Militia pledges to stop recruiting children

Sierra Leone’s pro-government Kamajor militia has pledged to stop recruiting children into its ranks and will send home those already serving, a UNICEF official told IRIN on Tuesday. UNICEF estimates that 3,000 children are with the anti-government Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and 1,500 with the Kamajors. “We won’t know the exact number until demobilisation,” the UNICEF official said. UNICEF has documented 3,867 children abducted by the RUF when the guerrillas invaded and occupied eastern Freetown on 6 January. So far 700 of the children have been returned to their families, UNICEF said. The Kamajors made their undertaking at a workshop on 17-18 June in Bo, eastern Sierra Leone. The event, organised by the EU as part of a relief and rehabilitation programme, was also attended by Sierra Leone’s Civil Defence Force, police, government ministers and humanitarian organisations. The Kamajors’ pledge was signed by Hinga Norman, the country’s defence minister and coordinator of the secret hunter society. In another development, the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone, UNOMSIL, has denied a media report that it had received complaints from the Kamajors about 1,000 RUF guerrillas attacking the militia’s positions on Saturday in Rima, near the Diamond-rich town of Kono. “We received no complaint,” a senior UNOMSIL officer told IRIN on Tuesday. “We will investigate further.”