Children at great risk in a war-torn society

The civilian population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the great losers in an ongoing war that has drawn in the forces of seven countries as well as numerous armed militias and rebel groups. Opposition groups supported by Rwandan and Ugandan forces now control over 50 percent of the territory, while Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean forces have supported the government. Gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law have been committed by all parties to the conflict, and children have not been exempted. Apart from the human and social costs of war, resulting from the virtual collapse of the state and of basic social services, the Congo is one of the worst theatres of war for the involvement of child soldiers, according to the ‘Global Report on Child Soldiers’ released on Tuesday. It is estimated that 50 percent of the DRC’s 49 million people are children under 16. Hundreds of thousands of children suffer or die from severe malnutrition and preventable diseases because of conditions created by the wars. “All these categories of war-affected children need our urgent attention and support,” according to UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu. The UN estimates that 15 percent to 30 percent of all newly-recruited combatants in the DRC are children under 18 years of age, and a substantial number are under 12, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, the NGO umbrella group which wants all governments and armed groups to set 18 as the minimum age for military recruitment and deployment. Both the DRC government’s Forces armees congolaises (FAC) and various opposition groups forcibly recruit children, the report stated. In addition, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) facilitated the recruitment of children by rebel groups in the east of the country, and often oversaw the training of child recruits. “Congolese child soldiers known as kadogos, or ‘little ones’, often serve initially as runners, bodyguards, porters or spies, and later learn to use arms and serve in combat,” the Coalition stated. In March 1998, the first government training centre was established to target kadogos in a new national service scheme, it said. By August that year, it added, the government was urging youths between the ages of 12 and 20 to enlist in response to anti-government insurgency, and soon after some 6,000 youths were sent for military training, many of them street children - some of whom were reportedly abducted. An informal survey of troops in Kinshasa in November 1998 found that one in 14 FAC soldiers was under 13 years of age, the Coalition reported. The FAC continued to forcibly conscript children and, in 2001, it was reported that children as young as 10 years old had been allowed to enlist, despite President Kabila’s 9 June 2000 decree forbidding it. “There has been no demobilisation of child soldiers in the FAC,” the report added. “I joined Kabila’s army when I was 13 because my home had been pillaged and my parent were gone,” it quoted Dieudonne, aged 16, as saying. “When I found myself alone, I decided to become a soldier. Usually I was at the front line. I’ve fought a lot... It is hard. I’m only a little soldier, I should return to school.” Tuesday’s global report by the Coalition also expressed concern at the continued recruitment of child soldiers, into 2001, by the Mayi-Mayi militias aligned with government forces. As for the armed opposition, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma), the RCD-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) and the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) “have been known to regularly recruit and conscript children”, according to the Coalition. It said opposition politicians had claimed that many young recruits joined voluntarily, often as orphans seeking protection, food and a place in society. Yet, other sources reported that many under 18s were recruited forcibly by opposition groups, often with the assistance of Ugandan and Rwandan armed forces, it added. “I was coming from school at about 5 a.m. ... when soldiers in a vehicle stopped me and made me get in,” the Coalition on Tuesday quoted a boy recruited in Goma, North Kivu, at the age of 13, as saying. “[The children] were trained on how to use arms and how to shoot, and that was the end of it,” the Coalition quoted from a Human Rights Watch report in March this year. “Some of the kids were even sent to battle without arms. They were sent ahead of battle-ready troops of the RCD and RPA to create a diversion. They were ordered to make a lot of noise, using sticks on tree trunks and the like. “When they succeeded in diverting the attention of government troops, that is to say when they drew government fire on their unarmed elements, these units, known as the Kadogo Commando, would be literally allowed to fall like flies under government fire. The experienced troops would then attack the government troops when their attention was diverted to the Kadogo Commando.” In February 2001, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1341 (2001) calling for all armed forces and groups involved in the DRC conflict to bring an effective end to the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, and to ensure the speedy demobilisation, return and rehabilitation of such children. The UN High Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution in April, expressing concern at the continued recruitment of child soldiers throughout the DRC, including cross-border recruitment. UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, last week urged that the protection and rehabilitation of war-affected children become a “top priority” in the DRC. In a statement issued after his 10-day visit to the DRC, (28 May - 2 June), Otunnu also called on political and military leaders to bring to a complete stop all recruitment and use of child soldiers. “There is an urgent need for a plan of action to address the grave situation of war-affected children in the Congo,” he stated. “Their protection and rehabilitation must become a national and political priority.” Otunnu observed that “the direct and indirect impact of the war has been particularly devastating for children”. The place for children was in schools, with their families and in their communities, not in the battlefields, Otunnu said. “The massive recruitment and use of children as child soldiers has become a plague that is steadily destroying the fabric and future of this country and this zone of Africa,” he added. “I have no interest in going to school,” the Coalition on Tuesday quoted Musimbi, a 13 year-old soldier with the RCD-Goma, as saying. “I’ve fought and killed many people. I’m a soldier, it’s all the experience I need,” Musimbi added, in a comment indicative of the problems faced by child soldiers and society alike. Otunnu proposed a five-point programme of action, which recommended a complete stop to all recruitment and participation in armed groups and forces of young persons below the age of 18. It recommended the establishment of a monitoring mechanism and the organisation of a major public awareness campaign to sensitise the military, civil society and local communities. The programme would also undertake joint visits to military camps and barracks and establish necessary structures for demobilisation, rehabilitation, reception and reintegration of child soldiers. “I appeal to the international community to reach out to the Congolese children with concrete assistance, focusing particularly on rehabilitation of schools and health care centres, and the provision of much-needed resources for the demobilization of child soldiers,” Otunnu said. The DRC government at the beginning of the month signed a “binding declaration” not to recruit children under 18 as soldiers. Otunnu said the challenge in the DRC “is to translate these commitments into actions on the ground”. UNICEF is currently negotiating the demobilisation of 165 under-age soldiers who were recruited by Congolese rebels and taken to Uganda. The organisation has insisted that each child be given documents preventing re-recruitment, and the rebel authorities appeared ready to comply. The agency’s representative in the DRC, Martin Mogwanja, stressed that the organisation was also insisting on rights of access to military camps, as a check on overall compliance with agreements. Meanwhile, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child last week concluded a three-week session, in which a seven-member Congolese delegation led by the Minister of Social Affairs, Ebamba Boboto presented the DRC report vis-a-vis the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As one of the 191 states which signed the Convention, the DRC is obliged to present periodic reports on how it is implementing its provisions. The Committee expressed deep concern that the Convention was insufficiently known and understood among relevant professionals and among the population in general in the DRC. It called for initiating a thorough campaign to inform and train professionals, children and the population in general of the existence and meaning, principles and provisions of the Convention. The Committee said it was concerned that children were regularly the victims of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, sometimes constituting torture, committed by teachers, the police, the military and the family, and that those acts were violations of children’s rights. It urged the government to strengthen its efforts to end the armed conflict and to ensure that the protection and promotion of children’s rights were given due consideration in the ongoing peace process.