A recent report by Amnesty International reveals that children are desperately caught in the internal conflict

By THAKUR AMGAI

• On August, 2004, CPN (Maoists) cadres shot dead Santosh Bishwakarma, 15, of Dhankuta ‘as punishment for committing incest and collecting donations while posing as a Maoist cadre.’
• In the summer of 2004, the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) arrested Govinda Pariyar and Somu Moktan, both 15, from Tanahun and Ramechhap respectively on suspicion of being associated with the Maoists. The army kept them in their barracks and tortured them; beat severely with pipes and kicked with boots and transferred to prison after eleven days.
• On February 20, three members of the ‘village defence force’- claimed to be formed to retaliate the Maoists against for the latter’s abuses, raped Durga, 11, in a western district of Terai.

Despite repeated pleas, such violations of children’s rights continue unabatedly. Summarizing, the violations of child rights, the London-based international human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) has recently released a 17- page report, ‘Nepal: Children Caught in the Conflict’.

In the report the organization said that that Nepalese children are being killed, illegally detained, raped, tortured, abducted and recruited for military activities and has accused both sides to the conflict of violating the most fundamental rights of children.

“This conflict is a disaster for the children of Nepal ,” said Purna Sen, Director of Amnesty International’s Asia –Pacific program. “Some children have been directly targeted by one or the other party to the conflict, while hundreds more have died from bomb explosive devices. Thousands of children have been forced to flee their homes and face desperate poverty and exploitation.”

Such treatment is in direct violation of the Nepalese government’s human rights obligations. The Convention in the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides that “every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity….and in a manner which takes account of the needs of persons of his or her age”, while torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are forbidden under the CRC and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

According to the reports of CWIN, an organization working for child rights, more than 400 children have lost their lives to conflict.

According to the report, Caught in the Middle: Mounting Violations Against Children in Nepal’s Armed Conflicts, released by New-York based network of organizations Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, it is estimated that hundreds of children have died from mines, bombs and IEDs (Improvized Explosive Devices) used by both the Maoists and the security forces.

Recently, three children were killed in Dhanusha, when the IED they were playing with exploded, and five children died and three injured in Rukum when an IED left at a public tap exploded in Rukum.

“Despite Nepal government’s often repeated statements of commitment to human rights and the CPN (Maoist) leadership’s claims to abide by international humanitarian law, in reality minimal effort has been made by either side to prevent abuses or bring perpetrator to justice for killings, torture, rape and recruitment of children or the attacks on schools or medical facilities,” the report states.