NGO reports on impact of war on children

The impact of the conflict on children is devastating, depriving thousands of vulnerable young people of anything approaching a normal childhood, the Refugees International (RI) nongovernmental organisation (NGO) said on Wednesday in its bulletin entitled "Children in the Eastern Congo: Adrift in a sea of war and poverty". During a just-completed fact-finding trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to examine the social impact of the civil war in the eastern part of that country, RI found a society under tremendous stress from violence and lack of economic opportunity. "The war-affected children of the eastern Congo have no opportunity for education, and eat one meal a day, if they are lucky. Many are homeless, forced to flee because of acute poverty," RI said. It said some of the children had witnessed horrible atrocities committed against their families or their neighbours. "Unaccompanied and traumatised, they roam into the big towns or cities. The streets of Bukavu and Goma, the two major towns of the Kivus, are rife with displaced children who vie for odd jobs or commit petty thievery," RI said. Girls living on the streets due to war or poverty were "extremely vulnerable" to sexual predation once they reached puberty, it said. "If they cannot find a home or are not taken in by a child welfare centre, they are almost certain to have to sell sex to survive. They may opt to join life in training camps, where they are used as porters, sex slaves, or spies to infiltrate enemy encampments," RI said. It reported that preliminary findings of a local NGO after a month's research indicated that of the 41 girl prostitutes aged from 13 to 17 years old that were interviewed, 38 were displaced because of the war or resultant poverty, and all had had little education. The researchers expected to find substantial numbers of girls in the same situation as they expanded their inquiry in the coming months, RI added. Another alarming aspect of the war was the plethora of male child soldiers, RI said, adding that 60 percent of the demobilised child soldiers in one centre had said that their enrolment had been due to the poverty of their families. It noted that the overall problem of child protection crisis in eastern DRC was vast, and that attempts by a network of Congolese NGOs and community-based organisations to get children off the streets and provide them with basic education and vocational training were effective on a small scale, but extremely under-funded. RI's mission also found out that net reductions in child soldiers were minimal, and that demobilised children were closely monitored by rebel commanders, and vulnerable to being snatched from transit centres or forced to re-enlist when they returned to their villages. It noted that the demobilisation process was, in this context, largely a "public relations" exercise. It recommended that the UN Observer Mission in the DRC (known by its French acronym, MONUC), and the UN humanitarian agencies make publicly available all observations of continuing child recruitment, including the names of the commanders involved. RI also recommended that international donors, UN agencies, and international NGOs make greater efforts to establish links with and provide funding for the local NGOs which had begun alternative schooling programmes to get displaced children off the streets and encourage efforts to locate and include girls in these programmes from the beginning. It called on the UN Security Council to immediately examine whether parties to armed conflicts in the DRC were abiding by the terms of Resolution 1314 of 2000, which affirmed the right of children to education during conflict periods, urged all parties to armed conflict to respect international law applicable to children's rights and protection, and if they did not, reaffirmed the Council's readiness to consider appropriate sanctions for such violations.