THE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is listed as a terrorist or unlawful organisation in several countries. Amazingly, this has done little to temper the penchant of the Tigers for legalese and hair-splitting on international law. Its latest war of words with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) best illustrates the point.
In the last week of June UNICEF handed over to the LTTE a list of 1,387 child soldiers on its rolls. The LTTE acknowledged receipt of the communication and did not dispute the overall figure, barring some `inaccuracies' about children who have crossed the age of 15 or whom it has supposedly released but who continue to figure on the UNICEF list. Essentially, it is enraged over the norms and methodologies UNICEF has adopted and questions the very basis of the determination.
The arguments professed by LTTE legal experts stretch from the sublime to the ridiculous. The organisation asserts that since the LTTE is no longer an "armed group" but a "state in formation", it is not correct to apply the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the child rights standard. The argument goes that the LTTE began its armed struggle in the early 1970s as a guerilla force when it "could have been accurately described" as an armed group, but in the 1970s neither the Convention nor its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict was in place.
The Convention was adopted and opened for signature on November 20, 1989 and came into force on September 2, 1990. The Optional Protocol was adopted and opened for signature on May 25, 2000 and came into force on February 12, 2002.
However, the LTTE maintains that the Optional Protocol was declared in 2001 and that it did not compulsorily raise the age of 15 as the minimum recruitment age for a state's armed forces. "It, however, did declare the minimum age of recruitment into `armed groups' as 18. Unfortunately, the entire discourse on child soldiers is based on these inconsistent Articles in the CRC and its Optional Protocol. When these are applied to the youths between the ages of 15-18 who join the LTTE, the contradictions multiply further," the LTTE claimed. According to the LTTE, by the time the Optional Protocol entered into force "in 2001" the LTTE was a full-fledged, mature non-state actor running a de-facto government with many non-corrupt, efficient structures with demonstrated humanitarian concerns. "Thus, since 2001, LTTE is no more an armed group. It is indeed a state in formation. Yet, LTTE has respected the international call to desist recruiting underage youths and the result is that underage youths are regularly released to their families or to ESDC [Education and Skills Development Centre] when the youth refuses to go back to his/her family," it said.
The LTTE is piqued by the UNICEF definition of child soldiers. It maintains that the CRC specifies 15 as the minimum age for recruitment into a state's armed forces and calls on the states to "take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities".
It has found several "faults and inaccuracies" in the list of 1,387 child soldiers supplied by UNICEF. If the Tigers are to be believed, it has the names of 54 children already released by the outfit. Besides, the list contains names of those over the age of 21 (107); over 20 (197); over 19 (247); over 18 (285); over 17 (207); and under the age of 17 (293).
The LTTE wants the United Nations body to understand the reasons why children in the Northeast embrace the organisation and to realise the inadequacies of international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in coping with the ground realities. "By crying for help, these children are forcing us to deal with their situation. UNICEF has been operating in the Northeast for several decades, and their presence here and their work are well known to the local population. Therefore, one must reflect on the reasons why these children are not going to UNICEF for help and turn instead to the LTTE for refuge," the LTTE said.
The Tigers believe that one obvious explanation for children running to its fold is that UNICEF does not take on resource-intensive responsibilities such as caring for children at risk. "LTTE on the other hand has extensive child welfare programmes in the Northeast excelling any available in the rest of the island," it said.
The LTTE complained that given that more than 800 of the youth in the list were now over the age of 18, UNICEF's call for the release of these youths was not based on any "international human rights standards. It can only be viewed as a desperate attempt to boost the numbers in their list with the view to discredit the LTTE".
The LTTE's diatribe against UNICEF raises several questions, particularly because nowhere is the outfit denying that it employs children, from the age 15, for military purposes. Why should an organisation that boasts of infrastructure for extensive child welfare programmes employ children for combat?
On the face of it, the attempt by the Tigers to debate a whole range of issues with UNICEF on the contentious subject of child soldiers appears to be human at one level, puerile and academic at another. However, a closer look would reveal that there is a method in the madness of the LTTE discourse on underage combatants.
The elaborate explanations are aimed not so much at UNICEF or the international community but at the Tamil diaspora. The diaspora provides the much-needed economic and political oxygen to the LTTE. The Tigers may have a devil-may-care attitude towards the rest of the world but are extra careful about the sensitivities of the diaspora. And thereby hangs a tale of passionate legal gloss by the LTTE on the issue of child soldiers.
B. Muralidhar ReddyCOMMents
COMMents
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