PRESS CONFERENCE ON CHILDREN IN Democratic Republic of Congo CONFLICT

 

Despite the promise of peace, national elections and reconstruction in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, armed force and groups continued to kill, rape, exploit and deny humanitarian assistance to thousands of Congolese children, Julia Freedson, Director of Watchlist on Children in Armed Conflict, a New York-based global network of non-governmental organizations, said Wednesday during a Headquarters news conference.

Watchlist’s newly released, 64-page report entitled “Struggling to Survive:  Children in Armed Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” documented pervasive and egregious violations against children’s security and rights from 2003 through January 2006 and called on Congolese authorities, armed groups, the United Nations, aid donors and the international humanitarian community to take steps to protect children and bring violators to justice.

“It confirms that children in the DRC continue to endure some of the most inhumane treatment in the world today and that Congolese children are not faring any better than they were three years ago”, Ms. Freedson said in presenting the report.

The report listed gross atrocities in the six major categories identified by United Nations Security Council resolution 1612 (2005) on children in armed conflict, including cases of murder and the maiming of children, hundreds of thousands of rapes and other forms of sexual violence, as well as attacks on humanitarian relief organizations and looting of humanitarian aid supplies.  It noted that, in the eastern part of the country, armed groups continued to abduct girls and hold them for ransom, and had destroyed schools servicing some
4.6 million children.

According to the report, at least 30,000 boys and girls were active in armed combat or used for sex, and almost all of those girls, as well as some boys, were sexually abused by their commanders or other soldiers.  It charged that the National Commission for Demobilization and Reintegration (CONADER) lacked the institutional capacity, technical expertise and coordinated leadership to successfully manage and sustain the country’s protracted disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process for children.

Kathleen Hunt, Watchlist’s Chairperson and 0the United Nations Representative of CARE International, noted that, of the 17,457 boys and girls who as of 1 March had been demobilized from armed combat and sexual services, only a small percentage had been reintegrated into their families and even fewer had returned to school.  Many children had been re-recruited or harassed by armed groups.

Ms. Hunt called on CONADER to strengthen coordination of children’s disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, and on the international donor community to create a general funding pool for programmes supporting former girl soldiers and dependants of adult ex-combatants.  She urged the United Nations Security Council’s Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict to immediately send three to five delegates to the country to ensure implementation of resolution 1612, and called on the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in the country to appoint a focal point to negotiate with groups that recruited or used children.

Greta Zeender, Training Officer of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, welcomed the Security Council’s endorsement Tuesday of deployment of a European Union reserve force to protect civilians and support the mandate of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC).  Ms. Zeender called on the international humanitarian community to implement greater protection against rape and other forms of sexual abuse of internally displaced persons -- 80 per cent of whom were women and children -- as well as improved medical and psycho-social treatment for victims of such abuse.

The Watchlist report also contained updates on the status of refugees and internally displaced persons, disease outbreaks, malnutrition and death rates, education, gender-based violence, trafficking and forced labour, and the use of landmines and small arms in the country.

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For information media • not an official record