At a glance
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) - formerly known as Zaire - suffered years of colonial oppression
followed by widespread corruption and economic instability in the post-independence
period. Since 1998 the country has been at war. Originally a low level
conflict between ethnic Hutu and Tutsi groups following the mass exodus
of Hutu refugees from Rwanda, the conflict has gradually escalated. From
1998 onwards the involvement of neighbouring countries has led to violence
on a much wider scale. Tens of thousands of troops have been actively involved
in the fighting. There have been an estimated three million deaths thus
far, many of them have caused by conflict-related disease and malnutrition
resulting from large scale population displacement and an almost non-existent
infrastructure. Recently the inauguration of a transitional government
has raised hopes that the five year conflict could be nearing an end. However,
the eastern area of the country remains the scene of local conflicts involving
severe fighting and large-scale population displacement.
Save the Children works in the capital, Kinshasa, as well as the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Kasai Orientale, and the troubled Ituri district in Orientale. Save the Children's work focuses principally on the protection of vulnerable children, including those who are being demobilised from the armed forces. The organisation also runs programmes aimed at improving children's food security, health and nutritional status, and undertakes advocacy around child rights issues.
Current situation
- Children are being abandoned by their families leaving them without protection and subject to mistreatment and exploitation.
- Children in rural and urban areas are at risk from malnutrition.
- Children and their families have been forced to leave their homes.
- Children who have been displaced or separated from their families may not have adequate food, clothing, shelter, or access to basic medical care.
- Children are recruited into the armed forces. They make up approximately 50% of the armed forces in Ituri region.
- Children have little or no access to school.
Politics
On Thursday 17 July 2003 the leaders of four main rebel groups in the DRC were sworn in as vice-presidents in a new power-sharing government. This is the culmination of a peace process that began with the Lusaka Accords in 1999.
Insecurity
Although the conflict in the DRC is moving towards some form of conclusion with the recent establishment of a transition government, a number of local conflicts have continued to escalate in the east of the country with catastrophic results. Since early 2003 the security and humanitarian situation in Bunia and surrounding territory in Ituri province has deteriorated due to ethnic fighting and civilian massacres. The scale of atrocities resulted in the deployment of a European Union military mission in June 2003 to Bunia. The decision to deploy this rapid reaction force was aimed at allowing the United Nations Mission (MONUC) to reinforce its presence in the area and work towards long term stability. Following pressure from the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, the Security Council agreed to extend MONUC's presence in DRC until 30 July 2004, increase its military strength to 10,800 and institute an arms embargo against all foreign and Congolese armed forces in the east. MONUC will act under Chapter V11 of the UN Charter, which permits the use of force to fulfil its mandate.
Humanitarian situation
The population is suffering the effects of profound economic decline, prolonged war, rapid urbanisation, the spread of HIV/AIDS and the collapse of state structures. An estimated 3.3 million people have died as a result of the DRC war since 1998. Crude mortality rates are higher in the DRC than any place in the world since the second world war. The majority of deaths have taken place in the east of the country, and are attributed to disease. However, it is difficult to come up with reliable statistics since the situation has remained poor for such a long time. In Bunia, warehouses containing essential food items have been looted, raising fears of additional food shortages. Untreated water is causing outbreaks of diarrhoeal diseases, and the threat of cholera persists. A severe lack of medical personnel means many people regularly must go without routine healthcare. Thousands of people, mainly women and children, have fled Bunia, making them vulnerable to armed groups operating in the area. Some have sought refuge in the dense forest areas, making them difficult to reach. Humanitarian agencies have been severely constrained from accessing the vulnerable due to the prevailing insecurity in the region.
Key issues affecting children
Statistics
Surveys carried out by the Government and UNICEF amongst 10,000 sample households show that:
- one in five children will die before they reach the age of five
- 50% of all children aged 6-11 attend school
- 38% of children under five are stunted
- 71% of households have no access to potable water.
Marginalised children
Poverty, conflict, displacement and the breakdown of traditional coping mechanisms have forced growing numbers of Congolese children onto the streets where they are vulnerable to neglect and exploitation. Though statistics are hard to come by, increasing numbers of children are being recorded as being separated from their parents following continuous outbreaks of fighting in North and South Kivu and Kasai provinces. It is assumed that many other children remain hidden in fear of being enlisted by armed groups. Unaccompanied children remain largely unprotected in a society that suffers from extreme poverty. A new and alarming phenomenon is the expulsion of children from families, often linked to accusations of child witchcraft. Many children do not have access to education, and in the country as a whole, 31% of children have never attended school.
Recruitment into armed forces
While substantial commitments have been made to promote the demobilisation of children from fighting forces, there has been little progress on the ground. Many children, both boys and girls, have been abducted to fight with rebel forces, but others tempted by the possibility of a regular wage, volunteer. Thousands of children are thought to be active, and in Ituri they are estimated to account for 40-50% of armed factions.
Displacement
The conflict in the DRC has caused hundreds and thousands of people to leave their homes, meaning approximately 2.7 million people have been displaced. The majority of them have fled fighting in the east. In Bunia alone, over 130,000 IDPs, approximately 70% of them children, struggle to eke out an existence. Some 12,000 people who recently fled fighting in Bunia and its surroundings have crossed the border into western Uganda. Large numbers of people continue to flee the area, seeking refuge with other families where possible, or camping out in nearby hills and forests. When families are in flight, there is a risk that they will be separated. Inter-community assistance has become increasingly polarised along ethnic lines leading to heightened insecurity, fear and conflict. Many of these people are hard to reach, and where assistance is possible, planning is complicated by continually changing numbers and re-displacement.
