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"Dalit Solidarity News" is an information project run by the International Dalit Solidarity Network. News stories are extracts from online newsservices. Link to the full story is found at the end of each blog.
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Formed in 2000, the IDSN is a network of international organisations, national solidarity networks and affected country groups, campaigning against caste-based discrimination throughout the world, from the dalits of South Asia to the Osu of Nigeria and the Burakumin of Japan. Visit our website International Dalit Solidarity Network for more information.
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Wednesday, February 07, 2007
NEPAL: Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers
Peace Journalism
6 February 2007
By: Human Rights Watch
The Maoists’ policy of recruiting children for fighting or supporting combat is one of the most disturbing aspects of Nepal’s decade-long civil war. The concept of "recruitment" covers any means (formal or de facto) by which a person becomes a member of the armed forces or of an armed group, so it includes conscription (compulsory/obligatory military service), forced recruitment, and voluntary enlistment.
The Maoists have used a variety of techniques for recruiting children: kidnapping of individual children; abduction of large groups of children, often from schools or at mass rallies that they are forced to attend; and use of propaganda campaigns to attract children as “volunteers.”
At the height of the civil war, in areas firmly under their control—particularly in the insurgency’s heartland in Nepal’s west and far west—the Maoists operated a “one family, one child” program whereby each family had to provide a recruit or face severe punishment. This campaign operated at a particularly high capacity in 2004 and 2005, as the civil war was escalating.
Media reports, citing high-level Maoist leaders, suggested that it was called the “Special People’s Military Campaign” and involved training secondary and higher secondary students from many villages in “secret camps.” Citing the same source, the paper suggested that “15,000 recruits have completed their basic training there.” According to the account, the “model districts” for the campaign were far-western Jumla and Jajarkot.
Over half of the children interviewed by HRW were from these districts. Our research strongly suggested that systematic abduction of children, or forced recruitment, also occurred in other areas where the Maoists could operate unfettered.
The Maoists conducted a systematic campaign of recruiting child soldiers. This campaign operated at a particularly high capacity in 2004 and 2005 in Nepal’s west and far west, the insurgency’s heartland.
Human Rights Watch’s interviews supported investigations by credible Nepali groups such as Children as Zones of Peace and Advocacy Forum that indicated that most of the affected children are initially recruited by and for local Maoist militias, not the People’s Liberation Army (PLA, the armed wing of the CPN (M)). Militia units are expected to, and do, provide crucial military and logistical support to the PLA during combat operations, for instance by carrying supplies, providing frontline medical care, transporting the dead and injured away from battle, and, most directly, engaging in offensive or defensive military maneuvers. While local militias are not as well trained and well armed as the PLA, nonetheless both empirical evidence and statements by the Maoist leadership indicates that the CPN (M) closely monitors and controls the activity of local militias and exercises an effective chain of command when required.
We also interviewed some children who told us that they served with the PLA.
Most children were recruited by and for local Maoist militias. Militia units provided crucial military and logistical support to the Maoists’ armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army.
confirming accounts by Nepali NGOs and international monitors about the PLA’s use of children. While the PLA and local militias may differ in their degree of professionalism and military training, both groups have taken part in major military operations, and both have been subject to attacks by Nepali security forces. Maoist military strategy has relied on overwhelming government forces by superior numbers.
Read the full articleLabels: child, maoist, Nepal
10:40 AM
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