COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels have been slowly demobilizing their baby brigades, but teaching child soldiers to become children again is becoming a 40-million dollar problem.

International aid agencies report a rise in the number of child warriors freed by Tamil Tiger rebels since they entered into a Norwegian-brokered truce with government forces in February.

Aid officials say a “working group” consisting of international humanitarian agencies and the authorities were finalizing minimum standards and conditions for reintegrating child soldiers into society.

The question of child soldiers has been a key issue for the United Nations Children’s Fund which has been intervening with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to have underage combatants freed from rebel ranks.

“We don’t want to get into a debate on why there are child soldiers,” said UNICEF representative here, Ted Chaiban. “What we say is that they should not be there (as child soldiers) in the first place.”

Poverty and lack of schooling are said to be among key causes that drove hundreds of young boys and girls to take up arms in Sri Lanka’s north-east and many are likely to face starvation if they quit the guerrillas.

Chaiban believes education is the key to address the problem of children in a post-conflict situation and help consolidate the peace process.

He said the new school term starting in January will be the first education year in a period of normality in the otherwise embattled northern and eastern regions.

Government forces and Tamil Tiger guerrillas have been observing a truce since Feb 23, and despite allegations of violations by both sides, it has by and large been holding.

The conflict has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the past three decades.

Initial estimates by UN agencies place the cost of rebuilding the educational infrastructure in the island’s north east at $40 million.

With Sri Lanka’s treasury virtually empty, the government has difficulty in finding the money for even the basic needs of the estimated 800,000 people internally displaced by the conflict.

The government and the Tamil Tigers are set to address international donors in Oslo on Monday in a bid to gain support as well as cash to underpin the fragile peace process.

Chaiban said that about three quarters of the 400,000 school-age population in the war-hit regions lived as refugees. More than 300 schools function under temporary sheds or sometimes even under trees.

“The best way to get a sense of normalcy and support the peace process is to get the education system back,” Chaiban said noting that despite the damage to school buildings, the country had faired well in maintaining an education system.

However, the drop-out rate in the embattled regions was three times the average in other parts of the island.

Tiger rebels, who have drawn flak for their policy of recruiting child soldiers, did acknowledge the need to protect children during the latest round of talks in Thailand earlier this month.

The rebels reneged on a promise to UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, in 1998 that children under 18 will not be used as combatants, UN diplomats have said.

Diplomats and aid workers said there has been improvement in the situation for children in recent months, but the Tigers needed to do more.

The Norwegian who heads the ceasefire monitoring team, Trond Furuhovde, said he noticed that the Tigers were gradually allowing underage combatants to return home. Some do not have homes to return to.

“When they (child soldiers) are taken out of the jungle they must have something just as good or even better,” Furuhovde said last month. He said poverty had forced some children to join the rebels and the demobilization was now posing new challenges.

He said sending the child soldiers home was not sufficient and they needed support to be re-integrated into society and go back to school.—AFP