Children living in the shadow of death
Children are dying in large numbers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) even as the country went to the polls yesterday. The United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says in its Child Alert: DRC report that more children under age five die each year in the African country than in China – a country with 23 times the population. It draws attention to the appalling fact that the total countrywide death toll every six months is similar to that for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 countries.
"While DRC has experienced death rates like that of the tsunami every six months, it has not received the attention it deserves, either from the media or the public," said UNICEF DRC Representative Tony Bloomberg, who attended the report’s launch in London. "UNICEF issued this report to call attention to this hidden emergency and its impact on children. “We stand ready to work with the elected government and all other actors to begin immediately improving the lives of Congo's children”, he added.
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The report’s launch came only a few days before the first free elections in over forty years. The report, based in part on UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies Martin Bell's own observations in DRC and his past experience in war-torn countries, suggests there is hope for an end to conflict through successful elections. "It is easy to be overwhelmed by what has happened in DRC because the sheer scale of it," said Bell. "But we owe it to the children to give them the future they deserve and these elections may be the opportunity of their lifetime."
Child Alert is a briefing series that presents the core challenges for children in a given crisis location at a given time. Mr Bell travelled to the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2006 and produced this Child Alert on one of the world’s deadliest humanitarian crises. The report states that every day 1,200 people, half of them children, are killed in the conflict-ravaged DRC because of violence, disease and malnutrition.
UNICEF reports that these grim statistics make DRC one of the top three deadliest places to be born.. "Children bear the brunt of conflict, disease and death, but not only as casualties. They are also witnesses to, and sometimes forced participants in, atrocities and crimes that inflict physical and psychological harm”, says the report.
The report chronicles some of the most heinous crimes perpetrated on children. Sexual assaults, used as a weapon of war against women and children, have reached epidemic proportions. Last year alone, 25,000 reported cases of rape occurred in eastern DRC. Children are caught up in war as refugees and internally displaced people. In eastern DRC, as many as 120,000 people every month are being displaced from their homes. Constant migration robs children of schooling, health care and the chance for a normal life.
The victims of rape or other forms of sexual violence in DRC could easily be in the hundreds of thousands. The Heal Africa Hospital in Goma, run by the organization Doctors on Call for Service (DOCS), has provided care to more than 4,500 rape victims in the past three years alone. Sexual violence is consciously deployed as a weapon of war, by one group against another, to humiliate, intimidate and tear apart families and entire communities or even force them into an alliance. “Gang rapes, mutilation, rape involving the insertion of objects into the victim’s genitals and forced rape by one victim upon another are not uncommon in this largely ungoverned eastern part of the country”, the report observes..
The victims include those who are forced to witness these atrocities against their spouses, parents, children, relatives and friends. Girls and women who become pregnant as a result of rape often become social pariahs, rejected by their families and their villages. As a consequence of extreme sexual violence and difficult pregnancies for very young girls, an untold number of women suffer from vesicovaginal fistula, a debilitating condition resulting from trauma to the body that prevents women from controlling their bodily functions.
According to the report, the number of people living with HIV is currently estimated at 1.1 million. For women and children whose lives are subjected to this extreme violence, HIV/AIDS is part of their daily reality: Many combatants involved in the war are HIV positive. The risk of transmission is higher when women, particularly young girls, are violently raped, because of internal injuries. Very young children and adolescent girls are frequently singled out for their youth and relative defencelessness or in the fallacious belief that having sex with them will cure AIDS.
The report cites the case of Martha (not her real name) aged 14. She comes from a religious family in North Kivu Province. When she was 13, her mother sent her to buy a dress for her own baptism. On the way home, and as darkness fell, she was attacked and gang-raped by some people from her neighbourhood. As a consequence of the rape, she gave birth to twin boys born 28 days prematurely. They lie beside her in an incubator at the Heal Africa Hospital in Goma. At first, she hated them. But for the moment, she says, she loves them. She is one of many victims of rape receiving care and counselling at the hospital. The chief surgeon, Dr. Kasereka Lusi, says: “It’s a terrible experience. They all become mad, really furious mad. They would rather be dead than live like this. At first they see the child as the enemy within. They try to smack it and kill it. To heal them, you need the whole community to counsel them to accept the baby.”
