Freedom for Child Soldiers in Nepal

Nearly 400 former child soldiers were on Thursday released from a detention camp in Nepal, the first of some 3,000 former child soldiers with the communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who will eventually return to civilian life.

Since the signing of a peace accord in 2006 brought an end to a 10-year armed struggle by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), as the party name suggests the rebels were/are followers of the ideology of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong, 20,000 former members of the PLA have been held in cantonments across the country in which they once fought. There are 28 such camps under UN supervision according to IANS. In December a UN plan to integrate back into society the 3,000 or so former members of the PLA aged under 18 was signed in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu. Bloomberg reported at the time the agreement was signed that the release of the child soldiers, many of whom had been messengers, cooks and porters rather than spies or fighters, would take between five and six weeks from late December. As a part of the agreement signed in December the former child soldiers are to receive free education and vocational training from UN agencies. At one stage there were plans to allow the youngest members of the PLA to join the Nepalese army but as the Associated Press confirms the head of the army refused to accept the former rebels, leading in May 2009 to the resignations of the Maoist members of the government in Nepal - the Maoists were the majority party following a election in Nepal in 2008 - after the President of the country, Ram Baran Yadav, reversed the decision of Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known alternatively as Prachanda, to dismiss the army chief. But despite the education and vocational training on offer there appears to be considerable disappointment amongst the former child soldiers, facing temporary surveillance to ensure they do not rejoin the PLA or other such groups, with the assistance given to them by the Nepalese government, a worrying sign bearing in mind there are thousands more former rebels to be released in due course. Pitambar Dahal, one of the former child soldiers released from the camp at Dudhauli, a village 125 miles from Kathmandu, on Thursday expressed anger with the authorities in Nepal and is quoted by the Associated Press as saying of his intentions:

I plan to work for the party from outside the camp for the good of the country. I may have been removed from the camp, but my work for the party will not stop.

Unless they provide some monetary benefits, we will not take anything from them

The Nepalese government did provide each of the former fighters released on Thursday, the Associated Press actually puts the number freed at 210, rather than the figure of 371 quoted by IANS, with a set of civilian clothes and $130 (10,000 Nepalese rupees), with the PLA due to contribute another 12,000 Nepalese rupees. Nepal, home to the world's highest mountain Mount Everest and a country in which 13,000 people died during the Maoist rebellion, continues to be beset by violence. Three Maoist leaders in Southern Nepal were killed by unidentified gunmen on Wednesday, which has resulted in Maoists, whose party is now known as the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), holding strikes on Thursday in three districts in the south of Nepal and boycotting the country's parliament.