ISSUES

UNICEF's unique rehabilitation
The Editor The Sunday Leader

Following the September 14 editorial in The Sunday Leader titled "Suffer, Little Children" UNICEF Representative Ted Chaiban has sent the following reply. We carry the letter in full along with The Suncay Leader's observations. 

Dear Sir,

I am writing in response to the editorial "Suffer, Little Children," which appeared in your newspaper on September 14 and would like to correct a number of errors, misinterpretations and loose implications. Without referring to the strange analogy used in the editorial I feel the following should be brought to the attention of your readers.

UNICEF has never said the children being presently used as soldiers in the LTTE have no idea who their parents are, or their whereabouts. Nor have we suggested in anyway that they do not want to go home. UNICEF's expectation is that most of the children with the LTTE are from stable homes, which can be traced, and the family quickly reunited. In few cases, where the family cannot be traced, or where there are severe social difficulties, an alternative long term care solution in their community or extended family will be found. These cases will be exceptions.

The purpose of the transit centres through which the children will transit after they are released by the LTTE is to allow for an initial assessment of the children, and to provide a break from the military environment before reunification with families. It is important to note that the assessment period may be as short as a few days and will not exceed three months. The statement in your article that children will stay in the centres until they are 18 is therefore completely wrong. The use of some system of transit provision is common in demobilisation processes, and should to be portrayed as an invention for the Sri Lankan context. It is not an alternative to family care, or an adequate substitute. It is part of a process, which we sincerely expect, will secure the reunification of large numbers of children with their families.

I wish to emphasise that the transit centres are not rehabilitation centres as stated in your article. The rehabilitation of former child soldiers will happen only when a child has left the transit centre. As envisioned in the action plan, this is a long-term commitment involving re-enrollment in school, counselling and micro credit facilities as appropriate for families with returnees. Each child will be followed by a social worker from the Social Welfare Ministry and Save the Children to help ensure successful reintegration. To be successful this kind of work can only happen when a child is in a stable environment where there is support from families and communities.

All these activities are taking place under the government and LTTE agreed action plan, which states as a guiding principle that all children have a right to a family, that families have a right to care for their children, and that it is preferable for children to be living with their families rather than in an institution. It is absurd to suggest that it is in any way endorsing the abduction of children. UNICEF advocates for the release of all children recruited by the LTTE and has called for the end of such recruitment as necessary to the success of the action plan.

The process now underway in Sri Lanka is an unprecedented opportunity to return child solders to their families. There simply has not been a way of securing a negotiated release of children and put an end to their recruitment before. Our priority is to get children away from a highly damaging military environment and return them as soon as possible to their families. UNICEF was asked to take on this role by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.

In situations where UNICEF wants to reach vulnerable children, we work with those agencies and partners who have access to the children in conflict affected areas. Frankly, we need to be able to work with those who can help us achieve the best result for child soldiers, and that result is the fastest possible removal of children from the ranks of the LTTE.

It should be noted that the transit centre project is one component of a larger plan that looks into the needs of children affected by the war, and covers children from all communities. The transit centre component of the programme covers child soldiers specifically but the other components look at the needs of a range of children directly affected by conflict including children engaged in other forms of child labour, unaccompanied children and street children.

In conclusion, I would emphasise that UNICEF is the instrument accepted by the government of Sri Lanka, the LTTE and donor partners to engage in the extremely difficult task of addressing the complex and multiple needs of all the war affected children in the north east of the country. This will be a long-term project that will involve many partnerships and shared responsibilities. No doubt there will be criticism as we travel this route, but I would hope that comment will be based on sound knowledge and balanced assessment.

Yours sincerely,
Ted Chaiban 
UNICEF Representative

The Sunday Leader:

Mr. Chaiban has missed the point. UNICEF is paying TRO, an organ of the LTTE, Rs. 100 million to build transit centres to house, for a period of three months, more than 1,000 children abducted by the LTTE. (It is interesting and singularly curious to note that nowhere in Mr. Chaiban's letter has he made a single reference to the TRO, UNICEF's partner in this exercise - we couldn't imagine why.)

If children are to be housed in these centres for only three months so as to undergo an "initial assessment" and to "provide a break from the military environment," why is it necessary to spend Rs. 100 million on these centres? Is it that the LTTE will continue to abduct children - as they have done despite the ceasefire, with not a whimper out of Mr Chaiban - and, once they are done with them, dump them in these centres? Is this what Mr. Chaiban is in effect endorsing?

Surely the right thing for UNICEF to have done was to have used this Rs. 100 million (which amounts to Rs. 100,000 per family) to strengthen financially the families from which these children were taken, so as to assure them of basic needs and education? Instead, the money is being handed over to an arm of the LTTE. Let's not mince words, Mr. Chaiban: is this not a ransom? Aren't the transit centres just another convenient way of institutionalising these abductions. Children belong at home, with their parents, not in transit homes operated, out of all people, by the TRO.

Mr. Chaiban asserts that both the government and LTTE have agreed to this outrageous arrangement. Well, it was the government that stood idly by even as Tamil people were stoned and burned to death, and their homes looted in 1983; and it was the LTTE that slaughtered tens of thousands of innocents through the 1980s and 1990s. UNICEF does indeed derive its moral values from strange places!

No, Mr Chaiban, you are wrong and if you have a conscience, you ought to know it. The process to which you are subjecting the victims of terror, innocent children, is not one to which you would allow your own children to be subjected. If we are wrong, pray say so, and let us see whether you could look your own children in the eye again.

These are not issues that can be sidestepped through the elegant euphemisms that are the United Nations' stock in trade. Mr. Chaiban says, "It is absurd to suggest that (UNICEF) is in any way endorsing the abduction of children."

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