Child Soldiers in the DRC

“We were told to kill people by forcing them to stay in their homes while we burned them down. We even

had to bury some alive. One day, my friends and I were forced by our commanders to kill a family,

to cut up their bodies, and to eat them… My life is lost. I have nothing to live for. At night, I can no

longer sleep. I keep thinking of those horrible things I have seen and done when I was a soldier.”

Since the latest conflict erupted in the DRC in 1998, over three million people are estimated to have been killed or have died from the effects of the war. Up to two million people have been internally displaced, including 400,000 children. In July 2003, a transitional government, led by President Joseph Kabila, was set up, yet peace is still far away. In eastern DRC, the fighting and grave human rights abuses continue, and in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, some 20,000 people who were forced to flee their homes are living in makeshift camps under the protection of international troops.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers has recently estimated that the number of child soldiers fighting in the DRC is in the tens of thousands. All of the groups involved in the conflict, including the RCD-Goma, the AFDL, the RCD, the LDF, the RCD-ML, the MLC, and mayi-mayi units under various commanders, use child soldiers. Some soldiers choose to be in the army in hopes of getting food, finding some sort of protection, or forming an identity. Others have no choice. Jeanne, now 18, speaks of her experience when she was 11:

I was recruited in Goma on my way home from school. I came across some soldiers who were pretending to mend their broken-down vehicle, but in fact it was a ploy. They called me and some other children over, and when I went up to them, they grabbed me, threw me into their vehicle and took me off to a training centre. I was trained there and then we began the march towards Kinshasa . Because we were taken just like that on our way home from school, our parents had no idea where we were. To this very day I don’t know if my parents are alive. And even if they are, they don’t know what’s become of me.[1]

Stories like these are common in the DRC. Many children are forcibly recruited, as Jeanne was, and most have had no contact with their parents in years. Sadly, most of them don’t care about where their parents are and if they ever see them again.

Other children join the armies when they are young after witnessing their houses pillaged, their sisters and mothers raped, and their fathers butchered. Having been in hiding while the massacres were taking place, they are left alone, with no place to go, and no one to protect them. They join the armies in hopes of finding protection, as did Paul, when he was 13 years old: “One day they [the RCD-Goma] came to our house and took everything we had. So I decided to join them so that nobody come and beat us up anymore.”[2]

There are many stories like Jeanne’s. There are many known cases of children recruited in the DRC, trained in Rwanda (the home of the infamous genocide), and then deployed back into the DRC. Reportedly, the RDF has recruited Rwandan street-children, trained them, and then sent them to fight in the DRC.

Children who voluntarily join armies commonly join them for reward. They are forced to undergo activities that are akin to brainwashing, and commonly forced to kill “enemies” to prove their loyalty and bravery. Drugs – specifically cannabis, known as “chanvre” -- are used both as rewards for soldiers who carry out their tasks effectively (other rewards include women and girls to rape) and to alter the states of mind of the children. “Before engaging in scenes like that, before killing,” says Albert, recruited by the RCD-Goma at age 15, “you first have to smoke some chanvre – when you do that, it stops the spirit of the person you’ve killed from entering inside you.”[3]

Kadogos, as children in armies are called, are commonly beaten and abused. They are forced to kill other children, as well as adults, and they are hardly ever rewarded with any true respect. Says Thomas, recruited at age 13 and now partially paralyzed as a result of blows to his backbone:

The scars I have all over my back come from my camp commanders beating me 40 times with a rifle butt every time I did not perform the daily exercises successfully like the adults, or if I fell asleep while I was on guard. Being new, I couldn’t perform the very difficult exercises properly and so I was beaten every morning. Two of my friends in the camp died because of the beatings. The soldiers buried them in the latrines. I am still thinking of them.

As if this weren’t bad enough, most, if not all, girls who are recruited into the armies are commonly raped, often by multiple soldiers in one night. Says Natalia, age 16:

…I was only 12 years old, but I was frequently beaten and raped during the night by the other soldiers. One day, a commander wanted me to be his wife, so I tried to escape. They caught me, whipped me and raped me every night for many days. When I was just 14, I had a baby. I don’t even know who his father is.

The experiences that these children are subjected to are those which no human being should be subjected to, let alone children who are barely in their teens. Murder, rape, and brutality are the norm in the armies in the DRC, and children have no control over their involvement in the armies. Many, like Jeanne, didn’t want to be in the army in the first place. They may have lived relatively stable lives at home with their parents, despite the war ravaging their country. Those who did want to be in the army, like Paul, cannot leave. If the boys try to escape, they will be punished with beatings and possibly worse. If girls try to escape, as Natalia did, they will be raped.

