DRC’s former child soldiers face tough return to civilian life: Many of the former child combatants are overwhelmed by the horrors they have witnessed in a part of the country that has been ravaged by violence for more than 25 years
Some of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s former child soldiers have become traders, hairdressers and tailors, but many struggle to recover a normal life in a society buckling under unemployment and poverty.
What about teaching them a trade? “We do that sometimes, but not so much,” Kahindo said. “We lack the funds.” But he proudly pointed to the success of a young man who had been given a sewing machine and has since regularly visited with reports of his progress. Another runs a hairdressing salon. The youngest children are “used for spying, cooking, water and firewood,” said Faustin Busimba, Cajed’s programme officer. But in eastern DRC’s North and South Kivu, as well as Ituri province, the front line and the conflict itself can be volatile.
The number of child soldiers in the DRC is hard to estimate, although the tally runs into the thousands. “In 2002, I was among the first children to be demobilised. I was 15 years old,” said Papy Miruho, 36, in Bukavu, capital of South Kivu. “My father had been killed,” he said, “and my mother went mad.”
In 2010, he and two other young people created an association which supports and employs mostly former child soldiers. The work includes hairdressing and fixing computers.
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