1 We know that in Congos many wars since 1996, at least 5.4 million - - PDF document

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• We know that in Congo’s many wars since 1996, at least 5.4 million civilians have

been killed.

• Of those people, at least 2.5 million have been children under the age of five.
• Many of these children have died from violence directly.
• But even those who have not been caught directly in the crossfire are destroyed by

the disease and starvation that is a direct result of constant conflict and insecurity.

• People will tell you that Congo’s life expectancy is 48, and that’s true – but what

you don’t find out until later on, until you begin questioning that number because in Congo you see plenty of elderly people, is that the life expectancy is skewed so young because so many children die so early in their lives.

• The infant mortality rate in Congo is the second worst in all the world – 75 of every

1000 children will die before the age of 1. (It’s 6:1000 in the USA, and we have one

• f the worst rates in the developed world)
• One in every 7 children will die before the age of 5.
• One of the most horrific aspects of Congo’s conflict, however, has been the

rampant and forcible recruitment of both boys and girls as child soldiers 2

• At the height of the wars, it was estimated that Congo had at least 39,000 child soldiers

within the ranks of its dozens of armed groups.

• Fully 40% of those children were girls, used not only in combat but as “wives” and sex

slaves for the other soldiers.

• Children join the armed groups in one of two ways:

1. Voluntarily: this happens especially with boys, but not exclusively with boys. Children will join armed groups voluntarily or at the behest of a family member. Voluntary conscription usually coincides with the complete lack of any other educational or economic opportunity for the child and family. This is one of the reasons JWW focuses so deeply on education programs in Congo – we see educational opportunity as a crucial child protection mechanism. 2. Forcibly: It may seem illogical for armed groups to forcibly recruit children. Why not just use adults, who would likely be more capable or reliable soldiers? Several studies have researched the issue and have found a few common denominators:

• Children are relatively easy to abduct, subjugate, and manipulate. They

are more impressionable and vulnerable to indoctrination, and their moral development is incomplete and malleable.

• They are also seen as more loyal and less threatening to adult leadership.
• Even when children are less reliable in combat, they have particular

functional values to the armed groups. They are well suited for logistical support of armed groups (cooking, acting as porters, etc).

• At the end of the day, many rebel groups also make simple cost-benefit

analysis: children require less food and no payment. Punishment of children is also less costly. Child soldiers are financially attractive. Rebel groups may be extremely resource-constrained and forced to recruit children.

• Patterns of recruitment of children vary according to the context. It’s usually a mix of

punishment, promises of rewards and indoctrination.

• Many children are forced to participate in an assassination (perhaps of one of their

relatives, parents or friends) – the goal here is to break their will, and convince them that there is no home they could return to that would ever accept them. Killing a relative in particular destroys a child’s outside options: if the child were to flee, he or she would have no place to go.

• Armed forces also abuse certain motivations of children: children may join armed forces

because of the desire to take control of events, or because of the protection offered by being at the shooting end of a gun.

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A caveat about these statistics: Data is hard to gather in Congo, persistent insecurity and constant population movement means researchers rarely have access to consistently, methodologically sound data. These estimates are just that – estimates – gathered from organizations like the UN, War Child and other expert organizations. The good news is that the use of child soldiers in Congo is on the decline, as you can see. The biggest reason for this is a fundamental shift made by the Congolese national army, the FARDC. Working with JWW’s partner BVES and a coalition of child- protection organizations it brought together in Congo, the Congolese government and army in the last few years has made it clear to its forces that the recruitment of child soldiers is no longer acceptable, and has demobilized all children previously serving in its ranks. In the gaps between years, moreover, we see these numbers waxing and waning – increasing when there is a surge of violence, and plateauing or even decreasing when security improves. Between January 2012 and August 2013, for example, which was the height of Congo’s M23 rebellion (likely sponsored by Rwanda), the UN confirmed at least 1000 new cases of child recruitment. 4

• As Laurent Kabila’s forces moved westward through then-Zaire to topple Mobutu in Kinshasa

in 1996, they left a trail of horrific atrocities in their wake.

• At that time, Esther was only 13 years old. Her village destroyed, she fled to a nearby village

called Kabare and hid in a school.

• She kept telling us – she was alone, all alone.
• She had no idea where her mother or any of her siblings were.
• Life was incredibly difficult for her, she said. One night, she was hiding in one of the buildings

when soldiers began looting the area.

• She hid behind something, but the soldiers suspected there might be people hiding and they

found her.

• Six of the men, she said, “did very bad things against” her. Then, they just left her there.
• Another girl found her lying there, and she and her father took her to their home to try to

treat her. But she was “destroyed,” she said. A reminder – this was when she was 13 years old.

• Esther says she felt completely alone, completely used. She had no where to go, and she

didn’t know if she would even be accepted if she was able to find her family.

