Otunnu urges Agenda for Action for children

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict has proposed a special "Agenda for Action for the Children of Sierra Leone", after completing a six-day mission to Sierra Leone and Guinea on 4 September.

"Apart from the imperative of re-establishing credible security and peace, the crisis of the children is the most important challenge facing Sierra Leonean society today," Olara Otunno said.

The Agenda proposes the establishment of a national commission for children to ensure that their rights and welfare are a central concern in the aftermath of the war in Sierra Leone and that their needs are reflected in national priority-setting, policy-making and resource allocation.

Special programmes are needed to rehabilitate persons without limbs and to provide trauma counselling to sexually abused girls, according to the Agenda.

Otunnu also called on the government, the Civil Defence Force and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to observe their commitment not to recruit people under 18 years into armed groups. He said there was an urgent need for ex-child soldiers to be disarmed, demobilised andreintegrated under the guidance of a Joint Task Force established in May 1998 for that purpose.

The Agenda calls on the RUF leadership to give humanitarian agencies access to abducted children held behind their lines as a first step to their early release.

It proposes radio stations and programmes devoted to children's needs as a means of promoting reconciliation and satisfying children's hunger for information, recreation and entertainment.

Otunnu said services such as educational and medical facilities for children should be given high priority and he called on the international community to provide more resources to consolidate peace for the benefit of women and children.

He also called on the leaders of the RUF and Sierra Leone's former military junta to "acknowledge fully their role in the horrific atrocities committed during the war, most of them directed against children and women".