World Street Children News :: Congo (DR) Streetkid News

Unicef gets DRC to free street kids

    November 21 2006 at 04:28PM

Kinshasa - The United Nations Children’s Fund has persuaded officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo to free 143 street kids rounded up by Kinshasa police after election-related violence, Unicef said Monday.

The children - 33 girls and 110 boys aged between two and 17 - were among about 500 street kids, locally known as "shegues", hauled in by police in the capital in the aftermath of clashes on November 11 near the residence of presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba.

Six of the children, who were freed on Sunday, were handed over to their parents, while the 137 others were sent to shelters run by the ministry of social affairs, according to a Unicef statement.

Hundreds of homeless kids and young adults live on the streets of Kinshasa. UN agencies and the UN mission in the DRC, MONUC, which currently has 17 600 personnel monitoring a three-year post-war electoral process, have repeatedly expressed concern at police crackdowns.

"The family is the best place for a child," Monday’s Unicef statement said, announcing that enquiries would begin to try to reunite the other children with their families and calling on relatives and the community to help out and "take care of children".

The violence near Bemba’s residence broke out when people in the vast central African country were still waiting for the results of a landmark October 29 presidential election that pitted the former rebel leader against incumbent head of state Joseph Kabila.

Riot police intervened on that Sunday when shegues gathered close to Bemba’s quarters, which are guarded by about 1 000 troops loyal to him, and held an election protest at alleged ballot fraud in Kabila’s camp. In the clashes, a soldier and three civilians were killed.

Within days, police rounded up the shegues at the places they usually gather to spend the night. The street youths, like many Kinshasa residents, tend to back Bemba, though he lost the election nationwide to Kabila according to the final official results released last week.

Kinshasa’s city governor, Admiral Baudouin Liwanga, said that 265 of the boys and youths picked up in the police raids had been transferred to a farm training centre in the remote southeastern Katanga province, while about 100 girls and young women will soon be sent to a similar facility east of Kinshasa.

Stephan Blight, the Unicef official responsible for vulnerable children, said the agency’s actions extended only to minors and that he had no details about older people detained by police.

"Unicef reiterates its desire to support the Congolese government in finding lasting solutions to the problem of street children and urges all political players not to involve them in political events that could put their lives and well-being in danger," Monday’s statement said.

On Monday morning, about 100 Bemba supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court in Kinshasa after the ex-rebel and wealthy businessman filed an official suit to contest the result of the election. The demonstrators dispersed without incident when riot police appeared.

Bemba has legally challenged several aspects of the voting process, in which Kabila won 58,05 percent to his 41,95 percent, according to figures released by the Independent Electoral Commission. The final announcement is now down to the Supreme Court, which has seven days to consider Bemba’s suit.

Earlier this month, the MONUC mission protested at what it called "arbitrary arrests" among the shegues and warned the DRC authorities and inhabitants against "a tendency to blame street children for all the problems of insecurity" in Kinshasa. - Sapa-AFP

“Enfant Dit Sorcier” Music Video
In 2003, Internews produced two videos to raise awareness of the plight of Congolese children accused of witchcraft. The first video was a documentary, “Enfant Dit Sorcier” (”Child Accused of Being a Witch”). This is the second video, co-funded by USAID and Search for Common Ground, that uses pop music to spread a similar message to Congolese society. It features the musicians of L’Orchestre Lachytoura, most of whom were once street children, some accused of sorcery. They perform their own song “Enfant Dit Sorcier.” Internews created and inserted a narrative drama to help illustrate the story of an innocent boy accused and discarded by his family. The song is in Lingala. Subtitles are in French.

Enfants Dits Sorcier - Children Accused of Being a Witch
Internews (http://www.internews.org) has produced two videos to raise awareness of the plight of Congolese children accused of witchcraft. The videos were part of a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development that trained journalists from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to report on peace talks and social issues. The videos were produced by Angela Nicoara and Mike Ormsby.

"Sorcerers" swell ranks of Congo street children

By Daniel Flynn KINSHASA

monuc.org: Rights groups want arrested Congo children freed ::: 27/09/2006

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Human rights groups demanded on Tuesday that Congo’s authorities release street children rounded up after political protests in Kinshasa that stoked tensions ahead of a decisive presidential run-off next month. Over 800 people, including nearly 200 minors, were initially arrested following clashes last week between the security services, street children and supporters of Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is running against incumbent President Joseph Kabila.

