By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Jun 11 1999 (IPS)

Dozens of children are either staying away from school or fleeing areas controlled by Tamil guerrillas in Sri Lanka’s war-torn north, with their parents, to escape a rebel recruitment drive, aid workers say.

“About four to five families are arriving daily at government-run welfare centres from rebel-controlled areas to prevent their children being forced to undergo rebel training,” one aid worker told IPS on Thursday.

She said that in other cases, mothers were not sending their children to school in a bid to avoid the rebel campaign.

Last month, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas asked people in the Vanni district to sign up for a new training programme in arms and other war-related aspects. The Defence Ministry said the rebels had begun a new conscription drive.

Though the rebels only called for volunteers, residents say the request for volunteers was just a ruse to dupe international agencies like the U.N children’s agency UNICEF, which has appealed to the rebels not to recruit children to their ranks.

“In reality, every active and able resident including children is expected to follow this training,” said a young woman from a rebel area who had fled to the government-controlled town of Vavuniya in the north with her 12-year-old son.

Last week, Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, launched a campaign called ‘War Games in Paradise’ to oppose the recruitment of child soldiers by the Tigers.

In May 1998, Olara Otunnu, a UN special representative on Children and Armed Conflict, met top LTTE officials in the Vanni and obtained assurances that children under 18 years would not be used as combatants. Otunnu, a former Ugandan foreign minister, visited Sri Lanka as part of a global UN campaign to urge governments and militant groups to protect children.

Since 1983, Tamil rebels have been fighting government troops for a separate homeland in the north and east of the island for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils. More than 50,000 people have been killed. Children also have been victims — dragged into the conflict by voluntary or forced recruitment by the rebels and dozens have died in battle or killed as civilians.

Conscription is just one of the dilemmas faced by children living in conflict zones, says Hiranthi Wijemanne, senior programme officer at the UNICEF office in Colombo.

Their education has been affected by displacement, poverty, shortage of teachers and fear of conscription into rebel ranks. Some children were able to enroll in primary school only at seven years, when they should have been at school from five.

Children in the war zone are traumatised by the violence and the atmosphere of hopelessness. “They don’t see any purpose in studying. They have no goals, no hope and wonder what the future holds for them,” said a child psychiatrist.

A UNICEF report in 1997 said over 500,000 children in the north and the east were directly or indirectly affected by the war.

In one case, a family had been displaced 18 times in the past few years in the Vanni region. “How do you expect children to go to school when they are being moved from place to place to escape the fighting?” asked a childcare worker.

A 1997 government study said one fifth of schools in the north and the east had temporarily closed due to unrest. Regional education authorities were asked to absorb children living in refugee camps into nearby schools, but this is hardly done due to lack of resources.

Neither are teachers prepared to work in rebel-controlled areas. “Teachers are reluctant to even serve in areas taken over by the army from the rebels, as their children can’t go to proper schools or since public services are limited in these areas,” UNICEF’s Wijemanne said.

She says however that there are some who are courageous enough to teach in conflict areas. “These people show an amazing resilience and determination to carry out their job despite the problems they have to face around them,” she said.

Wijemanne said the educational system has survived the war ruin better than others sectors like economic activity, government development and administration, partly because of the country’s earlier achievements in universalising education.

Despite the war, schools – apart from occasional disruptions – have been functioning and examinations held. In the northern town

of Jaffna, rebel headquarters till it fell to government troops in 1996, the schools and its one university – one of the best in Sri Lanka – have stayed open amidst fighting and bombardment.

“The country’s old education infrastructure has in a way helped children to receive some form of education during the war,” Wijemanne said. UNICEF supplies some teaching material and provides sports equipment to schools. It runs conflict resolution and psychosocial programmes.

In the eastern district of Batticaloa, where fighting has been less intense, students study under the trees or in village schools without chairs and desks, no toilets, drinking water or teaching materials.

Yet their examination results have consistently been better than schools in Batticaloa town. “The best examination results come from rebel areas,” a district education official told IPS by telephone.

He said the desire to learn and succeed coupled with the reluctance to be roped into militant groups, saw students in rebel areas pay a lot of attention to their studies.

Parents also are keen their children should be educated so they could escape from the conflict areas.

Getsie Chanmugam, a child specialist at Redd Barna, a Norwegian aid agency, confirmed that parents want to see their children get some sort of education at least. “If the child is educated, they can then leave the village and get a job in Colombo or outside …,” she said.

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