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VI. The Government’s Detention of Former Child Soldiers and Failure to Provide Rehabilitation Assistance

Detention of children

Children serving with Maoist forces were afraid to run away because they feared the Maoists would punish them if they were caught, or if they succeeded, their families. Another major reason why children were afraid to escape was that they feared being caught by Nepali security forces, which had established a record of violating human rights laws and the laws of war in a systematic and widespread manner.⁹⁷ The treatment of former Maoists by security forces not only failed to provide children with rehabilitation assistance, but also entailed further violations of their rights.  Children were held under “anti-terrorism” laws alongside adults, and were subject to abuse while in detention, including repeated and brutal beatings, interrogation, and forced labor. Since the ceasefire reports about abuses by the military have significantly declined (although nothing has been done to account for the numerous violations that occurred prior to the ceasefire) and some legal reforms have taken place.

Anti-terrorism laws first adopted during the state of emergency in 2001 allowed security forces to arrest and detain persons suspected of involvement in acts of terrorism without a warrant. Under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Ordinance (TADO), issued in November of 2001, security forces could hold individuals in preventive detention for up to one year without charge or trial and without any recourse to the judiciary.⁹⁸

The new government has publicly announced that it has released all detainees held solely under preventive detention decrees, including children detained because of their previous association with the Maoists. TADO was not renewed after it lapsed in September 2006 and is no longer in force. But Nepali human rights groups report that some children remain in detention under different charges such as possession of arms or explosives, or more seriously, murder.⁹⁹ Human rights monitors from Nepali groups as well as the UN are concerned that these children may be subject to abuse while in detention—a reasonable fear, considering the history of mistreatment of children by Nepali security forces.

Pre-ceasefire mistreatment of children in detention

Human Rights Watch’s interviews with Maoist child soldiers who had been detained by the government prior to the ceasefire confirmed that government security forces subjected children to interrogation, repeated and brutal beatings, and forced labor. Children were often detained for lengthy periods in army barracks, local police stations, or adult prisons, where some were subjected to additional violence, restraints, sensory deprivation, and inhumane conditions. 

Sixteen-year old Bikram told Human Rights Watch that he had spent four months with the Maoists when he was arrested by the army in November 2004. Five members of his group, including another child age 14, were captured at the same time. He told us,

The security forces beat us severely. They used their weapons, boots, and hands. They beat my back, head, thighs. I was beaten unconscious. That same day, they gave us bullets and bags to carry for them for a two-hour walk. Sometimes I couldn’t breathe. When we couldn’t walk, they would pull us.

The next day, he said, he witnessed the army execute another Maoist who had been captured earlier from another group. He and the other captives from his group were then beaten again, and interrogated for three or four hours before being taken to district headquarters. He said that once they reached the headquarters,

[w]e were blindfolded and handcuffed and put in one room in the barracks. For five days we were not provided with anything, no food, no water. Every two hours they [the army] would come and beat us. For the first 17 days we were not allowed out of the room. We were forced to do our toilet in the same room.

Bikram said that after three months of detention representatives of the ICRC visited the camp. Following this visit, he said, the group was provided with blankets and was no longer blindfolded or handcuffed. He was detained in the army barracks for two more months before he was transferred to a jail in Kathmandu, where he was detained for a further 11 months. He was never provided a lawyer, and was first taken to court over a year after he was first captured. He was finally released after the human rights NGO Advocacy Forum filed a case in the Supreme Court challenging the illegal detention of minors in adult facilities. In total, he spent nearly 16 months in detention.¹⁰⁰

Another boy, Ram, was recruited in 2004 when he was 14 years old. After a year in the Maoists he and another soldier were captured by the army. He said,

They [the army] took us to the barracks. They beat us both with their guns and boots. After 15 days my friend died from the beatings. They beat me repeatedly. Once I was beaten unconscious and taken to the hospital. When I regained consciousness I was taken back to the barracks and beaten again. I nearly died. I don’t know why they beat me.

I was fed once a day and got the same food as the soldiers. The floor of the room was wet. I slept on the floor. After the ICRC found me [six weeks after his arrest], I got a blanket and the soldiers no longer beat me.

