orphans
David Gough in Kigali
Clarissa Uwizcyimana last saw her son Kofi in December 1996, in the squalid refugee camp in eastern Congo where they had taken shelter two years earlier from the civil war and genocide raging in their native Rwanda.
She had gone in search of food when a gunfight broke out between militias vying for control of the camp. When she returned to the hut her four-year- old son was gone.
Uwizcyimana searched for Kofi for six months, until she returned to Rwanda in June last year. In a conflict that claimed the lives of one million Rwandans she saw little hope that he was still alive.
“After I lost Kofi I never had peace in my heart,” she said. “It was as if a piece of me was missing. So many other members of my family were killed during the war.”
But last month a neighbour told Uwizcyimana about a book of photographs of unidentified children issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“I dared not hope that Kofi’s face would be among them, but when I saw his picture my heart leapt with joy,” she said. She was reunited with Kofi at a Kigali orphanage last week.
Since the mass repatriation of Rwandan refugees from Congo began in 1996, the ICRC and Save the Children UK (SCF) have reunited some 25 000 children with their families in the biggest tracing programme since the end of World War II.
In many cases the children were too young to remember their names, while others were traumatised and unable to speak. Eighty-five per cent of the children have been reunited with their families, but for thousands more there will be no happy endings.
Cleontine (8) has spent the past two years at the Gisimba orphanage. “When I see other children meet their parents again I feel happy for them, but I also feel sad because I don’t know if my parents are alive or dead,” she said.
For every child like Cleontine, there are another 60 who know their parents are dead. Across Rwanda there are more than 60 000 households without adults, where the eldest surviving child is bringing up siblings. Some heads of household are as young as 10. Less than half the parentless households registered with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) receive charitable aid, and the number is growing as more Rwandan children are orphaned by Aids.
The Rwandan government has initiated programmes to aid these children, including free education and health care for minors, but resources are scarce. “The government is operating under extremely difficult restraints given the enormous poverty of the country,” said Steven Rifkin of SCF. “Although the government has made great progress, there is a crippling lack of qualified personnel.”