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X. The Action Plan for Children Affected by War

The Action Plan for Children Affected by War emerged out of the peace process in Sri Lanka and, as of mid-2004, was the only signed human rights agreement to result from the post-cease-fire talks. The plan was intended to benefit 30,000 to 50,000 children affected by the conflict in the North and East through a broad range of programs. A key provision of the plan was the LTTE’s agreement to end child recruitment and to release children from the LTTE’s forces. The LTTE and the government agreed on the plan in April 2003 and formally signed it in June 2003. UNICEF played a primary role in negotiating the Action Plan and is the main implementing partner.

The Action Plan gave UNICEF a formal monitoring role regarding violations of the rights of children, including under-age recruitment. UNICEF receives reports of under-age recruitment from families and others, maintains a database of such cases, and follows up on each report to verify its accuracy and when possible, to obtain a birth certificate or other documentation of age for each recruited child. Under the plan, UNICEF reports cases to the LTTE and issues a monthly report to the LTTE political wing. Meetings are held regularly between the UNICEF Representative and Tamilselvan, the head of the LTTE political wing, as well as monthly with LTTE representatives at the district level.

The Action Plan called for an awareness campaign on child rights at the beginning of the implementation period, publicizing the commitments by all parties in the plan with specific reference to the commitment of the LTTE not to recruit children under eighteen years of age. The campaign was to include posters, signs by the side of the road, radio spots, and leaflets.  UNICEF prepared a series of posters on various aspects of the plan and submitted them to the LTTE for approval in January 2004, but as of August 2004, the LTTE still had not approved the poster series for dissemination. When Human Rights Watch asked an LTTE representative about the posters, he claimed that the LTTE was not opposed to the posters, but was still working on “logistics.”¹⁶⁵ 

Another component of the plan provided for vocational training for young people between fifteen and eighteen. The plan anticipates training 5,000 young people (including 1,200 former child soldiers) by May 2005, with the International Labor Organization (ILO) as the primary implementing partner.  The program began operating in April 2004, and as of early August, about 300 children were enrolled in three- to six-month programs to learn skills including construction, agriculture, motorbike and bicycle repair, tailoring, welding, animal husbandry, and television and radio repair.¹⁶⁶

The education component of the Action Plan aimed to encourage children, including children returned from the LTTE, to return to school; to provide students with catch-up education and school kits as necessary; and to construct and repair schools. The program was to be implemented by several partners, including UNICEF, the government of Sri Lanka, and the LTTE Education Society. In a progress report on the Action Plan, UNICEF stated that by the end of June 2004, 6,751 children had enrolled back in school and over 40,000 children were enrolled in catch-up education. As noted earlier, however, the benefits of these efforts have often eluded former child soldiers who are fearful of returning to school because of their vulnerability to recruitment or re-recruitment. Less than 40 percent of the child soldiers who returned from Karuna’s forces in April 2004 had returned to school by August, and some who initially re-enrolled subsequently dropped out because of fear.

The Action Plan includes ten main components, including those mentioned above. Other aspects of the plan address child rights training, microcredit and income generation, health and nutrition, psychosocial care, social work, and alternative care for children unable to return to their families. 

Transit Centers

A key component of the plan calls for the release and reintegration of underage recruits from the LTTE, including the establishment of three transit centers to facilitate the return of children to their communities. Although the plan envisioned that many children would be released directly to their families, the transit centers were designed to receive children who expressed a reluctance to go home, children whose families could not be found, and children with specific protection needs. Under the plan, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), effectively the humanitarian wing of the LTTE, was given funds to build the centers, and was designated to co-manage the centers together with UNICEF.

The first center opened in October 2003 in Kilinochchi. The other two centers, in Trincomalee and Batticaloa, although completed, had not opened by November 2004, in large part because of the low rates of children released by the LTTE.

Children at the transit center stay for an average of one to two months, although efforts were being made in August 2004 to reduce the length of stay and “fast-track” children with no significant protection concerns. While at the center, children participate in a full program of activities, including educational and psycho-social assessments; language, math, science, religion and other classes; drama, music, and art activities; sports; and physical exercise. They also have counseling sessions with staff social workers.¹⁶⁷ At the time of our visit in August 2004, the center had four TRO counselors and three UNICEF counselors.

The TRO and Save the Children also conduct home visits to assess the family’s ability to care for the child. Save the Children and the transit center staff then have joint care review meetings to discuss the best options for each child. According to transit center staff, “The most common concern is children coming from very poor families, where the capacity of the family is very limited. Some children find it difficult to go back. Many were suffering from neglect [in the home].”¹⁶⁸

After the child’s return to his or her family, Save the Children social workers conduct follow-up visits to evaluate the reintegration process, support the child’s re-entry into school or vocational training, and provide support to the family. These take place at intervals based on the individual child and family’s particular needs, but roughly take place one week after the child returns, and then after three weeks, six weeks, three months, and one year.¹⁶⁹ Although most children return to their families, in cases where that is not feasible or in the best interest of the child, children may be placed with extended family members or at a vocational training program, boarding school, or children’s home.

