A man discusses his grandson’s morning abduction by soldiers.
The most coveted tools of warfare in North Kivu are not grenades, or even shoulder-fired missiles. Children are the weapon of choice- too young to question orders, with hands the perfect size for Russian made AK-47 (Kalashnakov) assault rifles, they are taken from their schools and homes and forced into service, kept from leaving through fear of punishment or drug addiction. They are used as frontline fighters, porters, and even sex slaves.
Walking through the Kibumba displaced camp today, a dozen miles south of the front line, we happened across an old man carrying a blanket, tools and some food. He had fled the fighting yesterday with his 14 year old grandson. But this morning, the Congolese army surrounded them and forced the boy to join the battle against Nkunda’s rebels. The grandfather had no choice but to continue on to Goma.
The use of child soldiers in North Kivu has been prevalent since the start of the first war in 1996, but the recent round of fighting in December is leading to a new ‘catastrophic situation’ for children, according to the organization Save the Children. The 7,000 child soldiers they have demobilized in the area over the past 3 years are especially at risk, according to country director Hussein Marsal:
Children previously rescued from armed groups are at greater risk because commanders seek out battle-hardened youths, as many of them fail to reintegrate into family and community life due to lack of resources for care and schooling.
Last week in Bukavu we saw first hand how challenging it is to help these children find a new life after war. We spent an afternoon with former child soldiers at a demobilization center where two dozen boys, aged between 15 and 19, try to remember how to be teenagers again. Many came from here in North Kivu.
Children arrive at the center without their guns, feeling cast out by their commander. Counselors must first gain their trust, and then help them understand that the terrible things they saw and were forced to do were not their fault. The adults, not they, are responsible. They learn to not pull out a knife when they have an argument with another boy, and interact with women and girls with respect.
But when their 3-6 month program is finished, I wondered, what will happen to them? With luck they will be reunited with their families and be able to finish a childhood deferred. But with renewed violence, at least a few will find themselves on the battlefield in North Kivu, trying to kill an enemy they might have played cards with in Bukavu.
Learn about the campaign to end the use of child soldiers.
Want to learn more about what it is like to be a child soldier? We recommend Ishmael Beah’s book, A long Way Gone.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 06, 2007 |
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A mother holds an infant being monitored in an International Medical Corps clinic in Mugunga.
Click here to see Mugunga from above in Google Earth. Note the absence of any plastic sheeting. November 2007, image courtesy Masako Yonekawa/UNHCR.
The sound of exploding shells mixes with afternoon thunder; only those who live or work here can tell the difference. Yesterday government soldiers took back the town of Mushake [and will lose it again the following week] a few miles up the road, and are pounding Nkunda’s northern positions with attack helicopters and mortars.
Today Jerry and I have come to Mugunga camp to see for ourselves how the people displaced by the conflict are surviving. On top of a field of sharp volcanic rock is a small city of thousands of tiny huts made of banana leaves; they were made small so they would fit under the standard sized orange plastic tarp given to each family when they arrived sometime over the past year.
But last month (November) after a battle nearby, the displaced fled and the Congolese army (in which a soldier, when paid at all, receives $10 a month) looted the camp, stripping the residents of their food and every last piece of plastic sheeting. To top it off, they haven’t received a food distribution in two months. Jeanette, a 24 year old woman from Masisi district, is soaked every time it rains, along with her family and handful of possessions. She is hungry and beyond furious.
Yesterday the camp residents held a UN worker hostage for the day, blaming them for the lack of supplies. The humanitarian aid organizations are underfunded, not fully prepared for the latest round of fighting and wary of handing over new sheeting- they are worried, for good reason, that the tarps will just be looted again in a month or two.
But if later the afternoon thunder clouds bring rain, as they do nearly every night during the wet season, Jeanette and her family will lie awake with a puddle in place of their cardboard bed. Across the camp thousands will suffer the night quietly, and wake together to a morning of uncertainty.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 05, 2007 |
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Marianne and her father in Bulengo.