.The report further notes that as many as 30,000 children may be associated with armed forces or groups as fighters, sexual slaves and camp-followers. Almost half of all primary age school children are not in school and one out of three children under age one are not vaccinated against measles. An alarming 31 per cent of children under five are underweight. Children are forced into armed forces and groups by extreme poverty, abandonment, homelessness and the random hazards of war. Many are left with no choice but to join the militias who offer a modicum of protection and provisions.
It is estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of children associated with armed forces and groups are girls. Many are held in captivity as sexual slaves for extended periods of time. Children are used not only as soldiers, but as porters, spies and sexual slaves. Demobilization has been in operation since the peace agreement of 2003 and there have been signs of success.
So far, 18,000 children have been released and reintegrated; however, a significant number still remains with armed groups resisting participation in the demobilization efforts. Reintegration of children in communities that were highly affected by the conflict and so have very limited prospects for children is proving to be a challenge. Faced with the choice of destitution at home or paid military service with the armed groups, the young former combatants will all too often re-enlist.
DRC is a resource-rich country; gold, diamond, copper and cobalt are mined throughout the country. Too many children are forced to work in the dangerous and deplorable conditions that exist in these mines, more susceptible to illness and injury. Child labour is one of many reasons why so few children regularly attend school. In urban centres throughout DRC, children live on the streets, separated and sometimes abandoned by their families. They are routinely attacked by other street children and at times abused by the police. They are prime tarets for armed forces and military groups looking for new recruits.
According to the report, a human traged has unfolded in the DRC over the past eight years. The continuing conflict between the Congolese army and rebel militias – despite a nearly four-year-old peace agreement and a transitional government in place – has resulted in a death toll greater than in any conflict since World War II. Since 1998, nearly 4 million people have been killed by war or disease, or have simply disappeared without a trace.
It notes that conflict-related deaths have exacerbated the national crude mortality rate..As so often happens in conflicts, the casualties are disproportionately high among the young. For many children growing up in DRC, particularly in the east, their childhoods have been, and are still being, stolen from them.
“Part of the horror of this conflict is its scale. But the figures do not tell the full story. The conflict in DRC no longer makes waves or headlines. Perhaps because the war has gone on so long, or because the situation has at times seemed so hopeless, it is the war the world has largely forgotten”, the report concludes.
Part of the reason for this may also be the lack of access to the conflict zones. Insecurity in the worst-affected areas in the east of the country has placed some of the victims beyond the reach of aid agencies. UNICEF and its partners are preparing to implement programmes that provide long-term development, in addition to emergency relief.
But ongoing conflict has caused the displacement of millions of people, and without improvement in security, field offices in the eastern towns of Kalemie, Bunia and Goma, and mobile operations in Beni, as well as the southern town of Lubumbashi, are limited to helping people survive.
According to the report, peace is the missing link between a violent past and a more hopeful future. It is the prerequisite for investment in vital basic services that have been limited by conflict, such as free universal primary education, free basic health care for children under five, mosquito nets for pregnant women and children under five, rehabilitation of water sources, counselling and support for vulnerable women and children.
Despite such grim statistics, the report says, Sunday’s landmark elections in the war-ravaged country could be a turning point. Whereas the elections are not a panacea for all the nation’s woes, they can go a long way to restoring order and stability. On 30 July 2006, for the first time in over 40 years, the Congolese people will have a real choice at the polls and a real chance to end what is often called the “First World War” of Africa.
Statistics prove that the Congolese people want to vote. 25.6 million people—77 per cent of the eligible population-- have already registered. Despite the war and the insecurity, 70 per cent turned out to vote in the referendum on 18-19 December 2005, approving a new constitution. The election is critical. It is only a beginning, and will not by itself bring the conflict to an end. But it can be the catalyst for the emergence of a new DRC. Until now the lives of families and entire communities have been defined by conflict.
“Many children have grown up in the past eight years not knowing anything but war. The Congolese people must see results to encourage further peace and stability. Children must be at the heart of the post-election agenda. Nothing else can have a greater effect in shaping the country’s future”, the report concludes.