Role of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization

The TRO’s involvement in both the Action Plan and the transit centers was controversial from the start. The TRO was organized by the LTTE in 1985 initially to assist Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka taking refuge in South India.  It eventually changed its stated objective to focus on the humanitarian needs of persons affected by war in the North and the East.  According to the TRO website, it is, among other things, “dedicated to addressing the needs of children affected by war in the north-east of Sri Lanka by providing them with much needed relief, rehabilitation and development.”¹⁷⁰

Although the TRO claims to be a humanitarian nongovernmental organization, it is widely acknowledged to be closely linked to the LTTE. Local sources in Trincomalee told Human Rights Watch that many TRO representatives are former LTTE soldiers.¹⁷¹ The TRO is controlled largely by the LTTE, and its credibility is riddled with allegations about its political motives.  According to Canadian intelligence sources, the TRO raises funds from Tamils abroad which it claims to use to assist displaced peoples and former child soldiers in Sri Lanka, but channels much of the money directly to the LTTE.¹⁷²

Some observers and local NGOs have questioned the wisdom of allowing the TRO, because of its links to the LTTE, to protect and rehabilitate former child soldiers. Concerns have also been raised by the funding arrangements for the centers, which were budgeted at US$1.3 million between May 2003 and August 2004.¹⁷³ Much of this funding was given to the TRO for construction and operation costs. The director of the National Child Protection Authority told us, “Groups may claim that they are not supporting the LTTE by funding the TRO, but outside funding frees up other money for military purposes.”¹⁷⁴

UNICEF acknowledges that “for many, the TRO and LTTE are synonymous,” but defends the TRO’s role by saying “In the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of choice. We had our backs against the wall. Initially the LTTE wanted the TRO to run the centers. We argued for three months until we reached a compromise. The TRO is not going away.¹⁷⁵

A representative of UNICEF’s Kilinochchi office, which administers the center, said, “If it hadn’t been with the TRO, the transit center would have been impossible. The TRO has a strong presence in the North-East. They have trust from the LTTE, so there are advantages to working with the TRO.”¹⁷⁶

UNICEF notes that it has implemented a number of safeguards to minimize children’s contact with the TRO. UNICEF staff is present at the transit centers at all times to provide oversight, and children’s stay at the centers is limited to no more than three months. The TRO is also excluded from any follow-up with children once they return home; Save the Children is responsible for all subsequent social work with the children.

Although UNICEF staff at the transit center expressed a hope that in the future they would receive children released from the LTTE “according to their capacity,” TRO staff suggested that the number of children in the LTTE has already been exhausted. “The LTTE has released other children directly home, so we don’t know if there are any more children left to bring.”¹⁷⁷ Similarly, TRO staff in Batticaloa said that the transit center there is ready to start taking children, but that all the children with the LTTE had already been released and gone home.¹⁷⁸ 

Response to the Release of Karuna’s Forces

The mass April release from Karuna’s forces of an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers, including more than 1,800 children, took all actors by surprise.  UNICEF and international NGOs were unprepared to deal with the enormous number of new cases. A UNICEF progress report on the Action Plan acknowledged: “The scale and unexpected nature of this return has put an enormous strain on the capacity and resources of all partner agencies under the Action Plan.”¹⁷⁹

After the release, UNICEF, supported by Save the Children, set up mobile registration centers in Batticaloa and Ampara districts to register the children who had returned home. Save the Children, which is responsible for conducting follow-up visits with children who return home, quickly scaled up its program, increasing its number of social workers to twenty-five.

Of the 1,800 children who returned to Batticaloa or Ampara districts from Karuna’s forces and registered with UNICEF, Save the Children social workers had visited 1,300 by early August, and more than half of that number had been visited twice. ¹⁸⁰  In Trincomalee district, where there is a much smaller number of returnees—fewer than one hundred registered—Save the Children had visited each family approximately five times between April and August.¹⁸¹

A representative of Save the Children told us, “Our main priority is to get the children back to school or back to training. But many children are not there, not at home. Some families send children to relatives, abroad, or to marry.”¹⁸²

In Batticaloa and Ampara, 700 of the children were back in school by early August 2004, and 150 had been referred for vocational training, but over 50 percent of the registered children were neither back in school nor in vocational training. The large number of children without assistance was due to both on-going fear of re-recruitment (keeping many children out of school or leading them to leave their homes, as described earlier in this report) and according to UNICEF, the lack of capacity of Action Plan partners.¹⁸³

UNICEF’s progress report on the Action Plan particularly noted the challenges related to vocational training in the East: “ILO has been constrained by its lack of resource, staffing and infrastructure capacity which have caused delays in the implementation of this project. This is particularly the case in the East where ILO has faced considerable challenges given the large numbers of children and its limited capacity.”¹⁸⁴ UNICEF acknowledged that in general, partner agencies will need to continue to expand to deal with the large number of referrals and follow-up work.¹⁸⁵