Belgium tackles Khartoum, rebels on child rights

Belgian Secretary of State for Development Cooperation Eddy Boutmans, who has just ended a mission to investigate children's rights in Sudan, on Sunday expressed strong concern to the Sudanese government over the abduction of women and children by government-aligned militias in the "transitional area" between northern and southern Sudan. Boutmans and his colleagues had, in discussions with people and in direct testimony, been told of recent instances in in Wau and Aweil, Northern Bahr al-Ghazal State, where government-aligned militia engaged in serious human rights abuses, he told IRIN in a briefing on Tuesday. "Government militia - or at least militia under direct or indirect control of the government, accompanying and protecting the train convoys that supply the northern [government] army in the south - have engaged in practices that are very fundamental violations of human rights: looting, killing, burning down villages and also abducting children and women," according to Boutmans's information. Most of these abductees would be brought to northern regions, where most of them would end up in slavery - be it herding cattle or working fields, or in houses, he said. These raids and abductions, on which the Belgian mission had testimony, and which had also been documented by other sources, was "really a very serious and unacceptable human rights problem that is terrifying the whole region", Boutmans added. Visiting the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Sunday, the Belgian mission made their country's concern over these actions very clear to Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il and International Cooperation Minister Karam al-Din Abd al-Mawla, Boutmans said. "We very strongly insisted that with these practices going on under their direct or indirect responsibility, they had an obligation to take action - and at the highlest level. This is a very severe violation of human rights, and the state has the responsibility for having this stopped - certainly if it's carried out with the least connivance of the army," he added. He called for the highest authorities of the country to intervene and, "very directly... act to make it impossible for these kinds of things to happen in the future". Boutmans also called on the government to increase its efforts to trace the women and children, and have them returned to their communities; and to have those who would commit these kinds of acts brought to court. Khartoum, which has recognised that the problem exists and put in place (with UNICEF and local chiefs) a Committee on the Abduction of Women and Children, maintained it was doing its best to resolve the issue, the Belgian minister stated. "It is certainly not true that it is not happening and that the government cannot do anything about it still happening... so we made a very clear statement about this having to stop," he said. With Khartoum hoping to improve its economic and political relations with the European Union, there were grounds for optimism that progress could be made on some of these issues , Boutmans added. During his mission in Sudan, the Belgian development cooperation minister also visited military and civilian members of the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to press the rebel movement for increased efforts on the demobilisation and rehabilitation of its child soldiers. Describing the military recruitment of underage soldiers as "one of the most striking violations of children's rights", he said the SPLA estimated their number in its ranks at about 13,000, and "had made a firm commitment to demobilise them all - or at least 10,000 - by the end of next year". The demobilisation exercise in which UNICEF was engaging the SPLA, was a very important development because it showed that it was possible - with a state authority or, in this case, with an unofficially recognised authority - to come to terms on respecting at least this basic right of children: not to be involved in military activities and not to be incorporated into an army, Boutmans said. "Having this idea not only launched but also put into practice is an important way of setting standards for all governments, for all movements of armed people, that they should refrain [from using child soldiers] and that it's absolutely unacceptable to have children in a military context," he added. Demobilising children was one thing, but measures were also needed to help resettle them in their communities and rehabilitate them, Boutmans stated. It was clear that UNICEF was trying to provide facilities to give them some education - alongside other children from the local community - but educational facilities were still "appallingly absent" for many in southern Sudan, he said. It was Belgium's belief that "assuring basic education and some basic services for all children should be a priority for the international community", particularly in the context of resettling child soldiers, according to Boutmans. Interventions in Sudan had been limited to strictly humanitarian assistance and food relief for a long time, but the international aid community should at least consider trying to find ways of adding to this, he said. In southern Sudan, even European humanitarian aid had been effectively suspended some time ago because of a dispute between the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) and the SPLM/A over a memorandum of understanding on humanitarian operations, and there was an urgent need to resolve that unhelpful situation, he added. The provision of development aid in conflict situations was a very complicated matter, which would be addressed by the European Council of Ministers on Thursday (8 November), Boutmans said, yet he would be making the case that it has not been a very good solution for the people of Sudan to merely suspend development assistance and reduce interventions to humanitarian aid. "I will certainly be advocating in our discussions at the Council of Ministers... not just to re-establish aid but also to move towards development aid, within the context of humanitarian principles: neutrality, impartiality and so on," he said. "Getting basic facilities for families and children should be - even out of the context of the peace process - an aim for the international aid community," Boutmans added.