Child soldiers 'a challenge'

2003-08-08 09:28

Nyakunde - A weapons ban by international peacekeepers in war-ravaged eastern Congo has driven many militiamen out of Bunia, posing a major challenge to the authorities, and to child-care agencies.

The ban on "visible arms" was imposed on June 25 by the French-led UN-mandated peacekeeping force in Bunia, the main town in the province of Ituri where about 50 000 have died in ethnic clashes since 1999.

As a result of the ban, those militiamen, many of them mere children, who opted to hang on to their weapons have moved out of Bunia and back into the bush.

A number of them have settled in Nyakunde, about 40km west of Bunya.

Their camp is a former hospital, one of the better equipped in troubled Ituri until it was ransacked in September 2002 during a larger attack in which at least 1 200 civilians were massacred.

Whatever equipment was too heavy to take out was smashed to pieces. Youthful militiamen now rest their feet nonchalantly on the debris.

The camp is home to about 300 militiamen from the Lendu community, which is dominant in Ituri, amd most of them are children.

They are dressed in anything from rags to camouflage T-shirts and fake Versace gear. Their weapons are similarly eclectic, ranging from arrows and machetes to old assault rifles, along with spears much taller than the junior warriors themselves, who nevertheless know how to use them to deadly effect.

Teenagers shout their welcome at a visiting AFP photographer and the younger children - some only nine or 10 years old - take to dancing in the dust.

This being Africa, the child soldiers soon beg for something - anything: money, cigarettes, food.

Some are so young that they will gladly take sweets in lieu of cigarettes. And as they stand in front of what used to be a model hospital, they complain about a lack of medicines.

According to humanitarian staff, nearly one in two militiamen fighting in Ituri is under 18.

Staff at Unicef, the UN child care agency, recognise that as long as clashes continue outside Bunia, effective demobilisation of the child soldiers will remain a major challenge.

At the same time, they add, children should not stay in demobilisation centres for too long.

Unicef is also worried that once out of rehabiliation, child soldiers may be forced back into militias, or be subject to reprisals.

"The problem is that the conflict is dragging on", lamented Trish Hiddleston, Unicef's head of child protection in DR Congo.

"Trying to provide a safe environment to those children when they go back to their communities is quite a challenge."

Hiddleston gave Unicef goodwill ambassador Jessica Lange a tour of a rehabilitation centre for children soldiers in Bunia when the actress visited the town on Wednesday as part of a four-day mission in eastern Congo.

- AFP