UN to assess child soldiers in Sudan
Jan 27, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict met with Sudanese officials at the start of a visit on the situation of child soldiers in a country ravaged by conflicts.
“I am visiting Sudan to examine the situation of the child soldiers, their demobilisation and rehabilitation in addition to ascertaining violations of the child rights and the government’s role in those issues,” Radhika Coomaraswamy was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency.
The UN envoy met with Sami Abdel Daem Yassin, State Minister for Social Welfare, Women and Children, in the first of a string of meetings with Sudanese officials.
An August 2006 UN report highlighted incidents of child rights abuses in Sudan, including the “killing and maiming of children, their recruitment and use as soldiers, grave sexual violence, abductions and denial of humanitarian access to children.”
The report also accused government allied militias as well as rebel groups across the country of recruiting child soldiers.
But Yassin said the issue had been addressed in the context of Sudan’s peace deals.
“A large number of those children have been demobilised and the remainder will be demobilised after peace agreements are concluded with other Darfur movements,” he said.
The Darfur peace agreement was signed in May 2006 between Khartoum and a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) to end a conflict which pitted government allied-militias against rebel factions complaining of marginalisation.
Other rebel groups, including another faction of the SLM and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) have refused to sign.
Yassin stressed there were no child soldiers in the Sudanese government army and accused other armed movements of recruiting children “to replenish the shortage in their fighters.”
At least 200,000 people were killed in Darfur since 2003 and over two million displaced according to the UN, though some sources put the figures at much higher.
Coomaraswamy is due to visit southern Sudan, as well as northern and western Darfur for talks with officials and rebel groups.
(AFP)