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UNICEF Evacuates 2,500 Child Soldiers From South Sudan's War Zone
RUMBEK, Sudan, Feb 27 (News Agencies) - More than 2,500 former child soldiers have been airlifted from volatile areas of southern Sudan to rehabilitation centers in a unique operation by the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), the agency said Tuesday.
The boys, who have been demobilized from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the southwestern Bahr el-Ghazal region, had last week gathered near airstrips to board transport planes operated by the U.N. World Food Program, a journalist saw.
"This the largest ever airlift of its kind in the Sudanese war," said Martin Dawes, the head of communications and human rights promotion in Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the UNICEF-led coalition of U.N. and other aid agencies.
UNICEF's Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in Geneva on Tuesday: "We believe that this is actually quite a milestone, a marker of the growing global recognition that children should never be made instruments of adult conflicts and violence."
Bellamy, speaking at a press conference, said that UNICEF estimated that "around the world ... there are still more than 300,000 children engaged in conflict."
Sharad Sapra, head of the OLS, said that there were an estimated 9,000 child soldiers in southern Sudan's various armed groups.
The evacuation operation started Friday and went on through the weekend. One aircraft was continuing with the airlift on Tuesday. Some children traveled to reception centers by road.
The boys, between the ages of eight and 18, will live in transit centers run by local and international aid agencies around the town of Rumbek, where they will receive basic education, vocational training, health care and psycho-social counseling for four to nine months.
Children who received military training but never fought are expected to be reunited with their communities in three to four months, while those who have lived through combat and other traumatic experiences may require as long as nine months, during which they will receive more vocational training.
Those whose family members cannot be traced will remain under the long-term care of local authorities and non-governmental organizations supported by UNICEF, close to their communities of origin.
The stepped-up demobilization exercise follows a commitment made by the SPLA to Bellamy last October that the movement would remove from its ranks all children under the age of 18.
Bellamy said: "I would like to commend the SPLA for honoring its pledge to me and to UNICEF to release these children," adding: "I have confidence that they will complete that pledge by releasing all other children within their ranks and by continuing to refrain from fresh recruitment of children."
According to Elijah Malok, the executive director of SPLA's relief wing, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, 30% of all SPLA fighters are children, but only about seven percent of that number have taken part in active combat.
He said that many of the children went to SPLA bases after they were orphaned, separated from their parents or guardians during fighting were abducted by marauding militias allied to the government forces.
"Most of these children have been a burden to the military," Malok said, adding: "But it was our national duty to keep them in the army for protection."
Malok said the SPLA would have let the children go earlier had funds been available.
Sudan's civil war is set against a background of resistance by the mainly animist and Christian south to the Islamic regime in Khartoum.
But since 1983, control over resources, including humanitarian aid, has taken an increasingly important role in the conflict.
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