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Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

Despite commitments elicited from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by the United Nations not to use children for war, children are continued be targeted in the ongoing conflict of Sri Lanka charged Secretary General Kofi Annan in a just issued report to the United Nation's Security Council.

The Secretary General in his report issued to the Security Council prior to the UN General Assembly Special session on children to be held in New York from 19 to 21 September with the participation of more than 75 Heads of State strongly recommended that the international community take concrete steps to protect children in war affected areas.

The Secretary General said that his special representative Olara A. Otunnu, has elicited 59 specific commitments from governments and representatives of armed groups in several zones of conflict where children have suffered immensely.

Otunnu visited Sri Lanka in this respect and elicited a firm pledge from the Liberation Tigers' leadership not to conscript or recruit child soldiers. But respected human rights organisations have alleged that Liberation Tigers agents regularly visit schools or near schools to abduct children to serve in their armed forces including in their suicide squads. The most recent allegation was that a teenager who visited Madhu church as a pilgrim had been abducted to be conscripted in the Tiger army. Human Rights organisations like Amnesty International have said Tiger agents absolutely without the consent of the parents abduct the children.

The Secretary General said, in the armed conflicts of recent years, children have featured centrally as targets of violence, and occasionally - even unwillingly - as perpetrators.

In the report, dated September 7, 2001 and posted in the United Nations website, the Secretary General said, a large number of children have been directly affected by armed conflict, many of them uprooted from their homes and communities, maimed or killed. Other have been made orphans, abducted, abused, and exploited.

In a special mention of the government of Sri Lanka, Kofi Annan said, the island republic is one of the two countries (the other is Andorra) who have set the minimum age for voluntary enlistment at eighteen as he called upon member states to do last year.

Some fifteen months after the General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, said the Secretary General, only five ratifications have been received, five short of the ten required for the protocol to enter into force. Eighty one countries have signed, indicating their intention to proceed with ratification etc. Moreover, only two of the five parties to the protocol (Andorra, Sri Lanka) have set the minimum age for voluntary enlistment at eighteen, as I called upon member states to do last year.

During the recent attacks of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on various government installations like the Ampara police recently, reports said the Tamil insurgents had used large number of under age girls mostly described as cannon fodder.

Secretary General Kofi Annan in his report to the Security Council has emphatically pointed out that more attention to be paid to the impact of war on girls. Annan says the impact on girls is particularly damaging to the future generations. As already disadvantaged in peacetime, girls undergo sexual abuse and enslavement during war, he says, urging that sexual violence against women and children continue to be prosecuted as a war crime.

The Secretary General, in his report called upon the Security Council and member states to continue to take steps to ensure compliance by all parties to armed conflicts with their child protection obligations, and the commitments they have made to the UN Special representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu as well as relevant United Nations bodies.

The Secretary General in his report described efforts to demobilise child soldiers in few countries including Sri Lanka and said, such efforts are crucial, demobilisation of children is a necessity that cannot be held hostage to political developments. In each instance prevention of recruitment or re-enlistment has been an overwhelming concern. Such prevention cannot occur, however, without putting into place adequately resourced structures and programmes for receiving demobilised child combatants and ensuring their sustainable rehabilitation.

Kofi Annan concluded his report to the UN Member States and system, NGO's, the civil society and others to take the decisive action to protect children and to actively persuade and seek to expose and sanction those whose actions are beyond the pale.

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