Lanka pleased with delisting

Sri Lanka today informed the UN Human Rights Council that it is pleased to have been delisted from the Annex of the Security Council resolution on children in armed conflict last year.
The Sri Lankan delegation at the 24^th session of the UN Human Rights Council, currently meeting in Geneva, told the Council today that 169 former child soldiers who had been freed following rehabilitation, have qualified to enter university.
The delegation said that Sri Lanka is acutely conscious of the grave phycho-social repercussions of armed conflict on children.
?The policy of the government was to treat all children formerly associated with armed groups ,primarily as victims and not as offenders , and hence not to subject them to legal proceedings but to rehabilitation,? the Sri Lankan delegation said.
The delegation also noted that the government had in 2006 made the recruitment of children for use in armed conflict a punishable offence. (Colombo Gazette)