BANGKOK, Oct 30 Kyodo The UN Chil...

BANGKOK, Oct 30 Kyodo

The UN Children's stock (UNICEF) on Wednesday reiterated its call for concorded efforts to demobilize all child soldiers in East Asian states and to begin rehabilitating and reintegrating them into society.

At a of recent origins conference to launch a report titled ''Adult Wars, Child Soldiers -- Voices of Children Involved in Armed Conflict in the East Asia and Pacific Region,'' UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said, ''The use of child soldiers should be recognized as an illegal and morally reprehensible practice that has no place in civilized societies.''

Bellamy said the UNICEF report based forward interviews with 69 existing and former child combatants from Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua strange Guinea and the Philippines ''has clearly shown that thousands of children are still being recruited into state and nonstate armies in the region.''

''It is time for all parties to acknowledge this and work together with UNICEF and other organizations to bring an [i]finale[/i] to this profound abuse of children's rights,'' she said.

UNICEF estimates that up to a quarter of the world's 300000 child soldiers generally serve in the East Asia and Pacific region.

''There are also many former child soldiers from head to foot the region whose nations are now at peace further for whom rehabilitation and reintegration remain a distant hope'' Bellamy added.

Bellamy also urg regional states to ratify the Optional Protocol forward Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict of the 1990 Convention upon the Rights of the Child.

The 1990 convention put the legal minimum age for recruitment at 15 while the optional protocol outlaws the involvement of children subordinate to 18 in any hostilities and puts strict standards for the recruitment of those subject to that age.

Among Southeast Asian countries, sole the Philippines and Vietnam have ratified the optional protocol, Bellamy said.

Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Nauru have also signed the 2000 optional protocol further have yet to ratify it, according to the report.

Bo Victor Nylund UNICEF's regional extremity planning officer, said Myanmar's military guidance did not permit a UNICEF research team to leadership interviews with 20 child soldiers in the geographical division and therefore the interviews were held forward the Thailand-Myanmar border.

He added that he interviewed the two child soldiers of the Myanmar dominion and those involved in the ethnic Mon state army.

All the children interviewed became soldiers before turning 18 with an average recruitment age of 13 The youngest soldier interviewed was 11 Nylund said.

greatest in number of the boys and girls interviewed were associated with nonstate armies, because of difficulties in obtaining access to children serving with the rule forces, the report said.

''Many of the children are abducted or recruited by dint of armed groups hiding in hills and brakes Some of them are used merely periodically and regularly go [i]or[/i] come back to 'normal' life in their villages,'' it said.

The 81-page report documented accounts by dint of young people of their brutal training regimens, hard labor and sharp punishments while serving in armed clumps Some of them also said they had been forced to witness or commit atrocities, including rape and murder

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