Focus on helping former child soldiers

Despite the scorching sun, a cool breeze from the nearby volcanic mountains enables the former child soldiers to play football in the open space outside the Mutobo Transit Camp. For their part, the adult former combatants are attending a lecture in a rudimentary iron-roofed building nearby. One of the players is 14-year-old Alex Sinabubalaga, who left Rwanda in 1994 at the age of five years in the company of his parents. He is one of 68 child soldiers in the camp, nestled in the Virunga mountains of the northwestern Rwandan province of Ruhengeri. The camp serves as a temporary base for former combatants arriving from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), pending their demobilisation and reintegration into society. Most of the returnees had fled Rwanda nearly 10 years ago during or immediately after the 1994 genocide. They include former child soldiers aged between 12 and 17. Sinabubalaga, his dry skin raddled with scars left by injuries incurred during his years of soldiering, says he was abducted and recruited into the Mayi-Mayi militia movement in the Walungu sector of South Kivu Province, eastern DRC, when he was 12 years old. He has not seen his parents since. "I was an escort to a commander," Sinabubalaga says. "I used to go on the battlefield, but mainly carrying food for the fighters. I went through a week's military training on how to use a rifle." Now his most pressing needs are tracing his parents and later enrolling in primary school. Another former soldier, a skinny 14-year-old, who goes only by the name Mabula, wearing torn shorts that leave his buttocks exposed, also has a vision: He dreams of seeing a blackboard for the first time in his life. "I want to go to school like other children. I can neither read nor write," says Mabula, who lost both parents before the genocide. He joined the Mayi-Mayi two years ago in Nzibila in the Walungu sector. He was assigned the task of carrying medicine for the fighters as well as small-arms ammunition. Recruitment Mabula and Sinabubalaga are among 600 former combatants at the Mutobo camp who recently returned from the DRC. The number of the returnees has increased significantly since November 2003 when the Forces for liberation of Rwanda (Force democratique pour la liberation du Rwanda) of the rebel commander, Paul Rwarakabije, decided voluntarily to return home. Some 52 former combatants came home with Rwarakabije. The recruitment of children by armed groups in Africa has been widespread, and the rebels who operated in the vast jungles of the DRC contributed greatly deal to this phenomenon. Children make easy targets for recruitment, because they are easily lured into to a life of adventure, and trained to obey orders. "Militia groups find children useful as porters, spies and in most cases [they are] pushed to the front line as fighters," Jose Bergua, a child protection officer with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN on 15 January. Bergua attributed the easy recruitment of child soldiers to poverty, which, he said, drove many of them into military careers in the expectation of a more materially rewarding life. Separate camp for child soldiers Under the Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), a separate camp for the former child soldiers is being planned. Here, the children, who left Rwanda nine years ago, are due to undergo three months of rehabilitation, pending their reintegration into society. It is during that period that they will be expected to learn more about their motherland. The RDRC chief programme officer, Alphonse Nkusi, said the children would undergo special programmes, different from those for adult former combatants, at the new rehabilitation centre due to be built near the Mutobo Transit Camp. "It will be specially designed for the children, and staffed by people who can handle child-related problems," he said. "We are specifically looking at erasing from their minds the war experience, and examining their socioeconomic needs." Within the planned rehabilitation centre, to be established a few kilometres from Mutobo camp, the former child soldiers will receive trauma counselling and psychosocial care, as well as medical screening to check for chronic illnesses and disabilities. Efforts will also be made to trace their families for eventual reunion. In collaboration with NGOs such as Save the Children UK and the UNICEF, the RDRC plans to meet the educational needs of the former child soldiers by accessing schools and helping to meet tuition requirements. Those who choose to settle in communities as farmers will also be assisted to access land and provided with implements to help them engage in farming, Nkusi said. Demobilisation The disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants intensified in 1995, with the government Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) demobilising 2,364 child soldiers and enrolling them in a special primary school known as Kadogo School. Statistics from the government's disarmament programme show that almost three-quarters of former child combatants were reunited with their parents, while the rest remained with friends or relatives. One drawback of this measure is that there was no systematic monitoring of the DDR process under the first stage carried out in 2001. But now, to avoid a similar mistake, Nkusi said a research team had been established to assess the former child soldiers who mostly returned from DRC in 2001 and were coping in communities they settled amongst. "If they are still economically vulnerable, they would be eligible to receive reintegration aid under the [RDRC's] Vulnerable Support Window," he said. Former girl child soldiers Despite the high number of child soldiers who have been demobilised over the years, little is known of what happens to girls who served in the various militia groups in the DRC. Although the girls may not have actively taken part in armed combat, the Cape Town convention on child soldiers characterises child soldiers as children within a military environment doing any kind of work such as cooking, or serving as spotters or spies. Many girls fall in this category of child soldiers. However, the fate of many girl child soldiers is often unknown and few of them go through rehabilitation camps. The RDRC only handled one girl out of 450 child soldiers it dealt with from 2001 to 2003. Although it is difficult to ascertain the numbers of former girl child soldiers, humanitarian agencies estimate that the figures could be quite high. "There's so little we know about the girl child soldiers. Some of them either get married and remain in the DRC and a few return but go straight to their communities within Rwanda," Bergua said. "This denies them access to benefits that the boys receive through the reintegration programme. There's an urgent need to establish the fate of these girls." The benefits include help to resume education, medical care and counselling. Reintegration After their time at the Mutobo Transit Camp, most of the adult former combatants are reintegrated into civilian life. "Mutobo camp is a halfway home for combatants who are ready to become civilians, but are unfamiliar with today's Rwanda," Frank Musonera, the camp manager, said. The men and women spend two months at the camp, where they are taught about national security, the country's education system, human rights, HIV/AIDS, gender-related issues and good governance. Relatives of these former combatants are allowed to visit them once a week, and the camp residents are free to visit the surrounding communities in the evening after their lessons. Pierre Habinwali, 32, was a member of a Mayi-Mayi group based in Bunyakili in South Kivu. His dream is to trace his wife and children, who left him in the DRC. However, he is sceptical about reclaiming his land in his home village. "I do not want to go back into the army," he said. "My dream is to find land and become a farmer." He denied taking part in the genocide. Like many of his colleagues, Habinwali is wary of getting caught up in the country's new traditional-based justice system, known as Gacaca, in which ordinary citizens accuse alleged genocide perpetrators and have them tried before their peers. On completing two months in the Mutobo camp, the former combatants will receive household items such as kitchen utensils, soap and a blanket, as well as 39,000 Rwandan francs (US $71) to start them off in their new civilian life. They then travel to their home villages to pick up their national identification cards and wait to be summoned to give their version of what happened in 1994.