UNICEF and child soldiers

The United Nations Children?s Fund (UNICEF), the universal guardian of children?s rights and the international voice against child exploitation, has come out strongly against last week?s press publications depicting two LTTE child soldiers who had decamped from a Tiger training facility and sought refuge with the army.

Issuing a media bulletin it has also gone one step further and deigned to set out ?Principles and guidelines for ethical reporting on Children and the Young People? to the local media and has taken upon itself to set out certain ?dos? and ?don?ts? when disseminating material about LTTE child conscripts.

We are certainly with the UNICEF in their umbrage if the media has crossed the line in this connection. But what cannot be comprehended by the discerning public is what steps this great defender of the rights of the child has taken to rein in the perpetrators. Certainly in this instance the UNICEF has missed the woods for the trees. What has this vast mega-billion dollar funded world body done during the two decade old ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka to address the issue of child soldiers?

Being in the position where its voice is heard and taken note of, has the UNICEF succeeded in even causing any impact on the LTTE to give up on this horrendous exercise where children are plucked away from their parents in the first bloom of their youth? One recalls the visit of UN Special Rapporteur on Children Olara Otunu visiting the Wanni not so long ago where a pledge was extracted from the LTTE to halt recruiting under-aged children into its fighting units.

But the moment his back was turned on them the LTTE went about its usual business of child conscription. We don?t recall the UNICEF, who never hesitate to gnash its teeth over any real or imagined infringement by the Security Forces, making any effort to bring this matter to the notice of the International Community. Other than compiling statistics and coming out with lukewarm protests, the UNICEF has singularly failed so far to rein in the Tigers on the issue of child conscription and fulfil its mandate.

Nay it has all long being merely paying lip-service on the horrendous practise of child recruitment which no civilised country would countenance. The task of a world body such as the UNICEF, concerned with the welfare and well-being of the world?s child population, should surely extend beyond words and reports. We don?t here deign to proffer gratuitous advise to the world body. But there are many avenues through which it can make its voice heard globally vis-a-vis the plight of children under the grip of the LTTE.

It can add its voice for a ban on the outfit in specific countries and could organise demonstrations in world capitals to highlight the gravity of the problem instead of proffering unsolicited advise to the local media. Did the UNICEF, whose breast overflows with the milk of kindness for children, make even a whimper on behalf of the children of the three Policemen of the National Child Protection Authority captured by the LTTE?

Now though it has seen fit to lecture the Sri Lankan media for the ?exposure? of the two LTTE children who had fled to safety from their captors. It is surprising that the UNICEF, which not so long ago documented the various atrocities against children by the LTTE in precise detail (1794 forcible conscriptions), has taken up this issue with such vehemence thereby implicitly siding with the very outfit they condemn.

It also amounts to a contradiction of its role that acting to protect children without any form of ambiguity.

Here is an instance where the full horror of child soldiers is being brought to the public domain for the world to sit back and take note of.

Here is also an opportunity for the UNICEF to take up the issues of child soldiers with added vigour. Instead it cloaks the whole issue with an attack on the authorities and the media thus allowing the real issue of child soldiers go by default.

And this at a time when the LTTE had given an undertaking to cease all child recruitment into their fighting units at Geneva. Here was an ideal opportunity for the UNICEF, who often beats its breasts over child recruitment, to highlight the ordeal of child conscripts and demonstrate its credentials internationally. But instead it decides to

shoot the messenger.