DRC kids forced back into war

2007-09-19 21:06

Kigali, Rwanda - Thousands of children have been forced into armed service in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since fighting erupted between rebels and the army in North Kivu province in late August, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday.

Hundreds of children have been forcibly recruited into militias in less than one month, with boys expected to take part in armed conflict or work behind the scenes as porters, spies or cooks, while girls are sexually abused by their captors.

"It's extremely alarming and it essentially means we are on the brink of potentially taking a major step backwards in all of the advances made in the child disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration programme in North Kivu," said Pernille Ironside, a protection officer for Unicef in the eastern Congolese town of Goma.

Ironside confirmed that children captured during the current fighting are being held as prisoners of war by militia members and are being kept in "extremely desperate conditions", possibly being abused by their captors.

New clashes in eastern DRC

Eastern DRF has a history of children taking part in armed conflict during a succession of wars but the recent fighting has hindered efforts by Unicef to help reintegrate 5 500 former child soldiers back into their communities.

Clashes between renegade General Laurent Nkunda, who has not demobilised his soldiers and integrated into the national military, and Congo's regular army erupted nearly one month ago.

Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi, says the DRCo has not done enough to hunt down Hutu militias with links to the perpetrators of neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by militias.

Nkunda says his uprising is necessary to protect the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi tribe in eastern DRC.

The DRC administration has said it will not negotiate with Nkunda, who fought in the ranks of the DRC's army during the country's 1998-2003 war, in which an estimated four million people died, mostly from hunger and disease.

Brittle UN-backed ceasefire

A tenuous UN-brokered ceasefire has been holding in North Kivu since late last week, but observers have reported both sides stockpiling weapons and fear a return to the conflict soon.

Eastern DRC has long been a cauldron of tensions as militias allied along ethnic lines fought for areas of control in the mineral-rich region, with civilians including women and children often bearing the brunt of the fighting. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA