Lanka. In regard to Nepal, we hope that the children who remain in the ranks of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, will be demobilised and reintegrated in their communities without delay,'' Ms. Coomaraswamy said.

The Group was established in 2005 to promote protection of children in armed conflict through a monitoring and reporting mechanism, and to recommend action on the issue to the UN system.

A UN report says that more than one third of the victims of the fighting in Somalia in 2006 were children, with violence in Southern and Central Somalia characterised by grave child rights violations.

In Uganda, the report says, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had become notorious for abducting children and then using them as soldiers or porters, while allocating many girls to senior officers in a form of institutional rape.

UNI

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