NATIONAL 6 -(Spotlight Weekly)]

Painful Picture

Despite firm government pledges and growing social awareness, child exploitation continues in all its tragic forms

BY AKSHAY SHARMA

Barsha Koirala, 12 and Karma Lama, 10, were shot dead by police on December 26 last year when the streets of Kathmandu erupted in violence against an Indian film star's alleged disparaging comments on Nepal. The two children were just spectators.

Similar cases of innocent children being caught in the crossfire were reported between 1990 and 1992. "We need to find the answers and review these problems," said Gauri Malla of Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN) during a recent program in Kathmandu.

Child workers : Carying for attention

One day last year, Dil Bahadur Budha, an 11-year-old boy from Dolpa, Shahartar VDC-4, was going about his daily chores. As he was moving around with his herd of goats, he stumbled on a bomb that exploded, instantly killing him, according to INSEC, an organization monitoring the state of Nepal's children. The surreptitiously placed bomb pointed to the involvement of the Maoist rebels. Dil was killed in a war he was no part of and probably did not understand. The report lists the deaths of 57 children caught in Maoist-police fighting.

Nepal has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The government and political parties have expressed their commitment to safeguarding the rights and interest of Nepali children. But little has Happened beyond that.

Kapil Shrestha, a member of the Human Rights Commission said, "The brunt of all exploitation seems to fall on girls." Referring to the current status of children in Nepal, he said, "Our targets and priorities are not evencomparable with Latin American countries."

"One organization uses children as soldiers and the other chain victims who are sometimes children," said Shrestha. "We need to be responsible and responsive in the future. Will we fulfil our pledges and take steps towards the kind of future we want for our children?"

Two years ago, Man Kumar Chaule, 16, was watching a cultural program in Achham's Dachu's VDC-3 when a bullet struck him. INSEC blamed the police for the incident.

Nepal Bar Association's newly elected president Sindhu Nath Pyakurel, spoke about how things are hushed up, especially when the children are not aware that they are being exploited. "The children need to be aware of their rights and they need to speak out if they are violated."

Dal Bahdur Oli, a six-year-old boy from Jajarkot, Dhime, Panchkatiya VDC, was killed along with his father, brother and sister in an encounter between the police and Maoists. The family, which ran a teashop, were innocent victims of a bomb hurled by Maoists.

"The youth suffer the brunt of all exploitation. He thirsts for education and food but what he really needs is security, " Pyakurel said. NGOs and other organizations are making efforts to end such inequities, he added.

"A welfare state like ours needs to be aware of this problem. The government seem to have no program. We have laws but the government has yet to come up with a definite strategy," he said.

At the millennium summit of the United Nations last year, Nepal signed the optional Protocol to the Convention of Rights of the Child. The accord commits countries against the recruitment of children as soldiers, slaves or forced laborers and to take firm steps to prevent their involvement in prostitution and pornography.

According to the International Labor Organization, Nepal has been selected as a test case in Asia of a program to eliminate child labor by the year 2005. While the results of the program won't be available for some years, CWIN officials say the adjustments and alterations made in 2000 point to a promising future for the rights of children in Nepal.

Human rights activists say blaming the Maoist insurgency alone for the violation of children's rights would not be helpful. There are other areas society has to look at. CWIN says 96 incidents of violence were directed at children last year. Twenty-six were murdered in family feuds. In another shocking aspect of the situation, 32 infants were killed immediately after they were born.

Experts say there were 126 cases in which family members, guardians, teachers, or employers tortured children. "A teacher of mathematics in Rayelechaur Boarding School at Pokhara punished 18 of his first-grade students by forcing them to eat human excreta just because they could not master the mathematical multiplication. Most of society believes in saving the stick and spoiling the child," said CWIN's Malla.

A teacher in a Bhaktapur school recently made five first-grade students to act like cattle and eat grass. An eighth grader in a prominent school in Kathmandu was severely beaten by his teacher for trying to cheat in the exams. Twenty-two students in Kathmandu were held captive for not paying tuition fees.

"These issues need to be dealt urgently by the government," a CWIN expert said. "We are focusing on the violation of civil rights in educational institutions," the expert said. At the program, experts also discussed the situation of communicable diseases among children and the risks posed by the massive hike in fees at the country's only hospital for children. Experts say the ratio between child patients and doctors is 1: 102,671.

In the area of ensuring the welfare of its most tender population, Nepal faces innumerable problems such as high child mortality, HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, food shortages (especially in the mid-western Region), child marriage, gender discrimination, abuse, exploitation, trafficking, labor, discrimination against Dalit children, missing children, street children, among others.

As long as the exploitation of children remains politically, economically and socially profitable, beneficiaries will continue to block reforms. On the other hand, as long as the rights of children continue to be violated, these interests will gain stronger roots.