UNITED NATIONS – Sri Lanka and Nepal have been removed from a UN list of countries that use children in armed conflict, the world body said Monday (June 11th) as it released its annual report on girls and boys in conflict zones.

Both countries were taken off the so-called List of Shame after successfully completing Security Council-mandated plans to end the recruitment and use of children, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said in a statement issued from the UN headquarters in New York.

In Nepal, conflict-related violations against children significantly decreased in 2011, although children remain at risk due to the presence of armed groups and the "explosive remnants of war", which killed four children and injured 11 last year, the report said.

In Sri Lanka, "the security situation in the country stabilised, gradually moving towards an early recovery", the report stated.

"No new cases of recruitment of children by armed groups have been reported since October 2009," it said.

But the whereabouts of 1,373 children of a total of 6,905 recruited by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) remain unknown, the UN report said.

Assistance to vulnerable families in the war-scarred north of the country remains a challenge, and schools in northern districts continue to be used by Sri Lankan security forces, it added.