Thousands of Children Exploited in Congo's Mines and Militias
Posted by Cody Leblanc on Jun 20, 2013
Child miners in eastern Congo.
Thousands of children are being exploited in the mines and armed
groups that operate in the Tanganyika district of Katanga province in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo. June 16 marked International Day
of the African Child, and local activists publicly called on the
authorities to secure the safety of these children.
Speaking to Radio Okapi, Fatuma Kamona, chief of the Gender, Family
and Child service in Tanganyika, stated alarming statistics:
“There are more than two thousand children in the ranks of armed
groups...Sadly, we also see cases of rape and sexual violence against
the young girls. This violent impunity must stop. The majority of
these girls working in the mines are minors who become pregnant before
coming of age.”
Unfortunately, these figures are all too true for many parts of
eastern Congo. In May, World Vision released a report entitled “Child
Miners Speak.” The report interviews child miners, their parents, and
other community members in Katanga Province in an effort to hear
first-hand testimonies of the turbulent lives of the children who are
forced to work in Artisanal Mines throughout eastern Congo. Of the 50
children interviewed,
19% of the children said they had seen a child die on an artisanal
mining site,
87% experienced body pain and many had been injured,
67% of the children experienced frequent or persistent coughing, and
Several girls reported experiencing genital infections after
working waist-deep in acidic water.
Children in the Congo have also been conscripted into various armed
groups since the earliest days of the conflict over a decade ago.
According to Humans Rights Watch,or HRW, the U.N. has estimated that
more than 30,000 children were fighting in the Congo with various
armed groups. HRW’s 2010 report, “Trail of Death” deals with LRA
incursions into northeastern Congo and looks at their practice of
kidnapping children to brutally train them to become child soldiers.
To combat this practices,Fatuma Kamona is calling on both the local
and international community for help:
“We don’t have the means. But the government, the agencies of the
United Nations, the local community itself, the parents and the
children themselves; we must all get involved. The will is there. We
must succeed in ending these atrocities.”
On June 17, the U.N. Security Council will hold a debate on children
and armed conflict to discuss the Secretary-General’s recent report on
children and armed conflict.
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