Reclaiming the dignity of child soldiers of the People’s War

Stolen from classrooms and playgrounds and thrust into conflict, the minors lost their formative years of education, economic mobility and psychological security.

Dignity is the defining feature of human rights. By birth, every human being is endowed with this intrinsic moral worth. It is absolute; no regime, no ideology and no circumstance can justly strip an individual of it. Yet, the decade-long armed conflict that ravaged Nepal between 1996 and 2006 directly defied this fundamental law of nature. By recruiting, weaponising and ultimately abandoning nearly 3,000 children, the architects of the war did not just violate the human rights of these minors, but also robbed them of their basic humanity.