DRC 'worst place for children'
2008-11-12 10:02
Goma - Packed into squalid refugee
camps or roaming in the bush, hundreds of thousands of Congolese
children face hunger, disease, sexual abuse or recruitment by
marauding armed factions, aid workers said on Tuesday.
Weeks of violence have forced more than 250 000 people from
homes or ramshackle camps where they had taken shelter, bringing
to over 1 million the number of internal refugees from years of
fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province.
Most are children.
"North Kivu is quite possibly the worst place to be a child.
There is no question that children have been the most severely
affected by the recent conflict," said George Graham, spokesperson
for Save the Children in the provincial capital, Goma.
Fighting between Tutsi rebels and pro-government troops and
militia fighters has subsided into sporadic clashes in recent
days as African leaders staged summits and leant on both sides
to avert a repeat of Congo's devastating 1998-2003 regional war.
Disease, violence and sexual abuse
"When children flee fighting they become more vulnerable to
contracting diseases, to becoming malnourished, and vulnerable
to predators like sexual abuse, exploitation, violence and
recruitment into armed groups," UN Children's Fund (Unicef)
spokesperson Jaya Murthy told Reuters in Goma.
Sixty percent of the 1.1 million displaced are children, he
said. "We estimate that there's around 2 000 to 3 000 children
in armed groups and recruitment is going on right now."
"This has been a silent emergency for children for the last
five years, only now it is re-exploding - again."
Fighters on both sides have attacked, looted, raped and
murdered civilians in raids the UN peacekeeping force in
Congo, known as Monuc, says include war crimes.
US-based Human Rights Watch quoted local sources and
civilians as saying at least 50 civilians were killed last week
in Kiwanja, 70km north of Goma.
Nyrarukundo Rivera, 42, told Reuters she lost her children
when fleeing violence in Kiwanja and hadn't seen them since.
Cholera on the rise
At least 1 000 cholera infections have been reported since
the start of October, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
"We fear this is a direct result of the spreading
insecurity," WHO spokesperson Paul Garwood said. "As yet we have
seen no explosion in cholera cases but the risks are very high."
World Food Programme spokesperson Emilia Casella said it was
"extremely alarmed" about a lack of access to thousands of
hungry people in North Kivu.
"We are looking to take advantage of any lull in fighting to
deliver food in 'hit and run' operations," Casella said.
Renewed violence in the conflict-racked province since a
January peace deal collapsed in August has spread instability to
the provincial capital Goma and remote localities alike.
In Kanyabayonga, 120km north of Goma, Congolese
army troops fled when they heard rumours of a rebel attack.
"On their way back they looted everything from four villages
on the way (north) to Lubero last night and this morning," Monuc
spokesperson Lt-Col Jean-Paul Dietrich said.
'We are going to overthrow him'
As violence has increased the misery of some 250 000 people
displaced by fighting since September, Tutsi rebel chief General
Laurent Nkunda has vowed to pursue his campaign and topple
President Joseph Kabila if he doesn't accept talks.
"We are going to overthrow him," Nkunda told the British
Broadcasting Corporation. "Being elected is not a white card to
do what you want ... We have to liberate Congo."
Nkunda has said he may fight an African intervention force
proposed at a regional summit on Friday that urged a ceasefire.
European Union members have also discussed sending troops,
and Monuc, already the world's biggest peacekeeping force with
17 000 personnel, asked the UN Security Council a month ago to
send 3 000 more soldiers and police, but so far to no avail.
"Civilians need protection now from the killing and raping,"
Human Rights Watch's Anneke Van Woudenberg said in a statement.