Red Cross reunites 37 children with their families

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has facilitated two flights between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) capital, Kinshasa, and the eastern town of Goma to reunite 37 unaccompanied children with their parents, the ICRC reported on Friday.

Six of the children were demobilised child soldiers.

ICRC said following the registration of the children, it traced their parents and facilitated contact between them, using the Red Cross message network, a system that allows brief personal messages to be sent between ICRC locations.

The Kinshasa-Goma flights took place on 23 and 24 June, and involved the reunification of children aged from four years to 17 years, ICRC said.

Since the beginning of 2004, some 600 unaccompanied children and at least 150 demobilised child soldiers have been reunited with their families in the DRC, ICRC said.

Many had been separated with their families because of years of civil war in the country, the ICRC added.

On 28 June, the ICRC, in conjunction with Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other partner organisations, began the identification of unaccompanied children within camps for Congolese refugees in northwestern Burundi.

UNHCR Protection Officer France Lau had told IRIN that some 300 unaccompanied minors had been identified in the camps, from the information the refugees had provided. Lau said a general census in the camps was due to begin on Friday to collect more information on the situation.

UNHCR estimates that nearly 34,000 Congolese refugees had fled to Burundi following a wave of instability in the eastern DRC, brought on by clashes between dissident and loyalist forces. The dissidents captured Bukavu, the capital of the eastern province of South Kivu, on 2 June. They withdrew on 8 June, and loyalist troops re-entered the town a day later to restore calm.