17 April 2009

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has no policy of recruiting child soldiers into its armed forces, saying the right place for children is in schools in preparation for their adulthood and future.

The MILF believes that an educated man is better than the uneducated ones especially in the pursuit of development of society and humanity.

A senior member of the MILF military General Staff (GS), who requested anonymity, told www.luwaran.com/net that its military code of conduct specifically prohibits the recruitment of children.

He also disclosed that in the official roster of its military no child is included.

In a related development, Muhammad Ameen, chairperson of the MILF Secretariat, disclosed that the MILF is working closely with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) for the protection of children in conflict affected areas (CAAs).

“We are cooperating with this UN body for the benefit and future of Moro children,” he stressed, “the need to follow UN norms on children protection.”

However, he lamented the fact that the MILF feels almost singled out in this effort to stamp out child soldiers citing the Reports of the United Nations Secretary General on April 4, 2008, that only one percent is committed by the MILF in more than 100 cases of violations in the Philippines, 50% by the Philippine government, 35% by the New People’s Army, the rest by the Abu Sayyaf and other armed groups.

Most of the government infractions are in the recruitment of minors in its paramilitary forces, which are tasked as territorial forces.

The government is also violating this child laws in the recruitment of trainees into the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) who are mostly youth below 18 years old after they graduated from high schools.

Musa appealed to the UNICEF and other human rights groups to give more attention to the violations of the government rather than to the MILF, even as he stressed that certainly the MILF wants this one percent to become zero percent.

On December 10, UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy met with MILF officials to discuss the issue of child soldiers.

Coomaraswamy noted that while the Philippines has strong laws on child protection, these laws need to be implemented. She urged the government to implement and apply these laws.