• She purposefully went to a place where she knew there were Congolese army soldiers

(FARDC) so that she could join the army. She told us that at the time, she felt that since she had been raped by the Rwandan soldiers, she needed to fight against them. She told us that she thought “having a gun would give her strength and value.”

• She joined the army, and eventually one of the soldiers married her. She had two children with
• him. But soon after the birth of their second child, he was deployed far afield, and she was

alone again.

• She told us she felt discarded. She wanted to leave, to escape, but it was incredibly difficult to

do so. She left once, was stolen back into the armed group again, and then managed to escape a second time. But she was alone with her children, had little way of earning a living and was living an incredibly poor and difficult life.

• A few years later, she learned about one of the programs JWW is funding, LAV (Laissez

L’Afrique Vivre, Let Africa Live). I’ll get into the program in a minute, but the crucial part about the program for Esther is this: it is the beginning of her being ok, of her not being alone.

• On our first trip to Congo in 2009, what we heard over and over again from every survivor was

this: I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m all alone. There was no hope, there was no expectation that even we, who had traveled thousands of miles to meet with them, could ever end or alleviate their total isolation. The hopelessness on that first trip was palpable, sometimes oppressive.

• We heard it on this trip too – as I said to you, Esther kept telling us “I was alone, I was alone, I

was alone.” But as we asked her about her time at LAV, where she’s training to work in the hospitality sector (hotels, restaurants and such), her affect changed. For the first time in her recounting of her story she was remotely animated – she looked up, she said “I was alone BUT NOW.” But now she has people. But now she found her mother, and when she’s done with her training she’ll go back to her family. But now she’s building a support network. But now she might have a chance at a real job, without needing a gun to provide for her.

• Esther is far from recovered – you can see it in her stance in this picture, and we could see it

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speaking with her. But as hard as her recovery is, for the first time she has a real shot at it, and she knows it. Even that change is a miracle to see.

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JWW sees the need for critical responses on several levels. First, we must work to demobilize child soldiers from the armed groups themselves – to set them free from the clutches of the armed groups. Our best partner on this front is BVES, an organization that quite literally rescues children. This man, Dr. Murhabazi Namegabe, is a hero of ours in Congo. He is the only person we know of – and the only person anyone else we’ve spoken with in or out of Congo knows of – who goes into the field, negotiates with the armed groups for the release

• f the children, and then brings them back to Bukavu to the transit centers he
• perates.

He is the only civilian that MONUSCO, the peacekeeping force in Congo, allows to come with them to surrender or demobilization points when an armed group surrenders or when members of an armed group defect. He also goes out on his own, to areas he knows are controlled by various armed groups, and negotiates for the children’s release. 6

• Dr. Namegabe currently runs two transit centers inside Bukavu, and others at sites in

rural zones throughout South Kivu. In Bukavu, there’s one transit center for boys and

• ne that houses girls along with babies and toddlers that are either dependents of

the girls themselves, or were orphaned or abandoned by the armed groups. Now you may think a transit center with a couple of hundred boys, all former child soldiers from dozens of different armed groups, would be a tense, maybe even depressing place. But the community Dr. Namegabe has built is the exact opposite. The children here receive psychosocial counseling, medical care, and a healthy new

• start. Dr. Namegabe works with other child protection organizations to reunify the

children with their families whenever possible, and that the children will be accepted by their families and communities when they are found. They also receive counseling

• n their next steps – do they want to go to school? Is there a training program they

can access? All of this is done in a period of, on average, 3-6 months. The vast majority of the children are referred out to additional programs after their time at the transit centers. The boys here were singing and dancing when we arrived. This was not just for our benefit – many of the group therapies developed by the Congolese focus on this sort

• f communal creation – coming together through inventing songs and dances, joining

voices together in the same rhythm. 7

The children at the transit center come from all of Congo’s varied armed groups – many were trained, from a young age, that they were each others enemies. But at BVES is their first real step of reintegration – where they learn that they were all used, all victims and survivors of an illegal, predatory practice, and that they can support each other in their recovery. The boys wrote a speech for us – in English! – when we first arrived, thanking JWW for its support of BVES and telling us that “things were already better” (the chorus of the song they wrote for us). It was swelteringly hot out there, so when Dr. Namegabe joked that the boy delivering the speech needed some shade, the boys rushed to “be his umbrella.” For these children, this sense of community that Dr. Namegabe creates is crucial in order to give them the feeling of belonging that they have been missing for so long. 8

This is the girls transit center at BVES. Fully 40% of the child soldiers in Congo are

• girls. For the most part, they’re used as sex slaves, “wives” for the other soldiers.

