The government and the UNICEF have launched a much advertised national campaign to prevent child recruitment and to promote the release of all recruited children. Helping those hapless children is, no doubt, a noble effort which deserves praise from one and all.

But, do we need such a grandiose project costing the UN an arm and a leg to put the kibosh on this dastardly practice and bring child recruiters to book? Child conscription is not a scourge like environment pollution or dengue, the tackling of which requires a sustained campaign to heighten public awareness. What is needed to eliminate child recruitment is only a determined effort to take on child recruiters with might and main.

There are only two groups responsible for child conscription in this country – the LTTE and its offshoot the TMVP. The latter has joined forces with the government and the former is about to be crushed. All that needs to be done to secure the release of the unfortunate children in their clutches is for the government to force the TMVP to let go of children in its ranks and to stamp out the LTTE terrorism fast. There is no other way.

All these years the UNICEF has been barking up the wrong tree as regards Sri Lanka’s child combatants. It always sought the help of the LTTE to secure their release. The UNICEF even launched a joint project with the LTTE for that purpose by setting up transit homes. The LTTE promised to release child soldiers in batches for rehabilitation. But, we warned the UNICEF that the LTTE was taking it for a right royal ride. That project came a cropper and the UNICEF had egg on its face.

UNICEF pathetically failed in its endeavour as it was trying to eliminate the effect without first removing the cause. It tried to have child soldiers released without advocating the eradication of terrorism. A few years ago, the UN Security Council (SC), too, refused to adopt a number of tough measures child rights activists had proposed against the terrorist groups responsible for child recruitment. Paradoxically, the SC is now trying to sabotage Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE, which is on the UN List of Shame for child recruitment, in the exalted company of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which the UN Peace Keepers are fighting in Congo! Had the UN helped Sri Lanka defeat terrorism at the inception, thousands of child combatants could have been saved. At least now, the UN must help Sri Lanka put terrorism behind it without trying to scuttle its war on terror so that there will be no more child recruitment in this country.

The UNICEF, for its part, ought to pressure the UN headquarters to help Sri Lanka destroy terrorists who conscript children and demand that the government get Eastern Province Chief Minister S. Chandrakanthan, who himself is a former child soldier, to release children in the TMVP’s ranks.

We hope the greedy elements in the UN won’t make a business out of Sri Lanka’s child soldiers by throwing money at the problem.

- The Island Editorial, 28th Feb 2009