In Congo, former child soldiers get a window on a better future

Both boys stay at SOS Grands Lacs, one of two transit centers for former child soldiers in Goma, eastern Congo. Young boys sit in a makeshift classroom or lounge around outside their wooden shack dorms. Some act out martial arts movies while others dance to the beat of blaring Congolese music. Seventy-seven children are here today, although in the past, says executive secretary Albert Mushayuma, the center has housed as many as 235.

Every week, about 15 new arrivals come to the center. It will be their home for about two months while UNICEF attempts to reunite them with their families. Most of the children are forced out of the militias as part of a process of retraining and integration of militia forces into the national Army known as brassage. If fighters are under 18 years old they are refused entry into the Army.

"The children usually come out during the brassage process because, in our experience, they are released when they are no longer any use, not for any moral reasons," says Mr. Kitambala.

Release is not always the end of the ordeal. In June, a minibus full of former child soldiers on their way to be reunited with their families was ambushed by fighters loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general responsible for much of the instability in the eastern Nord-Kivu Province. Six children ages 12-17 were reabducted and taken into the bush, where they were beaten and thrown into a roughly dug dungeon. Tense negotiations between Save The Children and the militia leaders followed before the children were released. The incident underlines how precarious the children's existence is.

It is not only boys who have been drawn into this conflict, which continues to claim up to 1,200 lives every day through violence, malnutrition, and disease. It is thought that as many as 40 percent of children associated with armed groups are girls, but they tend to be less visible, raped and used as "wives" more typically than as fighters on the front lines.

Sifa is a slight 21-year-old mother of two. Earlier this year, she swapped her machine gun and rocket launcher for a sewing machine, and is now learning dressmaking at Goma's Girl Guides center. One morning nine years ago, Sifa was abducted by the Mai Mai as she collected water. "Once you are there as a girl, you belong to all of them even if there are 50 boys," says Sifa who was both "wife" and soldier. "I hope what I learn here will give me and my children a future," she says.

Wilhelmine Bamuswekere, a gap-toothed smiling woman wrapped in colorful Congolese cloth, is the director of the center, where some 20 percent of the girls were associated with armed groups. She looks after 60 girls, 10 of whom were child soldiers. The others experienced forced prostitution, beatings, or the loss of parents to violence or disease.

"Our aim," says Ms. Bamuswekere, "is to show the girls that they are members of society. Those who were with militias have no means for living, and we have to show that girl that she can keep herself and be useful in society and that society will accept her."

"Society must accept the children," says Angelique Nyirasafari, child protection officer at Save The Children, "because it was that society that abused them."

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