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🇳🇵 Nepal /Conflict & Security

Reclaiming the dignity of child soldiers of the People’s War

From Kathmandu Post · () English

Summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

Analysis Sources not specified Outcome reported
  • Nepal's Supreme Court has directed the state to address the historical injustices faced by nearly 3,000 children recruited as soldiers during the 1996-2006 People's War.
  • The court's ruling challenges the peace process's complacency and highlights the state's failure to provide economic and psycho-social rehabilitation to former child combatants.
  • The verdict underscores the international obligation to protect children from armed conflict and repair the harms caused by their exploitation.

Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the state to confront the enduring trauma of children exploited during the nation's decade-long armed conflict. In a landmark ruling, the court responded to a petition by former child combatant Lenin Bista and others, directing authorities to rectify historical wrongs against nearly 3,000 minors recruited, armed, and abandoned by Maoist forces between 1996 and 2006.

By birth, every human being is endowed with this intrinsic moral worth. It is absolute; no regime, no ideology and no circumstance can justly strip an individual of it.

— Article TextEstablishing the fundamental principle of human dignity that was violated during the conflict.

The judiciary's directive challenges the moral framework of Nepal's peace process, urging the state to acknowledge and address the continuing violations and lack of rehabilitation these former child soldiers have faced. The verdict exposes the inadequacy of both local and international peacebuilding efforts, which often reduced the profound tragedy of child soldiering to mere administrative details of demobilization.

It challenged the moral vocabulary of the peace process, shook the complacency of the war elites and directed the state to confront the ongoing, unhealed trauma of its children.

— Article TextDescribing the impact and significance of the Supreme Court's verdict.

The Supreme Court's ruling emphasizes that child soldiering is a crime against humanity, a violation of fundamental human rights and dignity. Despite Nepal's international obligations as a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the state has failed to shield children from such horrors or provide comprehensive rehabilitation. The court's intervention seeks to ensure that the harms inflicted upon these vulnerable individuals are finally repaired, restoring their dignity and humanity.

Even though the use of children in war constitutes a crime against humanity, the prevention of which is a shared global responsibility, UNMIN, the representative of the international community and the ultimate embodiment of the UN’s advocacy for human dignity, verified these minors as being used in the war, but washed its hands of their fate.

— Article TextCriticizing the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) for verifying child involvement but not ensuring their fate.
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Originally published by Kathmandu Post. Summarized and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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