OWN CORRESPONDENT, Geneva | Tuesday
WARRING parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to recruit and train child soldiers, the UN’s special rapporteur to the central African nation said in a report released this week.
Roberto Garreton, who presented his report to the UN Commission on Human Rights, which is holding its annual meeting here, said most of the children being recruited for battle were in rebel-held zones.
Ugandan-backed rebels from the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-MLC) hold sway in the northeast of the country, while the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) control territory in the east along the Rwandan border.
Chilean-born Garreton, who went to the DRC in March to probe human rights abuses, singled out Uganda for its role in fuelling the problem.
“The RCD-MLC forces have not only have established training camps, but have done so with the support of the Ugandan army, and sent many children to military camps in Uganda,” Garreton said in the report.
In an area in the north under the control of Jean-Pierre Bemba, who heads the rebel Congolese Liberation Movement (FLC), Garreton said he saw “thousands (of child soldiers) at the airport in Buta, some of them between eight and 10 years old.”
Garreton also said he had information that government troops and their allied militia were recruiting child soldiers, often from the street.
Uganda and Rwanda, whose military foray into the DRC in August 1998 sparked off the war, support rebels battling government troops backed by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.
Garreton’s report said it was difficult to assess how many child soldiers were being recruited to fight.
In February, Uganda handed 163 child soldiers from the DRC over to UN agencies at a public ceremony in a military training camp in the west of the country.
The children, most between 13 and 17 years old, were among a group of about 700 militia fighters whom the Ugandan army airlifted from the northeastern DRC city of Bunia in the middle of last year.
The Ugandan government said the fighters were part of a militia attached to a Uganda-backed rebel group in Bunia, where their continued presence Kampala had deemed provocative.
Garreton also said on Monday that President Joseph Kabila had made little progress on restoring human rights in the DRC since he took over the reins of government on January 26.
Garreton said he “regretted” that Kabila had not announced the restoration of human rights when he appeared last week before the UN commission. – AFP
ZA*NOW:
2_600 child soldiers released February 28, 2001
9-year-old soldiers found in camp February 21, 2001
Homecoming for DRC child soldiers February 10, 2001