Act now to stop recruitment of child soldiers, governments urged

A coalition of children’s rights advocacy groups in the Great Lakes has called on governments in the region to stop, immediately, the recruitment of children into their armed forces and into those of dissident groups. The Great Lakes regional coordinator for The Coalition to Stop The Use of Child Soldiers, Henri Nzeyimana, said the group was particularly concerned that despite the large number of Rwandan children fighting among rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the government in Kigali had denied that Rwandan children were involved. The coalition is a non-governmental (NGO) organisation working to prevent the use of child soldiers and to press for their demobilisation, rehabilitation and social integration. It comprises national, regional and international organisations and coalitions in Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and South America and the Middle East. Nzeyimana said that by 2003-2004, there were at least 2,500 Rwandan children in rebel groups operating in the embattled northeastern district of Ituri in the DRC, but they could not be demobilised because the Rwandan government was not cooperative. A total of 30,000 children were serving in both government and armed groups, which he said accounted for about 10 percent of the total combatants in the DRC. "There is weak commitment by civil society organisations in Rwanda and the government denies that there are children from the country involved in armed conflict," Nzeyimana said. "What makes our work even more difficult is the fact that we don't have the coalition in Rwanda as we only have an informal presence." He said all the conflict-prone member countries of the Great Lakes region except Rwanda - Burundi, the DRC and Uganda - had national chapters of The Coalition to Stop The Use of Child Soldiers. He added that when a country had such a structure, it was easy to monitor child recruitment from communities, as coalition members would enhance the protection of children through sensitisation about the horrors of war. Nzeyimana said although these children were not recruited within Rwanda, they were part of the rebel groups and for the recruitment cycle to stop, the coalition needed commitment and acceptance from the Rwandan government to set up a national structure. "About 100 [former child soldiers] are being rehabilitated at a centre in [the northern province of] Ruhengeri," he said. In Burundi, it was estimated that there were 12,000 children in armed groups and that by 2003/04, 7,000 of them were in government and other armed groups that had since decided to work with government. Of these children, he said, 2,138 had been demobilised by April. "But recruitment was still going on," he said. Many of these children are girls, making it hard to demobilise them because many have become mothers. The stigma, he added, made many of these children opt to remain in the armed groups as some had developed attachments to their "husbands". The coalition said that in northern Uganda, where an estimated 20,000 children were reportedly forced to join the Lord's Resistance Army rebels, there was evidence that other children were being recruited into government auxiliary forces. He added that there was no formal demobilisation and integration programme in Uganda.