Attribution & the Karuna Split
This dossier lives on the live desks, not in the closed research series. Attribution of child-recruitment allegations across the 3 March 2004 Karuna split is still an open citation question — it is held by a standing Unmai desk and a Case sub-spine, so it can be updated as UNSG CAAC Annexes, UNICEF figures, and HRW reporting evolve.
Critical Research dossiers are append-only — they ship when the citation work is closed and the argument can survive a hostile reader. The Karuna-split attribution question does not yet sit at that closure: UNSG CAAC Annex II listings, OISL findings, ICG 2007, HRW 2004 / 2007, and OHCHR work continue to revise the year-by-year, district-by-district, faction-by-faction picture. Holding it inside the active Unmai layer keeps the citation discipline honest.
The substantive argument — four buckets (Vanni LTTE / Eastern LTTE pre-split / Karuna group · TMVP post-split / alleged state complicity), no single TLTE total, command-versus-unit responsibility under Rome Statute Art 28, children as victims first — is published in full at the two canonical homes below.
Standing desk: convention map (Additional Protocols 1977 → OP-CAC → Rome Statute → UNSCR 1612), honesty index (verbatim figures per source), and a non-removable child-protection referral block.
Sub-spine reading: where this dossier sits within the seven-piece LTTE-era Unfinished Ledger inside the Self-Determination Case file.
- No child is ever named.
- No count is aggregated in TLTE voice — only verbatim per-source figures.
- Tier-A naming exception (Karuna / Pillayan) applies only because their roles are documented in UN, HRW, ICG, and OHCHR records — never extended elsewhere.
- "Political benefit" framing of the split is a hypothesis, never a finding.
- Coerced contributors are extortion victims, not accomplices.