11/07/2005

UNICEF estimates that in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are about 33,000 children associated with all the different fighting forces and that 40% of them are girls. But when Refugees International visited the CTO (Center for Transit and Orientation) for former child soldiers in Goma, DRC, we were told that since the opening of the center in April 2002, only two girls have been among the 165 demobilized child soldiers.

One of those young women was at the camp when we arrived. She had already gone through the camp’s orientation program and had stayed on to work in the camp as a cook but recently had lost that job. Her name was Elizabeth* and sitting on her lap was her little girl Judith who was almost one and a half years old. Elizabeth told us her story of the difficulties of life in the conflict-ridden Congo and the perils of being a child combatant.

“I voluntarily entered the army because I came to the conclusion that my family was suffering too much. There was no more food or clothes. They lost everything. I did not tell anybody I was going. I was fifteen. I spent one year with the Mai Mai (a militia group). I was a combatant and going to the battlefield. We had many children but only four girls in our small group.

One night, two of the commander’s men came to get me and bring me to him. Since he was the commander, I had to obey. I went and lived together with him. I felt that I was raped. It was a kind of rule. Once they noticed you were a girl and were very beautiful, they just brought you to a commander.

One day, MONUC (the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo) people came to our village to pay soldiers to quit. I escaped in the confusion, and I came here. Even if I had wanted to escape before, I couldn’t. Particularly the girls, the combatants were protecting us so we could not escape.”

Elizabeth made her way to CTO in April 2004. In June 2004, she gave birth to her daughter. She was living with her aunt when she finished her training and education at CTO. However, it has been difficult for her to hold a job and raise her daughter “I live alone in my house. I am experiencing hard times.” Even after children leave militia groups, it is difficult for them to find ways to support themselves in the DRC, particularly if they don’t have a family. As we left the camp, Elizabeth and her daughter, both beautiful, looked so vulnerable and alone.

Female combatants are particularly vulnerable. Often sexually abused and sometimes with children of their own, these young women rarely participate formally in disarmament and demobilization programs, and are more stigmatized than male children when they try to return home. RI has documented the failure of disarmament programs to include female former child soldiers in Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Northern Uganda, and Sri Lanka.

*Name has been changed.