The human rights organisation Amnesty International said on Friday a dissident general is recruiting large numbers of children to fight in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) conflicted North Kivu province.
”For several weeks, anti-government forces loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda have been recruiting children, often by force, in the Masisi and Rutshuru territories of North Kivu,” said Veronique Aubert, an Amnesty International researcher who has just returned from the region.
”Many others, fearing abduction by Nkunda’s troops, have been forced to flee their homes and families to seek protection in major towns and cities. Many of the children had previously been recruited by armed groups and had already passed through a formal release and family reunification programme.”
”While visiting one centre caring for children released from the armed groups, we were appalled to learn that in one week alone in early March, 14 of the 782 children they had reunified with their families since July 2005 had been re-recruited by Nkunda’s forces,” Aubert added. ”Other centres reported similar figures.”
She said the recruitments and continuing insecurity in North Kivu are also having a devastating effect on programmes to reunify children formerly associated with armed groups with their families and to develop projects to support them in their return to civilian life.
Many of the allegations of recruitment and use of children concern the 83rd army brigade, formerly part of the RCD-Goma armed political group and composed of Kinyarwanda-speaking (Rwandan-speaking) soldiers who oppose the extension of DRC state control in North Kivu.
Elements of this brigade have rallied to Laurent Nkunda and in January this year attacked government army positions in Rutshuru territory, later committing scores of rapes of women and girls from non-Rwandan-speaking ethnic groups. — Sapa-AFP