Press Release

Doti Insident: Against the understanding from the state and non state parties on children being zones of peace

15 October 2003, Kathmandu

The partner organisations of the National Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace working in the field of child rights are deeply shocked over the media reports of an firefight on Monday, 13 October 2003, at the Sharada Higher Secondary School, in Mudhvara village, Doti district in western Nepal, in which four students were killed and many others injured. This not only violates the international laws and norms that advocate for the protection of children from the effects of armed conflict in places where they live, or study, but also goes against the understanding from the state and non state parties on children being zones of peace. This incident has drawn our gravest concerns.

The media reports that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) forcibly closed the school and had the children congregate for a cultural programme and that the Security forces fired indiscriminately inside the school premises. This suggests that both the government security forces and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) appear to have failed in their duty to take due precautions to protect the civilian population as required by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

The Coalition calls on the Government of Nepal to fulfil its obligations to the international treatises it is signatory to, like the Convention of Child Rights of 1989 and its Optional Protocol of 2000 and to immediately investigate the incident and to bring to justice anyone found guilty of violating these obligations.

Words cannot express the feeling of horror that this carnage took place in a school. School must remain a safe place for children to learn, to grow and to play. Please let us not see bullets and blood in a playground again. The Coalition again calls on all parties to particularly respect the rights of children and immediately adhere to the following:

• No arms in any schools
  
• No schools closed for any reason whatsoever
  
• No disruption in the operation of any school activity
  
• No use / mobilisation of children in any armed conflict-related activity

The Coalition currently comprises of 30 member organizations with the National Human Rights Commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross as observers. The Coalition is soon going to dispatch a fact-finding team to Doti and appeals to all concerned parties to provide necessary assistance to the mission.

Secretariat of National Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace GPO Box 1187, Kathmandu, NEPAL Phone: 552 3200 Fax: 977-1-5527280, 977-1-553 5395 email: czop_nepal@yahoo.com