Stop arming Children- Peace is every child's right

Kamala Sarup, USA

This week, Nepal's Maoist rebels announced plans to raise a militia of 50,000 children. On February 22, the leader of the Maoists student wing, Kamal Shahi, said the decision to raise child militia was taken by the rebel leadership on January 10-11. In the past couple of weeks, the Maoists have resorted to mass abductions, particularly of young students of grades six-ten from schools in western Nepal. In this period, around 950 children were abducted.  Though most abducted students are allowed to return after a couple of weeks.

12-year-old  Samjhana is one of the many children who have been wounded in the Maoists  war in Nepal.  She was caught in the cross fire between the militia and has lost both her arms. Samjhana was hit when her house was bombed and she went out to search for her mother who was missing. Samjhana is an internal refugee.  She said "I was so afraid of dying. I would like to live normal, in peace. Please stop the fighting".  Almost every family in Nepal has been affected by the conflict.

Those children who survive living in eastern and western part of Nepal have often seen members of their families killed and have believed that they too would die.  In the chaos of conflict and the panic of fight, many children become separated from their families. Not only are large numbers of children killed and injured, but countless others grow up deprived of their material and emotional needs.  Children are also being used as human shields.

The death of Samsher Khatiwada, a four-year-old child in Jhapa’s Dhulabari in December this year is a chilling reminder. Khatiwada died while trying to grab an unexploded bomb, mistaking it to be a toy.  Naturally curious, children are likely to pick up strange objects, such as the infamous toy-like 'butterfly' mines that Maoists spread by the thousands in Nepal. Land mines pose particular dangers for children.
The majority of children in Nepal have grown up against a permanent conflict background. Many of those who are six or seven-years old have grown up with shootings, explosions, deaths. This is their childhood.  Children who manage to survive explosions are likely to be more seriously injured than adults, and often permanently disabled. Some children become Maoists or soldiers simply to survive.

As a result of armed conflict, in the last six months of ceasefire, at least 11 children have been killed, two have been taken into custody and five have been injured. The state of emergency coincided with the bloodiest year in the insurgency: between November 2001 and October last year.  Three times as many have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Hundreds of children have been forced to witness or even take part in horrifying acts of violence.  Yet it is clear that increasingly, children are targets, not incidental casualties, of armed conflict. While the government has not made any efforts to take care of the special needs of children caught in the conflict.

The vast numbers of children affected and traumatized by armed conflict cast a long shadow over future generations. The situation has worsened in recent years because conflicts have grown more prominent and children suffer more in these. Not only do they suffer from bombs and other violence against civilians, they are all too often drawn into direct participation in these wars.  The war-affected children of the eastern Nepal have no opportunity for education, and eat one meal a day, if they are lucky. Many are homeless, forced to flee because of acute poverty.

It is clear that mobilizing children in combat or visiting upon them violence and illness and exploitation holds terrible consequences for their development. The number of children who have been killed, disabled or wounded or have otherwise suffered from grievous harm remains unknown.  Girls living on the streets due to war or poverty were "extremely vulnerable" to sexual predation once they reached puberty.
Children are affected by warfare in many ways, but one of the most alarming trends is their participation as guerillas.  Thousands of children die each year as a direct result of armed violence from knives, bullets, bombs and land mines. Many of these are forcibly recruited, seized from schools. Others are driven to join armed groups by fear or poverty.

Thousands more have been died from the indirect consequences of warfare as a result of the disruption in food supplies, for example, and the destruction of health services, water systems and sanitation. In Nepal where children are already vulnerable to malnutrition and disease, the onset of armed conflict has increase death rates. Continuing war in Nepal brings more casualties with each day. Political unrest and insurgency have forced several children into hazardous work in Nepal. Many have also been pushed to work as labor in Indian homes and factories.  

Our attention also to the failure of systems of traditional values that, have always prevailed in the defense of the children. Every day, we see a rapid increase in the number of children killed, injured, violated, exploited, uprooted and without support, in great part due to the effects of armed violence. Children are facing horrible experiences when they take part in wars. They take heavy risks, are often tortured or raped and lose their most fundamental rights to a life in safety. Except for the risk of being killed or wounded, many are suffering from damages in back and shoulders after carrying heavy weapons. The children often are exploited sexually with the risk for diseases like HIV.

 Ultimately, displaced children and their families need to return home. The safety and well being of displaced child-headed families relies significantly on their access to land, property, housing and essential services. Children also need special protection and care.  All emergency assistance should specifically address the health needs of children.  Thirdly, trafficking in small arms and light weapons, which often provokes and always sustains conflicts, must be brought under control because modern small arms are indeed small and light, they are easily handled by children. There can no longer be any excuses, no acceptable argument for arming children. It is immoral that adults should want children to fight their wars for them.

Nothing is perhaps more heartrending and disturbing than hearing reports of children being killed not as innocent victims but as combatants. The recruitment and use in hostilities of children under the age of 15 by any armed force or armed group, as a war crime. Crime against children is unacceptable. We Nepali are urging armed groups to end the recruitment of children under 18. The deployment of child is a despicable and damaging practice that must end. Children want the wars to end and the fighting to stop. The idea that children should not fight wars is universal.

