Former child soldiers forgotten, Human Rights Watch

More than a year after the end of Angola's civil war, the plight of thousands of former child soldiers continues to go unnoticed, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. In a report, "Forgotten Fighters, Child Soldiers in Angola", the rights group claimed that the current demobilisation and reintegration programme discriminated against children, many of whom carried out the same duties as adults during the 27-year conflict. HRW noted that while adult combatants, eighteen years and older, had received identification cards, a resettlement kit and food assistance from the government, many child soldiers were excluded from the demobilisation programme and received only an identification card and food aid provided by international aid groups. Although there are no official figures of the number of ex-child soldiers in Angola, child protection workers have suggested that as many as 11,000 from the two belligerent sides may have lived and worked in combat conditions. Neither the government nor former rebel group UNITA has revealed how many underage soldiers were recruited to fight during the civil war. Recruitment of soldiers aged under 15 is forbidden by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the government in 1990. "The design of the [demobilisation] programme meant that the government was able to avoid the cost of providing benefits to an additional 7,000 former [child] combatants and to deflect attention from the potentially embarrassing issue of the use of child soldiers in Angola generally, and by the FAA (Angolan army) in particular," the report quoted one international worker as saying. While child soldiers were a primary concern following the 1994 Lusaka Peace Protocol, "child soldiers have not been given the comparable priority in the current process". HRW added that girls and disabled children were of particular concern. "Current plans, which focus on family and community rehabilitation and included no specific programmes for child soldiers, run the risk that these two groups will be forgotten once again," the report noted. According to HRW, girls were used as cooks, domestics and porters by rebels during the war. Women and girls were also given to UNITA commanders and forced to have sexual relations with them, or coerced into marriage with UNITA combatants, HRW said. The report argued that only through a demobilisation programme that addresses the particular needs of young women "will their true roles and numbers be known and their rehabilitation begin". "The situation regarding girls and women is complex for a number of reasons. In some cases, many of these young women are afraid to talk about their experiences during the war for fear of their lives. Many of these women have developed strong emotional ties to the men they lived with during the war and are unsure of their future. Admittedly, more needs to be done to deal with the concerns of girls in a war situation," Abubakar Sultan, the child protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) told IRIN. There was also increased concern over the number of orphans abandoned following the closure of IDP camps and gathering areas. While unaccompanied children had been taken in by families after the end of the war as a way of increasing their share of food aid, many of these children have now been abandoned as families make their way home to their areas of origin where there is little assistance. Sources told HRW that in some cases children expressed a desire to return to military service in order to be guaranteed a decent meal and shelter. "While the number of children who have been abandoned have only been recorded in two provinces, we are concerned that this might happen in other provinces," Sultan said. Human Rights Watch called on children's rights groups to work with government to ensure that national legislation is enacted to exempt all children who fought in the conflict from future recruitment into the army. The government has repeatedly denied requests from local groups to provide demobilisation cards for ex-child soldiers, showing that they served in the FAA. HRW said while these cards may not provide the children with a government pension, they would exempt the children from further conscription. So far the government has suspended recruitment for its armed forces in 2003. Last month the government, UNICEF and civil society partners re-affirmed their policy framework for assisting former child soldiers and separated children at a round table on the Challenges of Child Rights Protection in the Process of Reintegration, which was organised by the Ministry of Assistance and Social Reinsertion (MINARS). At the meeting representatives pledged to step up efforts to increase returns to school, accelerate access to skills training and boost psycho-social support. "Getting children back to school is probably the single most important challenge of lasting rehabilitation," Sultan told IRIN.