This should not be the case. Children should never believe that fighting is the best option they have. The army shouldn’t be the only way they can get food. Children should not join the army because that’s where the other children are, as another young boy named Paul did. These children are given knives, machetes, and AK-47s, and they use them to kill other children. Says Christian, 12: “One time the gun I had, which had a big chain of ammunition attached to it, was so heavy that I had to kneel down to fire it.”

He had to kneel down to fire it? What is the world coming to, when children not only lose their childhood to war, having to develop responsibility they would ordinarily not learn until later on, but also are forced to kill? This child could barely hold the gun up to aim it, yet he was still using it to take the lives of other people. Many children interviewed by Amnesty International speak of various instances where they killed other people, oftentimes under the auspices of a commander. Roughly half of them finish their stories by saying they couldn’t sleep the following nights. Others speak of the crimes with accomplishment, one boy proud that he watched his commander’s head cut off in front of him, and then shot the man who did it solidly in the neck.

Children who fight in the DRC conflict, some as young as seven, are sometimes used as cooks, but are most often sent to the frontlines. There, they suffer much higher casualty rates because of their inexperience and lack of training. Like Christian, many are not even strong enough to handle the machinery. Even grown men have difficulty bearing the hardships of military life; not surprisingly, children suffer awfully. They are particularly vulnerable to disease and malnutrition, and there are numerous reports of the severe psychological side affects these children suffer. Most children who are enlisted in armies have no chance of ever completing their education. It is hard to imagine a worse human condition.

This should never happen. Children should not be used as soldiers in any situation, least of all one where they are abused mentally, physically, sexually, and psychologically. Radical and immediate legislation should be made to enforce a ban on child soldiering, with serious repercussions laid down and enforced for those who do not follow the demands of the declaration.

As the situation in the DRC worsens, the global outcry against such practices is rising, with organizations like Amnesty International and UNICEF staunchly against them, actively giving as much aid to child soldiers as possible. Many groups have also specially formed to combat this phenomenon, such as the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child formerly set forth conditions that child soldiering violate, including a clause that said children should not be used as soldiers. Ironically enough, the three main users of child soldiers, the DRC, Rwanda , and

Uganda

, have all ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, agreeing to a minimum voluntary recruitment age of 18.[4]

Increasing international concern has led to new legislation; the newly formed International Criminal Court will treat the use of child soldiers as a crime. Child soldiering has been defined by the International Labor Organisation as one of the worst forms of child labor in the world, and groups condemning child soldiering include the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Organisation for African Unity, the Organisation of American States, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child set 15 as the minimum age for military recruitment and participation in armed conflict; however, a new optional protocol to be added to the convention sets the age at 18, as well as bans all compulsory recruitment of children under 18 and the recruitment of children under 18 by armed groups.

Yet despite all this, there remain tens of thousands of children on the scattered frontlines of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo

, slashing apart families by day, being beaten and raped by night. It is not enough that the DRC has agreed not to use soldiers under the age of 18: they still do. With so many factions continually fighting for power, there is no potent voice of authority to enforce this claim, and so children like Jeanne, Christian, Kalami, and Paul don’t sleep at night. We’d hope our children dream of their futures, of the shining stars they will one day be. These children have no futures; their only dreams are slideshows of the atrocities they themselves have forcibly committed.

If the world could stop concentrating on matters that don’t mean so much when all is said and done, perhaps we could help demobilized soldiers from the DRC and liberate the tens of thousands of children who virtually have no life. Perhaps we could stop the use of child soldiers, and return life to so many who have never had a chance to live it.

America

can’t save the world; the world can only save itself. Yet perhaps we can one day turn away from our own narcissism and focus our myriad resources to the people who truly need them The Congo has always been known as the “heart” of that Dark Continent, Africa. It’s time we shed some light upon other corners of the world, and there is no place to start but the darkest of all, the

Congo

. Stop the use of child soldiers.

"I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence."

10,000 Child Soldiers in DRC News 24; South African Press Association (6/6/03)

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:

Reserves Option to Use Children in War, Contrary to Treaty (6/30/03) Viewed 11/17/03

Child and Young Adult Soldiers: Recruitment Prevention, Demobilization, and Reintegration Viewed 11/17/03

[1] Amnesty International – Library – DR Congo: Child Soldiers Tell Their Stories

[2] Amnesty International – Library – DR Congo: Child Soldiers Tell Their Stories

[3] Amnesty International – Library – DR Congo: Child Soldiers Tell Their Stories

[4] Amnesty International “Democratic Republic of Congo : End the Use of Child Soldiers”