National 3 (Spotlight Weekly)

Young Wounds

Eleven children died after the declaration of ceasefire — CWIN report states

By SANJAYA DHAKAL

Despite the ceasefire and apparent prospects of peace, Nepalese children are still suffering from atrocities committed by both the state as well as non-state actors.

"Eleven children died due to violence in the last six months," states the half yearly State of the Children report published by Child Workers in Nepal Concern Sector (CWIN). In the period between January till June 2003, 11 children died, 2 children were arrested and 5 injured in different incidents related to insurgency.

Children playing : No disturbance, please

Among those who were killed, 6 died while playing with unexploded bombs, 1 was caught in crossfire, 3 died from Maoists' bullet and 1 from army's bullet. Even during the period of ceasefire, 28 children were abducted by the rebels and hundreds continued to be displaced.

"Such displaced children are vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation. Hundreds of street children have appeared in places like dang and Nepalgunj — quite clearly the result of insurgency," said Gauri Pradhan, president of CWIN.

In the last eight years of insurgency, 161 children have lost their lives at the hands of both the security forces and the Maoists, said Pradhan. According to the report, the CWIN has recorded 2866 different incidents of rights abuses of children in this period including labor exploitation, child trafficking, child marriage and so on.

Consequently, alarmed by the growing atrocities against the children, around a dozen of different NGOs including the CWIN have pressed for declaring children as Zone of Peace. "We want all concerned to respect children as zone of peace, thereby, halting any kind of violent and intimidating activities in places like schools, parks, playgrounds and other points which children use," said Pradhan.

The half yearly report also indicated rise in other forms of violations of children's rights like child sexual abuse, trafficking, child marriage etc.

According to the report, every year at least 500 children die in the country due to road accidents. In the review period of the report, 284 children had died in road accidents across the country. Among those killed, 150 were boys and 65 girls — a steep rise from the total of 110 children killed in the same period last year.

Around 36 children had died due to natural calamities like floods and landslides in the period — up from 11 dead in the same period last year.

Another disturbing revelation has been the increase in HIV infection of children. The report states that 9.9 percent of total HIV infection in the country includes children below 19 years of age. The HIV has infected forty-one children below 13 years of age already.

The report also draws attention to the burgeoning trend of domestic violence and severe corporal punishment to children.

The labor exploitation of child and their involvement in worst forms of labor is another issue the report dwells upon. In the review period, 71 children were found engaged in worst forms of labor compared to 102 such cases in the whole of the last year.

With the objective to control and alleviate child labor exploitation, the parliament had passed Child Labor (Preventive and Regulative) Act. Though the act had already received the royal seal, it has not come into force yet. "We took a number of initiatives to know what has happened to that act but to no avail," moaned Pradhan.

Likewise, large numbers of children are also subjected to severe torture in houses where they work as domestic workers. Last week, newspapers carried a report how a housewife, in a fit of rage over small matters, poured boiling fluid over the body of a teen-aged boy who stayed at her house as a domestic worker. Though in majority of houses, these domestic worker children get proper atmosphere and chance to study in schools, in some they face torture from their unruly masters. The report stated that 25 incidents of child marriage were recorded in the period.

In the last six months, CWIN recorded 122 different incidents of rapes. Alarmingly, nearly 60 percent of those incidents involved children below the age of 16 years. Around 19 percent of the incidents involved children below 10 years of age. The report stated that there are 2.6 million children engaged in different forms of labor in the country with 40,000 working as bonded labors in restaurants, brick-kilns, domestic households and so on. Out of total 98 incidents of girl trafficking, 43 percent were girls below the age of 16 years, it stated.