NGO pleads for lives of former child soldiers

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday urged the DRC government to spare the lives of four children sentenced to death by the country’s Court of Military Order, who were between 14 and 16 years of age at the time they were sentenced to death. It named the four children facing execution as: Diyavanga Nkuyu, 14 years old at the time of his arrest; Bosey Jean-Louis, aged 15 when arrested; and Mbumba Ilunga and Mwati Kabwe, arrested when they were 16 years old. In a meeting with Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu on Wednesday, HRW emphasised that the execution of individuals for crimes committed when they were below 18 years of age violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Congo is a party. It urged the government to spare the lives of the four, who it said had not enjoyed due process in their prosecution by the military court. People convicted by the court have no right to appeal, and the sole power to commute death sentences rests with President Joseph Kabila, who has never used this authority, according to HRW. “International law is clear: No one should be put to death for a crime committed as a child. Congo should immediately commute these death sentences and bring its practices in line with international standards,” said Michael Bochenek, a children’s rights lawyer for the NGO. Congo’s military routinely recruited and used child soldiers under the late President Laurent Kabila, it stated. In June 2000, Kabila announced that the armed forces would demobilise child soldiers and reintegrate them into civil society but Congo still has approximately 12,000 child soldiers, according to figures cited by the report. Rehabilitation and reintegration into society are critical issues for children that have participated in armed conflict, it said. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special expert on the impact of armed conflict on children, Grace Machel of Mozambique, has pointed out that child soldiers may be forcibly abducted, severely brutalised, and compelled to participate in atrocities; they are rarely autonomous actors, HRW added. [for full statement, go to: http://www.hrw.org/]