We will call her Marianne. She is a beautiful six year old girl, wearing a dark blue dress and pink rubber shoes. She sits beside her father while we talk with him about what happened to her last month, before their family fled here to Bulengo camp a few miles east of the fighting on the front line. Marianne sits with her hands in her lap, and doesn’t say a word.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 02, 2007 |
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A woman in Kibumba camp for the displaced just north of Goma.
Jerry and I stepped off the boat from Bukavu this afternoon into a war zone, the faint pop of artillery fire reflected by the hills of Rwanda a few miles east.
Not even the strange beauty of the lake or mountains can hide Goma’s harsh landscape. In 2002 the volcano Nyiragongo erupted and sent molten lava flowing through the airport, city center and out into lake Kivu. The city was rebuilt on top of the hardened volcanic rock, and at times I could almost imagine we were driving on the moon.
This week the Congolese government launched major military operations 15 miles up the road, against a rebel group that refuses to give up arms. Laurent Nkunda, leader of the rebels (National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP), claims to protect Tutsis in eastern Congo, who he says are at risk of genocide. While anti-Tutsi (and more broadly anti-Rwandan) feeling is strong here, Nkunda’s heavy-handed response risks fueling a self-fulfilling prophecy:
Every [Nkunda] military offensive, with its abuses against innocent civilians, fans the flames of anti-Tutsi sentiment… In response to the cumulative deaths of fewer than 20 Tutsi over the past two years, Nkunda has launched offensives that have killed over 100 persons and displaced hundreds of thousands… While Nkunda has defended the Tutsi minority in North Kivu, he has become a potential danger to the community’s security as a whole.
From Bringing Peace to North Kivu, a report by the International Crisis Group published October 31, 2007.
The CNDP’s own laundry list of human rights violations makes clear that Nkunda is as much abuser of the weak as defender of the people. Like every other armed group in North Kivu (including the Congolese army, and the FDLR which includes former perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide), the CNDP has preyed upon the local population through sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, torture and by recruiting children by force right from their schools and homes to fight on the front lines.
Regardless of whether the army can defeat Nkunda (aside from atrocity and theft the Congolese army is known best for running away from the battlefield), the humanitarian consequences of the government’s operation will be severe for the people living in North Kivu. There are already more than 370,000 people displaced from their villages in this area by the conflict over the past year (and 800,000 in all of North Kivu), and this week tens of thousands more who live near the front lines are expected to join them in Goma and its crowded camps, where malnutrition and disease are taking their toll on the most vulnerable residents.
Click here for an October 2007 Human Rights Watch report on crimes against civilians in North Kivu.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 02, 2007 |
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Dr. Denis Mukwege, the founder, director and chief surgeon of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu.
Doctor Denis Mukwege repairs damaged women, helping each find a little dignity where they had only shame.
The doctor is quick to smile; his tired eyes shine with kindness, but also with anger at the unspeakable things done to the mothers and daughters of his community, tens of thousands of them, by men without conscience. Where they torture and violate, Dr. Mukwege and his staff heal.
This year alone 3,500 women were treated at Panzi Hospital, located on the outskirts of Bukavu, just down the bumpy road from one of the several UN peacekeeping bases around the city. Most of the women come here with internal wounds, including fistulas, humiliating and painful effects of their violation. The other type of internal damage is psychological, and can last a lifetime. The only good news is that most of the time this physical damage can be fixed with a simple procedure, restoring at least the bodies of the women who come here.
A few dozen women who come here each year cannot be cured, and will live with the damage forever. Most of them will not be welcomed back to their communities, or by their husbands. Doctor Mukwege is undeterred by the enormous challenge of caring for so many- he is working to open a new transit center here at Panzi for these incurable women called the City of Joy; here at least they will be welcomed.
As we stand up to leave his office he hands us each a small Congolese flag, as a gift.
“Don’t forget the Congo,” he says softly.
As if I ever could, after coming here to Panzi.
Learn about Panzi Hospital and plans for the City of Joy on Glamour.com, and read about Dr. Mukwege and sexual violence in Congo on the New York Times.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 01, 2007 |
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