Historic elections held in Democratic Republic of Congo on July 30 have resulted in Kabila and Bemba, the two frontrunners in the polls, heading for a deciding run-off set for October 29. Even before the elections, the first free vote in the vast, former Belgian colony in more than 40 years, rights groups had warned that feuding politicians might try to exploit Kinshasa’s thousands of street children in their campaigns. Although many of those detained since last week have been freed, more than a dozen children and some 100 other men and women, some with babies, remained in custody on Tuesday inside the police compound in Kinshasa.

"Give us bread," shouted some of the detainees, held in an area of concrete slabs covered with corrugated roofing, as police ordered Reuters journalists out of the compound.

"We are going to the police to try to ensure the release of the remaining children," Ambroise Bakajeka, interim head of a Kinshasa street children’s charity known as REEJR, told Reuters.

"This is a huge violation of their rights," said Amigo Ngonde, head of the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights. "They should have been released by now … We don’t know why they were arrested in the first place," he added.

CAPITAL TENSE

The police have denied any political motivation behind the detentions, saying they were merely part of the fight against criminals and bandits.

The July 30 first round vote went ahead mostly peacefully, protected by more than 17,000 United Nations soldiers. Congo has the world’s largest U.N. peacekeeping mission. But when the Kabila-Bemba run-off was announced on August 20, rival soldiers loyal to the two men fought three days of gunbattles in Kinshasa in which at least 30 people were killed. The largely pro-Bemba capital remains tense, his supporters have taken to the streets in protest several times this month and analysts fear further clashes with the security services.

Kinshasa police chief General Patrick Sabiti said the arrests had nothing to do with last week’s protests. "It was a police operation to arrest people we suspected of committing crimes," he said.

The elections in Congo are aimed at ushering in a new era after a 1998-2003 war that killed some four million people, mostly from hunger and disease, and crippled a nation already on its knees after decades of dictatorship and corruption. With no support from the government and just a handful of charities offering assistance, groups of children and youthful street hawkers roam the crumbling capital’s streets. "We wake up like this, we go to sleep like this … and we only get a bit of food in the evening," said tired-looking Deki Kitenge, 19, one of those arrested last week.

DRC: Protesting street kids held 

22/09/2006

Kinshasa - More than 700 street children have been rounded up in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa over the past few days, said police sources on Friday.

"We are holding in custody about 700 homeless young people, who were responsible for acts of disorder in central Kinshasa, where they threw stones at the police and passers-by," Kinshasa police chief Patrick Sabiti told AFP.

More than 100 street dwellers, mostly children and young people, caused havoc in central Kinshasa on Tuesday, burning tyres and throwing stones at police. They were protesting about a fire that had broken out at a television station, owned by presidential contender Jean-Pierre Bemba, on Monday.

"These young people have been behaving like bandits for some time now, attacking members of the public. We have had several complaints," said Sabiti. "We are currently identifying the young people, of whom 90% are adults. Those considered guilty will be sent to court and the others will be released to their families."

United Nations officials at the UN mission in the DRC, Monuc, said they were investigating the arrests. Monuc has often criticised the treatment of the country’s estimated 20 000 street children and young people.

Bemba’s party said Tuesday that it believed the fire at the television station had been deliberately started by "people who do not accept political contestation and the free expression of opinion". Bemba is running for president against the country’s current head of state Josph Kabila. The campaign has been marred by violence between their supporters. Voting in the second and final round of the DRC’s first democratic presidential poll in more than 40 years is scheduled for October 29.

Homeless youths throng Congo’s cities

KINSHASA, Congo — Colonial rule, rapacious dictatorship and civil war have so ravaged Congo’s economy and society that the streets of its cities swarm with homeless young people who numb their misery with drugs and alcohol.

Sixteen-year-old Baruti Ilanga ran away from home four years ago and now lives in the rusty brown shell of a Toyota, discarded in a cemetery-turned-garbage dump in Kinshasa. Even though there’s too many mosquitoes at night and he often goes hungry, he believes he’s better off than most of his countryman.

‘Everyone in Kinshasa is poor and hungry. At least we are happy,’ the boy shrugged, a half-empty bottle of pale yellow French Pastis beside him. ‘It is good in the street. I am free. I do what I want, when I want.’

No one knows how many children and teenagers call the streets their home in Congo. Aid workers estimate between 25,000 and 40,000 children are homeless in Kinshasa alone, and tens of thousands more are said to live in the vast Central African country’s other cities.

Next month, the U.N. Children’s Fund is holding the first census of Kinshasa’s street children since the end of Congo’s 1998-2002 war, which killed nearly 4 million people and destroyed the country’s infrastructure.

Many Kinshasa households are too poor to feed their children. Aid workers say many times only one child is fed on a given day _ a desperate solution to the problem of distributing precious food. Other households chose instead to abandon their children, some under pretexts like witchcraft or sorcery.

