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Child
soldiers in Nepal |
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| Situation
in Nepal |
child-soldiers.org
Country
Report
The
situation in Nepal should be brought to the attention of the Security Council.
Thousands of children are believed to be fighting in armed forces
and groups, and thousands more are caught up in the conflict. The
Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-Maoist) is believed to receive international
support, including from the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement.
In
February 1996, the CPN-Maoist and its political wing, the Samyukta
Jana Morcha, United People's Front, launched an armed insurgency,
declaring a "People's War" in mid-western Nepal to overthrow the
government and establish a republican communist state. An estimated
9,000 to 10,000 people have since died in the fighting, which has spread
to all of Nepal's 75 districts and involved grave human rights abuses
on both sides. The government has dealt with the insurgency as a
law and order problem, using police rather than the army in counter-insurgency
operations.
Throughout 1999 and early 2000 there were
moves to grant the police special powers and establish paramilitary forces,
though these stopped short of deploying the army. By the end of 2001 the Maoist armed groups were believed to have been involved in violent
incidents in nearly all of Nepal's 75 districts, increasing the security
risk to civilians. Among the offences reported are forced disappearances,
abductions, raids, destruction and looting of property, extortion and other
acts of intimidation. The risk of violence and the collapse of services
in the worst affected areas are said to have forced some families
to flee to safer areas. Thousands of persons have been internally displaced.
The
long-running conflict between the CPN-Maoist and the government forces
became a human rights crisis in 2002, with hundreds of civilians
killed and scores of police officials summarily executed. A State
of Emergency was declared on 26 November 2001, following
Maoist attacks on police and army barracks in Dang and Syangja districts,
was extended on 25 February 2002 and again in May 2002.
Political uncertainty added to the Government's rejection in July 2002 of an offer for peace talks, on the grounds that armed groups would have
to disarm first, could prove a further threat to the security of
the region. International food aid has been scaled back or completely suspended
in some areas due to security concerns. Experts fear that Nepal may be
moving towards one of the most serious food crises in South Asia.
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| National
Recruitment Legislation and Practice |
Provision
for conscription does not exist even in the event of war or national emergency.
There are no known plans for its introduction, as volunteers fulfil
recruit quotas.
According
to information provided by Nepal to the Committee on the Rights of the
Child, the 1962 Royal Army New
Recruitment
Rules requires recruits to be at least 18 years old. Officially, enlistment
is open to all Nepalese, regardless of caste, religion or ethnic
background. But in practice recruits tend to be drawn from the ethnic and
caste groups that have traditionally supplied the bulk of the Nepalese
and Gurkha regiments and from the ethnic groups of the mountainous
areas and the Kathmandu valley.
In December
1999, there were reportedly 3,491 Gurkhas in the British Army: 65 in
Nepal, 945 in Brunei, and the remainder either on operations or in
the UK. Nepalese Gurkhas are also recruited in India. Recruitment to the
British and Indian armies is apparently regulated by a tripartite agreement
that sets recruitment and salary levels.
The
government denies the involvement of under-18s in the armed forces, but
interviews with ex-Ghurkas suggest some may enlist before the age
of 18, either by falsifying their age or through irregularities in birth
registration. Other observers have also noted that minimum age legislation
is not always upheld either due to irregularities in birth registration
or corruption, and have estimated that some 10-15
percent of recruits may actually be under 18.
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| Military
Training and Military Schools |
The 1971Young
Boys' Recruitment and Conditions of Service Rules state that boys must
be between 15 and 18 years old to be recruited. However, the Government
explained that this means "Young Nepalese men could enlist from the
age of 15 years in order to follow military training, but nobody under
18 years of age could be recruited into the army."
Training
for the armed forces is said to take six months to one year depending on
the type of duty. According to
UNICEF,
there is a Military Academy that admits young men of 18 years or
above to train for national service.
The
military also provides formal education to children in special military
schools based on the national school curriculum. Formal education
usually begins at grade four and continues to grade 12 (upper secondary).
