MILF agrees to removing child soldiers from ranks

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, Manila Times