‘My aunt treated me very badly, she would scold me and not feed me. That’s why I came here. I feel safe here, with other children like me,’ said Esther Okudi, 14, an orphan who has lived on the street for seven years. Her current home is a wreck of a car near Baruti’s.

As evening falls on the Congolese capital, Ilanga and his friends are busy rolling marijuana between their palms. They take swigs of pastis. A group of young street girls appears.

Boys chase the girls playfully, dashing between upright car frames silhouetted against the twilight sky. But their games are hardly innocent. Aid workers say most of the girls, also abandoned children living on the street, are prostitutes.

"They earn a living through prostitution. Some are only 10 years old," said Guy Milongo, who works with a local organization to help street children. "But these children will tell you they are having a good time. There is no one to control them."

A new generation of children is being born and abandoned by destitute street parents. Without help, these newborns will probably never know the comfort of a home or family, and will spend their childhood shunned by society, sleeping on sidewalks and in garbage dumps.

Hospitals see the malnourished babies of street children every day.

"We receive lots of them. They are usually dirty and malnourished," said Annie Ndombasi, 31, a nurse at Clinic Afia in Kinshasa. "It makes me sad to see children and parents so ill."

L’Oreal Oganga, 15, gave birth to a baby in her home, a broken down car. By the time she was brought to Clinic Afia five days later, she needed antibiotics to treat an infection.

She was on a drip, barely able to speak and lying on her hospital bed. Her daughter, Brunette, squealed behind her, in the arms of the father, 19-year-old Biko Lombe, who also lives on the streets.

"I’m proud of my baby," Lombe said.

But Ndombasi said teenage fathers like Lombe often disappear.

"It is rare that the fathers help. They usually abandon the babies," said the nurse. "We don’t know if the babies survive. The mothers are too poor to afford hospital care."

Those working to help Congo’s street children say it can take years to return a child to his or her home. Parents who washed their hands of their children are rarely happy to see them at their doorstep again. And the children are hardly eager to return to families that abused or rejected them.

"It is painstaking work. Every child is different, every child must be treated with care," said Jean-Pierre Godding, who helps reintegrate street children with their families.

Godding operates a center in Kinshasa that feeds street children and sends them to school, while hunting down the family of each child and negotiating conditions for them to go home.

Dr. Almouner Talibo with Doctors of the World, an organization that provides health care to street kids, said there is only enough money "to touch the surface of the problem."

"Every day, there are more children on the street. It will take a much bigger effort, and more funding, to help them all," Talibo said.

___

On the Net:

Street Children’s Development Association, a private Kinshasa group: http://www.ajrd.populus.ch"

D.R. Congo: Election Poses Dangers for Street Children
Source: Human Rights Watch

(Kinshasa, April 4, 2006) – As presidential elections approach, Congo’s tens of thousands of street children risk political manipulation and physical harm, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In recent years, leaders of political parties have enlisted street children to create public disorder in mass demonstrations. In many cases, the security forces have responded to these protests with excessive use of force, leading to the death and injury of dozens of children.

The 72-page report, "What Future? Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo," documents how security officials and other adults routinely abuse the country’s street children. In the past 10 years, armed conflict, HIV/AIDS, prohibitive education fees, and even accusations of sorcery have led to a doubling of the number of street children. With no secure access to shelter, food or other basic needs, these children live in insecurity and fear.

Instead of providing street children with protection, police and soldiers routinely use physical violence and threats of arrest to steal from these children. Street children also face physical and sexual abuse at the hands of adults and older youth, who take advantage of their vulnerable status. Rape of both girls and boys is pervasive.

"As a first step, the Congolese government must protect street children during the election period. U.N. agencies in Congo should redouble their efforts to prevent abuse," said Tony Tate, Africa children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. "Congolese authorities should use this opportunity to start addressing the abuses committed against children."

The Congolese government periodically orders mass roundups of street children, justifying their detention on the basis of a colonial-era law that forbids children from begging. Guilty of nothing more than being without a home, large groups of children are detained and held in overcrowded jails, often mixed with adult prisoners. Held for days in deplorable conditions, these children are usually released without being charged, and then put back on the street.

"Congolese authorities should be assisting homeless children, not throwing them in jail," said Tate. "The government should end roundups of street children and do away with laws that criminalize children for being homeless."

In an alarming trend, an increasing number of children are being accused of sorcery, even though such accusations are specifically prohibited by Congo’s new constitution. Orphans or children living with step-parents are particularly vulnerable to accusations, made by their surviving relatives, that they are sorcerers responsible for the family’s misfortunes. Accused children are often neglected, abused, and thrown out of their homes.

