Indian children are no longer in danger in conflicts. But Kashmiri activists disagree

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, has removed India from the list of countries that appeared in the annual report on minors in armed conflict. But a group of activists have documented the violation of children’s rights in very recent years, as a civilian militia has been reactivated against autonomist rebels in the disputed region with Pakistan.

New Delhi () – After 12 years, India is no longer on the list of countries that use children in armed conflicts. The decision was made by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who praised the measures taken by the Indian government to protect minors in the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir region disputed with Pakistan.

Since 2010, India has appeared every year in the “United Nations Report on Children and Armed Conflict” along with countries such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, for the alleged recruitment of minors by armed groups and for the killings, arrests and mutilations carried out by the Indian security forces. This year’s document, which was released on June 27, considers that these practices have already disappeared.

However, the Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Forum, an organization made up of former government officials, judges, lawyers and activists, has pointed out that in reality violations of the rights of children and adolescents in the region have continued even in very recent years. Documents from last year show that children continue to be unlawfully harassed, interrogated and detained, in violation of the Juvenile Justice Act, a 2015 law on juvenile justice and the care and protection of children.

Indevar Pandey, secretary of the Ministry for the Development of Women and Children, told The Indian Express that in Jammu and Kashmir “the Juvenile Justice Act had not been implemented and juvenile homes were not functioning properly. Since then, other structures have been created, such as child welfare commissions, juvenile justice councils and homes for foster care for minors.The Indian government began to implement all these institutions in 2019, in collaboration with United Nations officials.The same year the Indian government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from which the prime minister comes Indian Narendra Modi, removed Kashmir’s partial autonomy.

In May 2021, the UN Security Council had expressed concern about “serious violations against children” in the region, while in August of the same year at least nine minors between the ages of 14 and 17 had been arrested and imprisoned. by the police for weeks, during which they were also beaten, according to the Human Rights Forum.

On the other hand, the area is still not completely pacified. Instead, following a series of armed attacks in January on villages on the Pakistani border, which killed two children and wounded a teenager, Delhi decided to reactivate a civilian militia called the Village Defense Guards (VDG). It had originally been organized in 1995 with the aim of fighting rebels demanding complete autonomy or a merger with Pakistan, but it has since faded in importance. However, attacks on Hindus and Sikhs have increased the demand by civilians to be armed and trained to respond in an emergency, and hundreds of people have taken service since January.