Kathmandu (AsiaNews) – Maoists continue recruiting child soldiers in Nepal and have not returned them to their families despite the November 2006 peace accord, this according to a United Nations report.
The report, Children and Armed Conflict in Nepal, was released yesterday in Kathmandu by Subhash Nemwang, speaker of the Nepalese parliament. In it the United Nations calls on Maoist leaders, who now sit in the interim parliament, to return children to their families so that they can start their life again.
The authors of the report found at least 1,811 children associated with armed groups. According to the ‘Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers,’ about 20 per cent of the 30,000 soldiers in the Maoist army are below the age of 18 years.
For more than a decade the Maoists fought King Gyanendra’s army in order to establish a Communist republic, but after the monarch surrendered power they agreed to a political deal with the country’s other major parties, a deal that entails their disarmament and the demobilisation of child soldiers under UN supervision. Even though they have put down their weapons, they have not released these children.
“Very few boys and girls who were taken away from their homes have returned. We urge the CPN-M (Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist) to stop the recruitment of children,” said Matthew Kahane, the UN resident coordinator.
“We have to ensure the demobilisation of child soldiers” and their safe return home, said the UN Secretary-General’s personal representative in Nepal, Ian Martin.
Gauri Pradhan, who heads ‘Child Workers in Nepal,’ told AsiaNews that the “Maoists deny recruiting children into their army and party but the truth of the matter is that they (children) are being hidden inside their camps.”
“We are ready to help rehabilitate and reintegrate them into society, but the continued denial by Maoist leaders can only make the damage already inflicted on these children even worse,” he added.
Pradhan and other social activists have collected extensive evidence, but many fear that despite Maoist leaders’ commitment, local leaders still refuse to give up this type of force.