He was detained in the army barracks for four months before he was released and taken by the ICRC to a rehabilitation program run by a Nepali NGO.¹⁰¹

As already described above, 14-year-old Shyam escaped from the Maoists after three months and surrendered himself to the police. The police kept him at the police station, where he worked cooking rice and making tea in the station canteen. The police attempted to contact his family, but most of his immediate family was working in India, and members of his extended family were not willing to take responsibility for him. He remained in the police station for seven months before the ICRC arranged for him to enter a rehabilitation program run by a local NGO.¹⁰²

Other children also reported lengthy periods of detention. One was detained in army barracks for a year-and-a-half and worked in the camp kitchen.  Although the boy was not certain of his age, he believed that he was only 12 or 13 years old when first captured and detained.¹⁰³

A UNICEF study found that 30 percent of children and youth interviewed in prisons reported psychological problems related to torture, including sleeping disorders, nightmares, anxiety, palpitations, and uncertainty about their lives.¹⁰⁴ Human Rights Watch’s interviews with detained child soldiers demonstrated the ongoing consequences of such treatment. Bikram, who was detained for 16 months, says that he still suffers physical problems from the beatings he received from the army, including damage to his right eye, hearing loss, and recurrent stomach aches.¹⁰⁵

The Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict in Nepal included the results of a study of Nepal’s juvenile justice system carried out by a task force comprised of Nepali and international monitors in accordance with Security Council resolution 1612. The task force documented 195 cases of juveniles held under TADO in army barracks, police stations, prisons and high security centers. Of these 195, the report stated, “the majority claimed to have been held incommunicado when detained by RNA for periods sometimes amounting six months.”

According to the findings of the monitoring and reporting task force, the majority of the children held under TADO were victims of ill-treatment or torture after their arrest, mainly during the initial interrogations. More than 80 percent of the 101 children who responded to the interviews by the task force provided detailed accounts of ill-treatment and torture. The methods of torture included blindfolding and handcuffing for extended periods of time, beatings with sticks mainly on the soles of the feet, kicking and punched on the head and the chest. Some children also reported electric shocks, water immersion until suffocation and mock executions.¹⁰⁶

Lack of rehabilitation and reintegration programs for former child soldiers

The discussions between the government and the Maoists after the ceasefire have not adequately addressed the problem of child soldiers. Since the ceasefire, although security conditions have improved markedly, little has been done to facilitate the release and rehabilitation of children serving with the Maoists—in part because the status of children has not been discussed, in part because the Maoists continue to deny that a problem even exists, and in part due to a lack of political will and resources by the Nepali government.

The Secretary-General’s report on children in armed conflict in Nepal stated that, as of September 2006, “it should be highlighted that child protection agencies have faced major difficulties in obtaining the separation of large numbers of children from CPN-M, in actively following up family requests for assistance to get their children out as well as in addressing the continuous and current cases of recruitment.”¹⁰⁷

As this report went to press, there were still no indications of a systematic effort to release and reintegrate children serving as soldiers with the CPN (M).

A growing body of international law has recognized that children who are recruited and used as soldiers are entitled to special assistance to ensure their rehabilitation and reintegration back into civilian society (see “International Legal Standards,” below). Under its treaty obligations, the government of Nepal is required to provide former child soldiers with rehabilitation and reintegration assistance, including access to education, vocational training, and support for their physical and psychological recovery. However, to date the government of Nepal has taken little responsibility to ensure that former child soldiers receive the assistance to which they are entitled.¹⁰⁸ A few NGOs provide important and quality rehabilitation services, but their number is extremely small, and the assistance provided is entirely ad hoc.

Nearly all children leaving the Maoists face considerable challenges. They may have no place to live, or need help locating relatives who might be willing to take them in. Many have been out of school for a considerable period of time, and without previous school records and money for tuition and supplies they find it nearly impossible to re-enroll. They may have few marketable job skills and few options to support themselves.

Former child soldiers may also experience emotional and psychological problems. A counselor with a residential rehabilitation program run by a Nepali NGO told Human Rights Watch, “The children can’t sleep at night. They have eating problems, anxiety, fear about the future and about themselves.”¹⁰⁹

Without assistance, former child soldiers may remain separated from their families, and enter a precarious existence in the informal labor sector. Unknown numbers of children who have served with the Maoists have crossed into India, seeking not only work but also safety from both the Maoists and government security forces. Many children are afraid to seek help, worried that identifying themselves as former Maoists may stigmatize them or expose them to security risks.

Prior to the Jana Andolan II, the government of Nepal not only failed to support rehabilitation and reintegration assistance for child soldiers, but actively obstructed such efforts by failing to hand over children apprehended by security forces to appropriate agencies, including the ICRC, UN bodies, or nongovernmental organizations. As described above, security forces have detained children for months or years, often in inhumane and miserable conditions. In some cases, government authorities have refused to accept the authenticity of birth certificates or other documentation establishing a child as below the legal age (16) for incarceration in adult prisons. ¹¹⁰

UN guidelines on the demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDR) of child soldiers stipulate that the demobilization and reintegration of children must be pursued at all times, regardless of whether formal peace or security sector reform agreements have been reached.¹¹¹ The demobilization and reintegration of children serving with the Maoists should not wait for final agreements between the Maoists and the government regarding an integrated military force. Immediate steps should be taken to identify boys and girls in Maoist ranks, and begin the DDR process.

