11,000 Child Soldiers Abandoned in DR Congo: Amnesty

The recent civil war in the Congo, dubbed “Africa’s World War” was one of the most bloody and most under-reported conflicts in recent history. The war, which raged for nearly five years until being tentatively stopped by a power-sharing agreement in 2003, claimed well over three million lives and included armed factions from six different African nations. One of the most disgusting facets of the war (aside from the massive death toll) has been the usage of children as soldiers and as the ‘sexual playthings’ of adult fighters. One of the main factions in the conflict, the army of the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo,) is reported to have ‘drafted’ upwards of 30,000 children for use on the battlefield – many of whom have still not been accounted for.

At least 11,000 children are still with armed groups or unaccounted for more than two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo launched a programme to release and re-integrate child soldiers back into civilian life, Amnesty International said.

The London-based human rights group said Wednesday that the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, which aimed to help 200,000 combatants, was failing to meet the traumatised youngsters’ needs.

Girls in particular were worst affected, with most of those snatched by armed groups in the war-ravaged central African state still unaccounted for, it added in a report critical of the interim power-sharing administration.

In the majority of cases, girls had either been abandoned or misidentified as legitimate “dependents” of adult fighters. President Joseph Kabila’s government has done little or nothing to trace them, it added.

Posted by Heatscore
A jaded Raskolnikov waiting in disgust for this sick society's imminent paradigm shift.

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