Recruitment of child soldiers

There have been credible reports of the Maoists recruiting child soldiers. The Maoist-aligned student wing All Nepal National Independent Students' Union- Revolutionary (ANNISU-R) has been responsible for forcing school students of the Kathmandu to take its membership. According to Karna Bahadur Shahi, president of National Private and Boarding Schools Association Nepal (N-PABSAN), the ANNISU-R activists storm into the schools and force students of classes eight, nine and ten to take their membership and if any school tries to resist, they threaten the management.141 In two days i.e., 13 and 14 November 2003, the Maoists allegedly forcibly mobilized around 1,000 students from several schools of Achham district for "organisation expansion.

The abducted students comprised of the nine grade and above mostly from the Jalapa Devi and Bidhya Mandir higher secondary schools and schools of Raniban, Dhakari, Toli, Binayak, Koika VDCs.142 Another 200 teenage students were allegedly abducted by the Maoists from Nandeswari Secondary School and Bindeswari school in Achcham district on 4 December 2003.143 Many school children from remote Mugu district reportedly fled their homes to some safer places to escape Maoist recruitment of youth and school children as their party cadres. Some of these children were working as dishwashers in hotels while others were engaged in other manual labour.