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Immediately end all recruitment of persons under age 18, whether for use as combatants, cooks, porters, messengers, guards or for any other military purpose;
Publicize the ban on the recruitment of children through the media, as well as through local meetings;
Release children under age 18 from all Maoist forces, and transfer them to their families or to appropriate child protection agencies;
Establish appropriate procedures for penalizing any local cadres who recruit children or who do not immediately release children;
Give all adults recruited by the CPN (M) before age 18 the option to leave CPN (M) forces, without any retaliation;
Cooperate with national and international monitors to ensure compliance with an end to the recruitment and deployment of child soldiers and provide the ICRC, UNICEF, and OHCHR full and unhindered access to all military camps and forces for verification purposes;
Cooperate with all efforts to rehabilitate demobilized child soldiers, including their reintegration back into their home communities.
Ensure that an immediate release of children from the Maoists is part of any implementation program of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the Maoists;
Cooperate with appropriate child protection agencies to establish and support rehabilitation and reintegration programs for former child soldiers, and ensure that any such programs are tailored to meet the special requirements of girl soldiers;
Grant a formal amnesty to all former child soldiers for their participation with the Maoists;
Exclude all known child recruiters from Nepal’s new, integrated armed forces;
Immediately ratify and implement the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflicts;
Establish and implement procedures to ensure that child soldiers arrested or apprehended by security forces are immediately transferred to their families or to appropriate child protection agencies for rehabilitation and reintegration;
Ensure that child soldiers who are taken into custody by security forces are treated with dignity and that their rights are respected; establish and implement sanctions against any member of the security forces responsible for physical violence or other human rights abuses against children in their custody;
Immediately end the practice of incarcerating children together with adults;
Allow national and international human rights monitors unhindered access to all Army barracks, police lock-ups, prisons, and other places where children may be detained;
Ratify the Rome statute for the International Criminal Court;
Amend the Child Rights Act to define as children all those below age 18 and introduce a comprehensive juvenile justice system.
Develop with UNICEF, OHCHR, and relevant NGOs complementary strategies to prevent the recruitment of children and to secure the release of children from the Maoists;
Establish specialized training and recruitment for monitors at local offices of the NHRC to publicly report on the recruitment of children by the forces of the CPN (M);
Monitor and publicly report on the treatment of children detained by the Government of Nepal.
Continue to work with local NGOs to monitor and report on any recruitment of child soldiers by the CPN (M) and any release and return of former child soldiers, and publicize any findings.
Take leadership in designing and implementing comprehensive demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs for children with Maoist forces, strengthening technical and operational capacity for this purpose, and working in cooperation with relevant government ministries and nongovernmental child protection organizations;
Assist the government of Nepal in identifying all persons under age 18 and accused of affiliation with the Maoists who are now held in government custody, and facilitate their transfer to appropriate rehabilitation programs;
Work with local communities and local nongovernmental organizations in order to effectively monitor child recruitment, put in place effective prevention strategies, and support the reintegration of children into their communities.
Seek commitments from the CPN (M) for an end to all child recruitment, the immediate release of children from its forces, and cooperation with their rehabilitation and reintegration;
Seek commitments from the Nepal government for the creation and support of effective DDR programs for children.
Create a donor task force for close liaison with UNICEF and other local actors and to make urgent interventions with the CPN (M) in cases of new child recruitment;
Support the creation of a comprehensive child-focused demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration program for children associated with Maoist forces, and provide financial support to enhance the technical and operational capacity of child protection agencies, including UNICEF and NGOs, for this purpose;
Insist that substantial progress is made in the demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration of child soldiers prior to committing significant resources to the demobilization of adult soldiers;
Provide financial and logistical support for the deployment of international human rights monitors in support of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as part of any peace process;
Use economic leverage to pressure the CPN (M) to put an end to all child recruitment by the CPN (M) and to promote the release of all children currently in the CPN (M)’s ranks;
Provide financial support for the Monitoring and Reporting Task Force (co-convened by OHCHR and UNICEF, with the participation of other UN agencies and NGOs in Nepal), which was established under Security Council Resolution 1612 to monitor and report on grave violations against children in armed conflict situations.
Urge the CPN (M) to immediately end all child recruitment and demobilize all children from its forces;
Recommend that no demobilization and rehabilitation packages be distributed to adult members of the Maoist forces until all children have been released;
Have local Kathmandu missions of Security Council members meet with the CPN (M) to insist on progress in the release of children, in accordance with Security Council resolutions on children and armed conflict.
In accordance with Security Council Resolution 1379 on children and armed conflict (November 20, 2001), paragraph 9, use all legal, political, diplomatic, financial, and material measures to ensure respect for international norms for the protection of children by the parties to the conflict. In particular, states should unequivocally condemn the CPN (M)’s continued recruitment and use of child soldiers and withhold any financial, political, or military support to the CPN (M) until it ends all child recruitment and releases all children currently in its ranks.
February 2007
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