UN may stop child labour in DRC

2006-09-08 09:21

New York - A United Nations task force set up to prevent abuse of children in war zones on Thursday recommended sanctions against a Congolese militia accused of forcibly recruiting youths as soldiers.

The move was the first enforcement step by a new Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict, set up late last year to prevent children from being abducted, raped or forced into combat.

The working group's first target was the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC), a militia operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri district, where ethnic violence and clashes had killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said the step was an "important landmark in the fight against impunity for those who commit grave violations against children during armed conflict".

Ngudjolo deploys 10 000 fighters

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported to the working group in June that the MRC was forcing children into its fighting ranks.

The group's leader, Mathieu Ngudjolo, accepted a government offer of amnesty a month later in return for his men joining the national army.

Ngudjolo had boasted of having at least 10 000 fighters deployed across the troubled district, but experts doubted that claim and it was unclear in any case whether they would ever show up at demobilisation camps, as required by the truce.

A decision to actually impose sanctions would be up to a separate security council committee in the DRC. UN sanctions on individuals typically included travel bans and asset freezes.

The vast central African country's government was seeking to integrate former rebel fighters into its security forces as it tried to put behind it a 1998-2003 civil war that pulled in armies from six neighbouring countries and killed four million people, most of whom died from hunger and disease.

UN peacekeepers had been in the DRC since 1999 and the mission was currently the world body's largest and most costly.

The DRC held its first free multi-party elections in 40 years in late July, and a presidential runoff was due on October 29.

- Reuters