Child soldiers in Nepal

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Jeb Sharp speaks with Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict about the use of child soldiers by Maoists in Nepal and the efforts to release them back into society.

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JEB SHARP: Child soldiers have been a feature of Sudan’s wars.  At the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands today, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Reprehensive for Children and Armed Conflict, told the court that children under 15 have an “underdeveloped notion of death” and that makes it especially cruel to send them into battle.  She also said it’s important to prosecute warlords for using child soldiers because it creates pressure on armed groups to stop the practice.   Radhika Coomaraswamy is on the phone with us from The Hague in the Netherlands.  Ms. Coomaraswamy, tell us more about this argument that prosecuting these cases can actually lead to good results in terms of seeing child soldiers released and hopefully rehabilitated?

RADHIKA COOMARASWAMY:  Well, we’ve already seen these results.  The prosecutions in The Hague have made many armed groups come to us, the United Nations, and they have entered into what we call action plans, to release children.  And we’ve seen quite a large number of these action plans being developed, recently in Nepal and the Philippines.

SHARP:  Now you mention Nepal.  When we think of child soldiers, we usually do think of wars like the ones in Congo, in sub-Saharan Africa.  But as you say, child soldiers have been a feature of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, and today 200 of an estimated 3,000 child soldiers are actually being released in Nepal.  Tell us about these kids.

COOMARASWAMY:  Yes.  Well, as you know, these child soldiers, during the Maoist rebellion, many of them were recruited from schools and from their villages.

SHARP:  You mention they’re recruited, sometimes even in schools, but were they forcibly recruited?  What sort of duress were these kids under when they joined the Maoists?

COOMARASWAMY:  Some were forcibly recruited, but quite a few, I think the Maoists appealed to this notion of fighting against a feudal order and fighting for justice.

SHARP:  And how did the Maoist forces use the child soldiers?

COOMARASWAMY:  In combat, primarily in combat, but they were also used to do domestic chores and other things in the camps as well.

SHARP:  You’ve worked with child soldiers and studied them in situations all over the world.  Is Nepal basically the same as anywhere else, or were they used in any distinctive way in Nepal?

COOMARASWAMY:  In Nepal, we did not hear many cases of sexual violence, though there were a few.  Primarily, the situation was of recruitment in conflict with the government forces, both girls and boys.  And of course, it is not an ethnic war there really.  It’s more a political war between the Maoist political vision and the vision of the government.  And therefore it’s more in line with what we would call Asian kinds of guerrilla movements, than what are the African wars of Sierra Leone and Liberia, where abduction was the main reason for child soldiers.

SHARP:  The fighting ended in 2006, so not only were they child soldiers.  They’ve spent an awful lot of time in these camps. What is this transition like for them?

COOMARASWAMY:  It’s going to be very difficult.  There’s no possibility of them joining the Nepalese army, because they were child soldiers.  Therefore what will they do?  It is important for us to make them realize that there are other livelihoods besides soldiering.

SHARP:  Ms. Coomaraswamy, some of the accounts today make it sound a little bit dicey that these young people are really just being taken to drop off centers.  What else is in place to ensure that they’re going to be okay?

COOMARASWAMY:  Yes, so they will be dropped off and made to go back to their community.  But our hope is that– and we rely greatly on our child protection partners in the community– that they will follow up with the addresses of these young people and that they will be taken care of.

SHARP:  Finally, what would you wish for each of these returnees?

COOMARASWAMY:  I have a network of former child soldiers working with me, and these are young people who are very resilient, who have become artists and writers and scholars, but who were once former child soldiers.  I wish that all those children in Nepal will, like these children, find their vocation, and then look back on their experience as child soldiers, see the negative aspects of it, but also to see how far they have come from that.

SHARP:  Radhika Coomaraswamy is the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict.  Thanks very much.

COOMARASWAMY:  Thank you.

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