Agencies that work with children in Kinshasa estimate that as many as 70 percent of the city’s street children had been accused of sorcery before they ended up on the street.

Specialized pastors or prophets from "churches of revival" perform ceremonies to rid children of their sorcery. In many such churches, dozens of children can be held for days at a time, with food and water denied. In the worst cases, children are whipped, beaten or given purgatives until they confess to sorcery. Even after the process is concluded, however, children can be subjected to further abuse at home, and ultimately abandonment.

"Congo’s new constitution expressly prohibits accusing children of sorcery," said Tate. "Congolese authorities must take action against adults who mistreat children."

Children affected by HIV/AIDS are particularly susceptible to accusations of sorcery. In the belief that HIV can be transmitted through sorcery, family members sometimes blame children for causing the death of their parents from AIDS. Already AIDS orphans, these children become double victims of the epidemic. National HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns must educate the Congolese public about the causes of HIV/AIDS and refute the view that it can be transmitted through sorcery.

Testimonies from the report:

"Our worry is this, what will become of these kids tomorrow? Thousands of children living on the streets with no supervision, no education, no love or care, accustomed to daily violence and abuse. What future for these children and for our country?" – Street child educator in Lubumbashi

"Child sorcerers have the power to transmit any disease, including AIDS, to their family members. AIDS is a mysterious disease that is used as a weapon by those who practice witchcraft." – Prophet who specializes in child sorcery at a revival church in Mbuji-Mayi.

Rights Group: Street Kids Open to Congo Election Manipulation

By David Lewis Kinshasa

04 April 2006

A human rights group is warning that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s street children risk being manipulated by political parties during and after elections this year. Human Rights Watch says tens of thousands of children across the country could be used to take part in demonstrations or incite violence, putting them in serious danger from the security services.

Congo’s bustling cities are full of street children. Crippling poverty, high school fees, and accusations of being sorcerers responsible for family problems have all contributed to their numbers doubling during the last decade. As the vast central African country prepares for elections, which are meant to mark an end to two wars and offer a chance for reconstruction, Human Rights Watch warns tens of thousands of children could be manipulated in the process.

Poor and homeless, the children risk being recruited by political parties to create chaos, intimidate voters, and challenge the results of the upcoming elections, the New York-based group said in a report published Tuesday. On the basis of political violence in 2005, when scores of anti-government demonstrators, including street children, were killed or injured, Human Rights Watch said it is particularly concerned about their safety during the electoral period.

The polls will give millions of Congolese a chance to choose their leaders for the first time in more than 40 years, during which they have endured little but dictatorship, war, and chaos. Although most of the belligerents from the last war, a 1998-2003 conflict that has killed more than four million people, have officially laid down their weapons and turned to politics, fears of electoral violence are real. As a preventive measure, the European Union will send hundreds of soldiers to Congo during the election period to back up thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, who are stretched thin keeping a lid on violence that continues in the east.

PolitInfo.com - Several Congo Street Children Killed by Vigilantes in Mining Town - Sep 27, 2004 Kinshasa

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, government officials say at least 15 street children have been killed, possibly by vigilantes guarding lucrative diamond mines. U.N. officials say they have recovered six bodies of children who were burned or stoned to death.

There are thousands of street children in the Congo, where the social infrastructure has been devastated by years of war and neglect.

Mbuji Mayi is a dusty, bustling diamond mining town in the middle of the Congo. But during the last week, a dark story of attacks on street children has reached the capital, Kinshasa, 1,200 kilometers to the west. There are gruesome reports of a week-long spate of attacks on the town’s children, many of whom have been burned or stoned to death, while hundreds of others reportedly fled for their lives.

Ingele Ifoto, Congo’s minister for social affairs, says that between 15 and 19 children have been killed during the last week alone. The minister says some of the attacks have been linked to diamond miners who set up a defense force, following a series of robberies blamed on street children. United Nations humanitarian workers say they have heard that scenario, but note that there is general frustration with the estimated 8,000 street children in the town, many of whom roam the streets hoping to get a foothold in the lucrative small-scale diamond mines. The U.N. Children’s Fund says its staff recovered at least six bodies of children who were killed.

Trish Hiddleston, UNICEF’s child protection officer in Kinshasa, says some of these children were burned to death, while others appear to have died after being pelted with stones. She called on the authorities to maintain calm and ensure the town’s children are protected. Years of war and neglect have left the vast African country’s social affairs infrastructure in tatters, as the still divided transitional government struggles to create a sustainable peace.

This article uses material from VOA.