|
SEPARATIST group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has agreed to
remove child soldiers from its ranks, the United Nations
Children’s Fund (Unicef)-Philippines reported Friday.
This development materialized after the MILF,
together with the UN, signed an action plan that will ensure
protection for children affected by armed conflict.
Under the said agreement, the MILF vowed to
administer concrete and time-bound activities pertaining to
unimpeded access by monitoring teams, preventing recruitment of
child soldiers, conducting awareness drive and capacity building on
children’s rights and child protection mechanisms within the MILF,
and most importantly, releasing and reintegrating any children in
their ranks who are under 18 years of age.
As part of the action plan, the MILF will
appoint a five-member panel tasked to take charge of the interaction
with the UN and Unicef who has been taking an active role in
facilitating the release of children who may be found within the
camps and in helping them adapt to civilian life.
Additionally, the MILF will also issue a new
General Order to its base commanders and officers to reaffirm the
MILF’s prohibition on employing children under 18 in any capacity,
as well as the appropriate disciplinary actions that will be
enforced in cases of violations.
The pact, according to the Unicef, was signed
following MILF’s consultative meetings with the UN Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed
Conflict and UN children’s agency Unicef.
Unicef Representative Vanessa Tobin welcomed
MILF’s move, saying that such gesture gives a clear message that
with effective dialogue, it is possible for all parties to unite for
the protection of children.
A Unicef commissioned study on children and
women released in April 2008 showed that the MILF has been
recruiting children in their ranks since the Philippine government
declared an all-out war against the rebels in 2000 because of
poverty, lack of access to basic social services, influence of their
families, peers and community members. The MILF assuming custodial
role for orphans whose parents were killed in the war is also a
factor.
“Children are affected in multiple ways by the
conflict in the Philippines. Whether they are displaced or used as
couriers, cooks or soldiers, they should be protected from violence
and return to their communities to live normal lives as children,”
Tobin pointed out.
The MILF first expressed its desire to clean its
ranks from children soldiers when Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special
Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed
Conflict, visited the Philippines in December 2008.
Coomaraswamy talked with MILF leader Mohagher
Iqbal to discuss ways and means of securing the release of children
being recruited by the MILF, New People’s Army, and the al-Qaeda-linked
Abu Sayyaf Group. She also met with government officials such as
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, then-Presidential Adviser on the
Peace Process Hermogenes Esperon, among others.
-- Llanesca T. Panti
|
