Feature - Winning back Burundi's child soldiers

In his December 2002 report to the UN Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan identified Burundi as one of five conflict-ridden countries across the world where children were being used as soldiers. However, while most of the armed groups named by Annan were opposition factions, his UN report pointed a finger at the Burundian government for abusing children by sending them to the frontline. Humanitarian organisations in the capital, Bujumbura, have said that the exact number of children involved in Burundi's decade long civil war is impossible to establish, but estimates ranged from 5,000 (at least 2,500 of whom were serving in government forces) to 14,000, a figure which the NGO Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers used in its 2001 Global Report. The Burundian government has begun to take steps to stop the recruitment of children in the army, but the very nature of the conflict, which pits various Hutu rebel groups against government forces in cycles of guerrilla-style attacks and reprisals, has meant that control over recruitment countrywide is difficult. Forced to fight "It was the middle of the morning and we were all in class," a 16-year-old boy who requested anonymity recalled. "Fighters from the Forces pour la defence de la democratie [FDD - a Hutu rebel group still fighting in Burundi] then surrounded our school and rounded up 70 of us and drove us to some forest area, where it was incredibly dark." The boy, who was 14 at the time, ended up in the Kibira Forest, an FDD stronghold to the north of Bujumbura, and it was here that the children were turned into soldiers over a month of intense training. "They picked out those who looked 12 or 13 and they were let go. But the rest of us began our training straight away. From five in the morning until five in the evening, we did physical exercises and we learned how to take weapons apart and put them together again. "They taught us the tactics of fighting in groups, showed us how to attack, prepare defences and how to use grenades when there were a lot of people around," the short, stocky boy explained with a glazed expression in his eyes. During his 18 months fighting in the war, he said that he learned to adapt to life as a rebel fighter - one of stealing food from the local population in order to eat, taking part in ambushes and attacks on government positions and then disappearing back into the forests. The prospect of fleeing often crossed his mind, he admitted, but having seen how those who were caught were beaten, or simply killed, he waited until his group was on an operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and, while they were down washing in a river, he and a 15-year-old friend fled. "We hid in the house of a lady and she helped us get to Uvira [a town near Burundi in the south east of the DRC]. She gave us bananas to carry on our heads and told everyone we passed on the road that we were working for her," he said. Nothing to else to do The two ended up sheltering with the Association des Jeunes pour le Developpement Integre-Kalundu (AJEDI-Ka), an Uvira-based organisation that looks after and helps to reintegrate into society former child soldiers from the DRC and Burundi. Other children at AJEDI-Ka list boredom and lack of opportunities as reasons for joining Burundi's horrific civil war, which has killed an estimated 300,000 since fighting began in 1993. "I joined the FDD because I lost both my parents and where I was, there was nothing else for me to do - I thought I could be useful," Yohange, a 16-year-old who enlisted aged 12, told IRIN. He said he had fought for both Congolese and Burundian rebels but was now being looked after in the centre. "There were so many attacks. I lost count. It was after one, near the DRC, that I fled and tried to find something to do. But, before long, I found myself fighting again, this time for the Mayi-Mayi [Congolese militia group]," he said. AJEDI-Ka provides as much help as it can, but its officials complained that due to instability, only a few international organisations were still working in Uvira, so they lacked resources and relied on its members volunteering to help the children to go to school or learn skills that would help them get jobs. "But, through our community network, we are also making contact with the heads of the rebel movements and talking to them about demobilisation and why children shouldn't be fighting for them," said AJEDI-Ka coordinator Beck Bukeni. Government taking steps In October 2001, in what many observers saw as a positive step, the Burundian government signed an agreement of cooperation on the demobilisation, integration and the prevention of recruitment of child soldiers with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). A committee, bringing together the ministries of human rights, defence and national security, the interior and public security and social action, has conducted a study on the ground, and has begun to identify child soldiers within the government forces and is sensitising army officers on the issue. "It seems that this is having some effect as, from what we can tell, since we began, there hasn't been any recruiting of children," Desiree Gatoto, an official in the committee, told IRIN. "The problem is that children are actually coming forward with fake identity cards that say they are 18 [the minimum age for a soldier in Burundi] so they can join the army." "There is often nothing else for the children to do but to join up because they are poor or are alone and vulnerable, and they feel proud to have a gun in their hands," Gatoto added. UNICEF, which is providing technical support for the programme, acknowledged that this was a start but stressed that the demobilisation of child soldiers had to be a priority and shouldn't have to await the implementation of Burundi's extremely shaky ceasefire agreements.