Many are abandoned by the armed groups when their no longer useful, or when they’re pregnant. Three of the girls at the transit center were pregnant when we last visted. 9

The girls live at the transit center with their own children, born of their time in the armed groups, but also with dozens of other orphaned or abandoned children. These kids are part of the negotiation – babies and toddlers are useless to the armed groups, and so Dr. Namegabe will offer to take them with him if the child soldiers are released to him as well. The space the girls and children live in right now is safe, and it’s clean. But it’s tiny and cramped – there’s no room to play, there’s no space for any private time. It’s in the center of the city of Bukavu, right off a main road, so it’s dusty and smoky and the girls especially don’t feel safe leaving the center on their own. 10

So we’re building them a new one! On this last visit to Congo, we saw the land that

• Dr. Namegabe is purchasing to build a bigger, safer space for the girls and the

abandoned children. The space is huge – a hectare, which I’m told is 1000 meters

• squared. That’s difficult to visualize, and the pictures don’t do it justice either – but

this is Dr. Namegabe pointing to those trees in the distance, all the way down a huge hill we were standing on. Those trees were the border of the property! Already growing on the property was mango, passion fruit, mulberry, papaya, pineapple, avocado, coffee and cassava. The property is right next to a school (with elementary and secondary), near an electric line and near a good source of water. It’s 26 minutes outside Bukavu, only 8 minutes from the main road and 5 minutes from the village marketplace. When we told the girls currently at the center about the new property, they all cheered! 11

• Dr. Namegabe’s work is crucial, but it is a first step. The transit centers are where the

children first go after they’ve been demobilized. Whether or not they can return to their families, almost all the children need ongoing reintegration support. For the children who can return home, they need to know how to make a living without a gun – and they need to show their families and their communities that they’re an asset, not a threat. For the children that can’t go home, their needs are similar – but they have even less of a support network to fall back on. Wherever possible, BVES finds host families in Congo willing to take children in, if their families cannot be found or are unwilling to accept them. One of the most effective programs supporting children after they’ve been demobilized is LAV, a French acronym for “Let Africa Live.” LAV is like the Homeboy Industries of Congo, for those of you who are familiar with Father Greg Boyle’s work here in LA. The children here – many of whom are referred from BVES – are given additional psychosocial counseling and health care. They’re also educated – and not just in basic literacy and numeracy training, but in professional skills (from the basics like showing up on time to deeper concepts like taking initiative, working with a group, etc). They’re given vocational skills training – here children are learning hospitality: cooking, working in a hotel, working in a restaurant. Other courses include tailoring, masonry, carpentry and welding. They’re also given further family reunification support and counseling. After they graduate, they’re not just left to their own devices – rather, the children are

• rganized together in collectives based on their professional skills and geographic region. This

way, the kids have the support and the accountability they need from each other to succeed. They can also take on larger orders and build a stronger business for themselves. JWW is currently supporting 50 former child soldiers in this program.

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In fact, we went to a restaurant run by graduates of LAV’s hospitality program – one

• f the best meals we had!

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The third pillar of our response to the child soldier issue takes a more societally- driven approach. We want to make sure that we prevent, as much as possible, the recruitment of children into the ranks of the armed groups, forcibly or, more than we expect, voluntarily. To that end, we see the education work that we do as a crucial aspect of this prevention and protection work. Education is of course critical for other economic reasons: studies have shown that for each year of schooling a Congolese child receives, she can expect her income to rise 10% above those of her less-educated peers as an adult. But we also know that when children see no hope for a future, no hope for any sort

• f economic opportunity in their lives, they join the armed groups willingly.

Sometimes they make this decision on their own, sometimes they are compelled by a parent or other relative. Either way, lack of opportunity is the biggest reason children will willingly join the armed groups. These children are part of the 169 kids we are supporting through our Educational Assistance program in Mumosho, South Kivu. Supporting this community is particularly important because of how consistently the conflict comes to its doors – the cluster of villages is right on the border with Rwanda, and has been in the cross- fire of a lot of violence over the years. 70% of the children we support in this project 14

are girls. 14

And in North Kivu, we support the Generation Hope project, which gives hundreds of children access not only to formal, classroom education, but also to an after school leadership and peacebuilding program. The children in this program are brilliant and inspiring – every one of them speaks nearly fluent English (in addition to Swahili and French), they all spoke to us about how important it was to become leaders in their community who could lead with compassion and without corruption. When we met these children, we were so impressed that we told the group that we thought the future President of Congo was going to come from this program. They agreed, of course. The girl on the left in this picture is named Charmante. The boys we spoke to all pointed to HER as one of the people they thought could become President. 15

We hope that our package of responses: demobilization, reintegration and education, will help Congo move forward. We have a long road to travel, but we’ve seen vast change in just a few short years – with your help, who knows where we’ll be in another five years! 16