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UN: Free child soldiers now
08/05/2008 09:25 - (SA)
Kinshasa - The UN in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) urged all rebel militias in the troubled east of the country on Wednesday to immediately free their child soldiers, and put a stop to further recruitment.
Spokesperson for the UN Mission in DRC (Monuc) Kemal Saiki accused armed groups of not honouring their commitments under peace accords signed in the regional capital Goma at the start of the year.
The UN peacekeeping mission said it was launching an "urgent appeal" to rebels including the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and Mai Mai fighters of the Congolese Patriotic Resistance (Pareco) to remind them of their obligations.
The deal eventually signed in Goma, the Nord-Kivu provincial capital, after a peace conference also addressing problems in neighbouring Sud-Kivu, required all signatories to "put an immediate end to child recruitment and to liberate all those child soldiers active in their ranks", Saiki underlined.
Authorities have complained of routine violations of these accords - which also envisaged an immediate ceasefire - but Saiki said that the release of child troops, "which doesn't call for any more than goodwill on the part of these groups' leaders, remains far from becoming a reality".
War crime
Saiki said that to recruit children under the age of 15 was to commit a "war crime".
Julien Harneis of the UN Children's Fund said at the end of March that it had freed up to 300 child soldiers, but that "around a hundred" fresh children had been recruited at the time of speaking, despite the agreements.
Unicef said that warring militias had recruited between 2 000 and 3 000 youths between the ages of 12 and 18 in the east of the country, with renegade general Laurent Nkunda's CNDP and Mai Mai rivals said by the UN in late 2007 to be primarily responsible.
One commander within Nkunda's organisation, Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed the Terminator, is already wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes committed between July 2002 and December 2003, including the recruitment of child soldiers.
500 000 displaced
Despite January's agreement, violations occur almost daily in both territories, with the UN adding that conflict has separated 7% of children from their parents and displaced at least 500 000 people.
A death toll of 43 was released by the UN on Wednesday, covering a series of confrontations between the CNDP and Mai Mai fighters at the end of April.
Thirty-four of those who perished were said by locals to be civilians, with Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, the Monuc military spokesperson in DR Congo, saying investigations were now underway.
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