There's also a need for psychologists to advocate for policies that support children affected by armed conflict. Although there is national consensus against the morality of sending children into battle, this terrible practice is now a regular facet of contemporary warfare.  Civil society should condemn the involvement of children in armed conflict, particularly their mobilization by armed groups.  Government and the civil society have to act to stop or minimize the suffering of children in armed conflict. Will Deuba government be able to prevent the outbreak of fighting, by addressing the socio-economic roots of conflict?

(Kamala Sarup is a doctoral student of armed conflict and women at Pennsylvania, US and can be reached at kamalasarup@gmail.com )

Lessons learnt through ignorance

Ms. Babita Basnet, Journalist and Women Rights Activist

"When my first child was not even four months, I was pregnant again. I tried a lot of things to abort the fetus. I had heard through the radio that consuming tobacco or cigarette during pregnancy was dangerous. I took it for granted that the consumption of tobacco will definitely kill the fetus so I consumed tobacco more than hundred times a day. While sleeping, I always kept a heavy stone on top of my lower abdomen and drank juices of herbs and leaves to abort the fetus. After four months of all this, chunks of blood came out of me and I was successful in my mission but I had to face lots of difficulties."

Gayatri Sharma, Baglung, Nepal

At that time Gayatri Sharma of Baglung was 31 years old and now she is 41. Her husband was employed in India and he had visited her for five days after the birth of her third daughter. Many people in the village did not even know that he had come for a visit at that time. When her husband was visiting, Gayatri had not had her periods after childbirth. Both of them had heard that it was safe to have physical relation after childbirth till the time of the first menstruation after the birth. Keeping this in mind, both of them had physical relation without using any means of family planning. Later, when Gayatri still did not have her periods and she found out that she was pregnant, she feared that her husband would doubt her fidelity and the villagers and her relatives would have lots of space to question her. Therefore, she made attempts to abort the child fearing that the villagers would question her as to whose baby she had given birth to when her husband was out of the country. She had not made a mistake but she feared her husband and the society, which forced her to take herbs in order to abort the fetus. She was also scared because her husband was confident that she could not be pregnant when she was not having her periods.

Many women of Baglung and the surrounding villages have died due to unsafe abortion. No study has been conducted on the number of women going for unsafe abortion. But, women have been taking risks by consuming forest herbs and other things, which directly hamper their health. This problem is not only limited to Baglung District but it is prevalent among the illiterate women of the whole nation. Nepali women are suffering from wounds in the womb and other diseases as well as massive blood flow due to lack of knowledge of the dangers of unsafe abortion. Gayatri Sharma had 3 daughters prior to the abortion. She had the desire to have one son but she had to do the abortion due to the fear of her husband and the society. After the abortion, her health continued to deteriorate so much so that her husband came to know about the incident. She told him everything and she feels proud that her husband was very understanding. She puts all the blame on herself. She still remembers the bitter taste of the things that she had consumed to abort the fetus. Some of these suffocated her and her chest was always in pain. She does not want to remember that phase but the things that she did are still fresh in her mind. She was not able to sleep for many nights due to the fear that her husband might leave her if he found out. Chunks of blood used to fall every 3 to 4 days and it took a whole month for the abortion. Her whole body would be in pain and many times she even fainted. She was not able to feed her milk to the other child since her milk dried up suddenly.

After the incident, she did not become pregnant for the next four years although she had physical relation with her husband. This period was full of agony and pain for Gayatri. Both of them wanted to have one son and she always used to feel that the child she aborted must have been a son. This played in her mind all the time and she became sick for a long time. But, five years later she gave birth to a son and now she has four daughters and one son. Her husband still goes to India in winter and returns in the harvesting season during monsoon. At present, Gayatri still suffers from pain in the lower abdomen and the chest. She gets exhausted very fast while going uphill and downhill. She repents about the past incident that she committed. She developed the habit of smoking during that phase but now she has abandoned it. According to her, she did not even think about going to a hospital at that time and she did not know of anyone else who did abortions. If she had known, she would definitely have gone to a hospital since it is only three hours from her home. She had never heard about traditional abortions. When she was small, she had heard her mom and aunts talking about abortions by consuming herbs, pumpkin and other food.

Very few men go for family planning in Baglung and the surrounding Village Development Committees because they are of the belief that family planning makes them weak. But, these days women go for 3 months injection all their life. According to health worker Sabitri K.C., the use of temporary family planning means such as Norplant, Depo, Sangini Injection, etc., has created problems of not having periods for continuous three months, gaining weight and losing blood. She feels that women have the problem of blood flow due to the heavy burden of workload and lack of nutritional food. Women would not suffer much if the men in that area started using condoms. Although the Baglung Hospital has a provision of three doctors, sometimes all the three doctors are present and sometimes none of them are there. According to local residents, the hospital does not have sufficient medicine but the maternity nurses are very experienced.

Most of the childbirth in the villages is still done at home but most of the women in the urban areas go to the hospital. The hospital also does safe abortion based on the state of the mother. Similar to other communities, the desire to have a son is another problem in this community as well. Trishala Rajbhandari of Aama Milan Kendra mentions that women are compelled to have many children because of the desire of the family to have a son. She feels that awareness programmes must be taken forward in order to control unsafe abortion. Unsafe abortion has been promoted by the social outlook of perceiving it as bad without even considering the circumstances. It is necessary to pull the attention of the concerned department to save women from the risks of unsafe abortion similar to Gayatri’s incident.

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