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A regional grant from the Belgian government enabled the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch a child-soldier demobilisation and reintegration project in Burundi early this year, UNICEF said in its January-February situation report.
The grant also enabled the agency to hire a consultant to assess the situation, develop a plan of action and initiate the demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers.
"This project aims to demobilise former child combatants even while the conflict continues, as well as after the cease-fire has been signed and implemented," the report said.
"This project is a large undertaking that requires a joint effort for advocacy, demobilisation and reintegration on behalf of the United Nations, diplomatic community, international humanitarian and human rights nongovernmental organisations [NGOs] and civil society," it added.
UNICEF-Burundi signed a memorandum of understanding with the government in October that gave it permission to launch this project and involves the government in its implementation.
The agency would present the lessons learned from Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and those learned from the research into the development of the child-soldier demobilisation project, to the UN's governmental and NGO partners in the coming weeks, UNICEF said.
According to estimates from the international NGO, Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, there are some 14,000 Burundi child soldiers.
Meanwhile, UNICEF Monitoring and Evaluation and Child Protection units, in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Action and the Promotion of Women, have just completed a study of the number, category and conditions of handicapped children in Burundi.
The study produced varied and detailed data that will allow UNICEF and partners to better target programmes for the prevention of child handicaps and the treatment and social integration of handicapped children, the report added.
The study revealed that there are 10,577 physically and mentally handicapped children in Burundi, and classified these children into the categories of speech impediment, physical trauma related to the war, mental illness, physical handicap, blindness and deafness.
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