A UNICEF representative told Human Rights Watch,

There is a potential that kids will be hostage to a long security reform process. There is no reason for kids to remain in the ranks. DDR of children is a human rights process, not a security process. It doesn’t wait until people are ready for it. It has to start as soon as possible.¹¹²

In November, the UNICEF representative in Nepal expressed extreme concern that children had not yet been returned or reintegrated. The agency called for the Maoists to immediately hand over children to child protection agencies as soon as they were brought to the cantonment sites where the Maoists agreed to gather their soldiers.¹¹³

In a press interview, Sandra Beidas, head of the OHCHR-Nepal protection section, pointed out that the ceasefire negotiations and political discussions had failed to consider the problem of thousands of child soldiers and how to return them to normal life:

There have been initiatives in Nepal during the past years to provide care for children who were either released by the parties to the conflict, captured or who simply voluntarily left. Some children were provided temporary shelter, others were given legal assistance when found to be held illegally in detention. Family tracing and mediation were also carried out to allow for the safe return of such children to their families. However, a national process to separate children from armed groups and return them to their communities has yet to be set up.

Separating children from armed groups is essential in terms of their protection and allowing them to return to a normal life. This advocacy must not only be directed at the parties to the conflict, but also civil society and the communities to which children will return, in order to facilitate their reintegration.¹¹⁴

Until recently, the burden was carried by a very small number of NGOs operating rehabilitation programs for former child soldiers. Child Workers in Nepal, for example, operates two centers for children affected by the conflict that accommodate around 130 children. The program helps children get back into school or vocational training programs. It also helps children make contact with their families and assesses whether it is possible or desirable for the child to return home.

Existing programs provide former child soldiers with a variety of services, including psychosocial counseling, education, vocational training, employment opportunities, and reintegration with their families. But such programs are of too small a scale to accommodate the thousands of children expected to be released in case of a full peace agreement between the government and the Maoists. For now, according to the Nepali groups, they have been unable to help many children even after the ceasefire. Despite improvements in the security environment, many Nepali families still harbor fears of reprisals from the CPN (M) or government forces.

According to the Nepali Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace, 100 days after the ceasefire,

[v]ery few children have approached for such programmes during this period. According to UCEP [Underprivileged Children’s Education Program] Nepal, only one child has visited the rehabilitation center in the hundred days after the restoration of democracy. Therefore, it seems that the process of identifying the children associated with the armed force or group and withdrawing them is still complicated. It is rather difficult to make their contact with and meet their families, who are still in dilemma about taking them back home. Some families are not assured about the security despite the easy present environment for the children, who were once associated with the armed force or group.¹¹⁵

Because security risks make it impossible for many former child soldiers to return home, children may remain in these programs for several months or even years. As a result, the number of placements available at a given time is relatively small.

Knowledge about such programs is also very limited. Children are most likely to be referred to such programs through the Red Cross or NGOs. It is impossible to know how many children leave the Maoists and then never receive help because they do not know that assistance is available or how to access it.

Since the ceasefire, UNICEF has coordinated a working group to address children associated with fighting forces, together with national and international NGOs. The working group has conducted capacity-building workshops for its members on demobilization and reintegration, and conducted a rapid assessment on children associated with armed groups. UNICEF has also hired a full-time expert on child demobilization and reintegration to facilitate planning for the release and return of child soldiers.¹¹⁶ Some NGOs are also scaling up programs to provide rehabilitation and reintegration assistance to children who may be released from the Maoists.

One complicating factor for NGOs operating programs for Maoist child soldiers is that the Maoists have been designated as a “terrorist” organization by several governments, including the United States, so some NGOs are reluctant to provide assistance to children who have been affiliated with the group, or make their efforts known. The terrorist designation has also limited avenues of financial support for rehabilitation programs. For example, United States law prohibits any US funding that benefits individuals affiliated with any organization that has been designated by the US government as a “terrorist” entity. Officials with USAID in Nepal have indicated that such laws may limit support from the agency for rehabilitation programs for children who have been part of the Maoists, particularly in the absence of formal demobilization mechanisms.¹¹⁷

The demobilization and rehabilitation of child soldiers requires specialized expertise. Child protection agencies including UNICEF and NGOs should take the lead in providing the technical and operational expertise to design and implement DDR programs. However, the government of Nepal also has a responsibility to provide political support, allocate adequate resources, and involve appropriate ministries in the planning, design and implementation of DDR programs.

The support of donor governments is also key to help child protection agencies build capacity in the short term, and ensure long-term sustainability of essential reintegration programming, including education, training, and follow up.