UNICEF mentions that there is a strict quota on admission to those schools
and places are usually reserved for children of military personnel. Students
are not automatically enrolled in the army.
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| Government
Treatment of Suspected Child Soldiers |
There
have been reports of armed 'encounters' in which police killed children
as young as ten. Many of these encounters have taken place
in disputed circumstances, which could amount to extra-judicial executions.
There have also been reports of the Nepalese Police detaining children
for alleged involvement in Maoist activities.
On 26 May 2000, one girl aged 17 from Kailali District was killed with
five other Maoist suspects in Urma village, allegedly after being wounded
and captured. The six had been pursued by police following a looting incident
and refused to surrender.
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| NON-GOVERNMENTAL
ARMED GROUPS |
| Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist)/United People's Front |
The Central
Military Commission of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) in February
1998 declared that the development of the people's army forces
was taking place in three ways: by arming the general masses; preparing
a broad and extensive network of the people's militia; and principally,
by building a regular people's army.
The
CPN (Maoist) are known to recruit and use children under the age of 18
as soldiers. However the Maoist insurgents have made conflicting
statements about their recruitment policy. They once declared openly that:
"the increasing participation of women in the People's War has had
another bonanza for the revolutionary cause. That is the drawing of
children into the process of war and their politicisation.
A large number
of children in the rural areas are now contributing substantially
in the guerrilla war by way of collection and exchange information, etc.
Indeed, these little 'red devils' hold immense potentials for the
future of the revolutionary People's War." They also stated that "large
scale rebellion of young girls, mostly high school and college girls,
from their patrimonial households to join the People's War have been a
common occurrence..."
But
in August 2000 Maoist leader Prachanda denied using children
as soldiers, saying: "We want to make it clear that no child soldier
has been recruited in any unit of the People's Army" and that the CPN (M)
was even reportedly turning down children who were volunteering."
The
number of children involved in the Maoist movement is unknown. Local
and international media have released numerous reports of underage
soldiers among the Maoists. For example, in 1998 the Himalaya Times
claimed the Maoists were recruiting children between 14 and 18 years
of age who are then sent out in groups of six or seven on combat
operations.
On 19
March 1999, six out of seven Maoists that had been killed in an encounter
with the police at Ankot village of Kavre district were found to
be students and young people, four of them girls. They included a 17-year-
old and a 14-year-old. Two other young people, aged 15 and 16, were also
killed in the operation.
Some
Maoist recruitment has been forced. In August 2000, Amnesty International
warned of a rising tide of recruitment of children by the CPN (Maoist),
including through abduction.
CPN
(Maoist) reportedly abducted at least thirty children in June and July
2000. Four cases involved students from Janapriya Secondary School
who were abducted from a hostel in Dasara, Jajarkot district on 8 June
2000. Three of them, who were under 15 at the time, had not returned
to their families by mid-2001. A fourth 14-year-old returned home
after nine days. Also in June the Kathmandu Post reported that 13 of 91
people who joined the Maoists in Lahan VDC in Jajarkot district were under
15 years old. There were continuing reports of school closures and parents
keeping children at home to prevent their involvement in Maoist activities.
There were reports that children who refused to join were beaten.
Some
estimates in 2000 suggested that 30% of Maoist fighters were children.
In July 2001, a member of the NationalHuman
Rights Commission claimed that at least
25 percent of the Maoist fighters were children under the age of 18.
According
to Amnesty International the situation has deteriorated since the start
of 2002, when the Maoists walked out of peace talks, breaking
a truce and launching attacks on government security forces, prompting
a full-scale renewal in the conflict. Reportedly, the Maoists had
since begun recruiting child soldiers in greater numbers than in the previous
period.
Most
children taking part in the armed conflict are believed to be between 14
and 18 years of age, but the use of even
younger children cannot be ruled out. Children are also used as porters,
messengers, sentries and spies and are involved in cultural or
propaganda activities. The Maoists are said to have formed "a youth wing
to reach out to school children."
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