SRI LANKA: U.N Talks Warring Sides into Taking Care of Children

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 11 1998 (IPS) - A top U.N. official who is armed with a mandate to seek the protection of children caught in war zones worldwide, has reported some success in Sri Lanka.

Olara Otunnu, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative on children in armed conflict, who was on a week- long visit here, said both the warring government forces and Tamil rebels have agreed children should not be victims of war.

“I hope we can send a message to the world that children in Sri Lanka, … (will) not be abused and brutalised in the manner that conflicts (used to) affect their lives,” he said in Colombo, Saturday, before he left.

Otunnu, a former Ugandan foreign minister and once his country’s permanent representative to the U.N, held meeting with President Chandrika Kumaratunga and parliamentarians from both ruling and opposition parties.

In addition, making use of a two-day ceasfire brokered by the U.N children’s agency UNICEF, he visited the war zones and talked with government military commanders, Tamil rebel leaders, community representatives and children.

“I have seen and heard a tremendous yearning for peace on the part of everybody in this country and that has impressed me,” he told an audience in Colombo of U.N officials, foreign donor agencies, parliamentarians, non-governmental organisation (NGOs) and child rights activists before he left.

Otunnu said that more than two million children have died in wars worldwide in the decade up to 1997. In addition, one million children were orphaned, more than five million disabled and more than 250,000 children under 18 years used in armed combat.

He said more than 90 percent of the casualties in the big wars this decade, were civilians. “This is a world upside down. It is a situation where warfare is being conducted specifically for the purpose of targetting, humiliating, destroying and annihilating civilian populations,” he noted.

The U.N official said the impact of war on children should be addressed urgently, and steps taken for their protection like the creation of fire-free zones in localities where there are hospitals, schools, school buses and playgrounds.

“We must do everything in our power to ameliorate the suffering and conditions of children even as war is raging within a particular zone,” he said, adding that women and children would continue to suffer the psychological and emotional scars of war for many years after the conflict ends.

“Healing is critical. Healing is important to reintegrate those who have suffered and make them productive. But healing is also important because it is the only way to break the cycle of violence, for those who are abused today could well be the abusers of tomorrow,” Otunnu said.

The U.N official said he was deeply moved by the spirit and the fortitude of Sri Lankans living amongst difficult conditions in conflict areas and said he was amazed at “the incredible courage of those residents.”

But he stressed that his mandate was purely humanitarian and ruled out U.N. intervention in seeking an end to the 15-year war in which Tamil rebels claiming to represent Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil population are fighting for an independent homeland.

“My concern is for the protection and welfare of all children, to whatever community they belong to, whatever party or whatever side of the dividing zone,” Otunnu said in response to reports brought back by local aid workers that many ordinary people who met the top U.N official in the war zone had pleaded for U.N or third party intervention to end the prolonged war.

A sudden flurry of visits, earlier of U.S ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the Commonwealth Secretary- General Emaka Anyaoku, have sparked speculation that the government and rebels may now be open to foreign mediation.

Both the previous rounds of peace talks were initiated by the government, but they collapsed before they made any serious headway. An estimated 50,000 combatants and civilians have died in the fighting that has devastated Sri Lanka’s north and east.

At a news conference that followed his speech, Otunnu said the rebels had agreed not to recruit children below 18 years in combat, to allow the free movement of displaced people to areas under government control, and not to interfere in the distribution of humanitarian supplies to civilians in war zones.

They had also promised to take review strategies to take care to prevent civilians from getting caught in the conflict. The Tiger rebels, the world’s best trained guerrilla group, has with

chilling results launched several attacks in the capital Colombo.

“There can be no defence, no justification, no cause that can justify the deliberate targetting of civilian populations anywhere within this island,” the U.N official said he told the government and Tiger political leader Thamilselvan and top ideologue Anton Balasingham during his talks.

Sri Lanka’s military doubts if the rebels could be trusted to keep the pledges made to Otunnu. Even before the U.N official had left, the military had accused the Tigers of breaking the truce by attacking government forces in two incidents.

Army chief Rohan Daluwatte said he most rebel fighters were boys and girls below 17 years and “it is just not possible for them not to recruit children. We have seen from the picture of captured Tigers and those killed that they are kids.”