Around 19,000 former fighters - including 3,000 underage combatants - have been in UN-monitored camps since a 2006 peace deal that ended the Maoists' bloody "people's war".
UN agencies must have access to the children to ensure their "recovery and reintegration", Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, said.
"The promise of peace has not come to fruition for these children," she said.
Nepal's Maoists, whose leader Prachanda was sworn in as prime minister last week, said they had yet to decide what to do with the 2,973 underage fighters, who were all under 18 in May 2006.
"We cannot chase them away just like that. They were helpful during the 'people's war' and now we cannot just ditch them," senior Maoist Chandra Prakash Gajurel told AFP.
Despite winning polls in April and having their leader become prime minister, the Maoists have not tackled the issue of the fighters, who battled Nepal's security forces for a decade.
The former rebels - whose decade-long civil war killed at least 13,000 people - say the fighters should be integrated into the Nepalese army.
But the army has said that there is no place in its ranks for politically indoctrinated guerrillas.
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