High rates of disease and illness
Repeated displacement and limited access to health services and water are increasing people's vulnerability to disease and death. Outbreaks of diarrhoea, measles and cholera are on the increase, and susceptibility to opportunistic diseases such as tuberculosis is high. In many areas the looting of pharmaceutical supplies has threatened people's access to basic medical care. The vulnerability to HIV/AIDS is high with sensitisation limited and many people lacking the means of self-protection. Approximately 1,300,000 people are estimated to be HIV positive, and approximately 930,000 children have been orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. Significant numbers of orphaned children in cities and towns, combined with poverty, large-scale displacement of families, and the widespread practice of rape amongst armed groups, increases the risk of HIV transmission.
Malnutrition and food security
Acute malnutrition among children under five has been a long-term problem in the DRC. Public health care is expensive, barring access to the most vulnerable. Fighting has prevented regular crop cultivation throughout the country and, as the vast majority of people depend on agriculture for their livelihood, people's food security and nutritional status has greatly deteriorated. Cultivation in many areas has been interrupted by the presence of mines and other unexploded ordinance, and because of displacement. In Ituri region, general constraints on movements of people and goods have contributed to escalating prices of basic commodities, and there are mounting cases of malnutrition. Food distributions have been hampered by access difficulties, restrictions on humanitarian flights into Bunia, and large-scale looting of warehouses.
Save the Children response
Child protection
In the absence of formal structures to ensure the protection of vulnerable children, Save the Children has supported the establishment of informal child protection networks. These help ensure that demobilised child soldiers and others who have been reunited with families are protected by their communities from further risk. In the past year Save the Children has been focusing on strengthening these networks through various means, among them community discussion groups. The groups examine the best ways to ensure optimal care of children, and carry out practical activities such as constructing water points and improving sanitation and awareness raising around basic health issues. In North and South Kivu provinces Save the Children has organised workshops with the aim of fostering a greater understanding of children's problems amongst community administrative and judicial authorities. In Kinshasa, efforts to assist children in detention has taken three forms: improvement in the conditions of detention, the training of judges dealing with juvenile cases, and support to court clerks responsible for keeping records on children in conflict with the law.
Child soldiers
Save the Children's advocacy work in the DRC has focused on preventing the recruitment of child soldiers and raising awareness amongst military authorities of children's rights, including their right to protection. Since 1999 Save the Children has also supported the successful demobilisation and community reintegration of over one thousand former child soldiers, mainly in North and South Kivu provinces.
Children separated or expelled from families
In North and South Kivu provinces Save the Children has continued its programme of identification, documentation, tracing and reintegration of separated children. In the first three months of 2003 the organisation launched an additional emergency IDTR programme in response to the sharp rise in the number of displaced people in the Beni-Mambasa area due to the abrupt escalation of conflict. Between January and March 2003 over 650 children were identified. Most of the area remained inaccessible for reunifications during the period. Save the Children has also been working to develop the capacity of local organisations to help prevent separations and to carry out emergency IDTR programmes. By March 2003 a total of 127 people had been trained through five workshops.
Health care
In 2002 Save the Children focused its efforts on starting up a new health programme in North Kivu province. Activities included: providing furniture and bedding to a nutritional centre and a maternal health centre; providing cold chain equipment to three districts and providing financial and material support to the Goma measles vaccination campaign for children from six months to fifteen years. Other activities included supporting awareness-raising activities on HIV/AIDS and training 110 community health workers in the prevention of malaria and water-borne diseases.
In 2003 Save the Children's activities included supporting local health zones in coping with an outbreak of diarrhoeal disease in January. This was done mainly through the distribution of oral rehydration salts. In addition, Save the Children supported the health zones with the rehabilitation of supplementary and therapeutic feeding centres and the supply of essential medicines and equipment. Training programmes for health workers on issues such as prevention of cholera and malaria are ongoing.
Nutrition
Save the Children's nutrition work began in April 2002 as part of a national programme under the Ministry of Health. The Kinshasa component of the programme covers a population of over half a million people in the poorest neighbourhoods of the city. These include infants under six months and children under five years, as well as pregnant and lactating women. The overall objective is to expand coverage of feeding centres and increase the capacity of local structures to provide curative and preventative nutrition programmes in four health zones in the south-east of the city, namely Kingasani, Kimbanseke, Kikimi and Biyela.
The Kinshasa programme has three main components:
(a) therapeutic feeding in one centre which is the main reference centre for severely malnourished children for all of Eastern Kinshasa. Save the Children covers the cost of drugs and basic laboratory investigations of severe malnutrition cases.
(b) supplementary feeding in seven centres.
(c) community based activities aimed at preventing malnutrition by promoting good feeding practices within communities and through bi-monthly screening for malnourished children.
Rehabilitation
In the east of the country, household economy assessments (HEA) undertaken in Bwito and Masisi in North Kivu, led Save the Children to reorient its programme to these areas. In line with the findings, Save the Children distributed kitchen sets and hoes to 12,453 households in 2003. The findings of the assessments also influenced activities of other partners including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Save the Children supported the treatment of 1,864 cases of severe malnutrition in four centres in North Kivu between January and March 2003. In addition, 6,411 moderately malnourished children received food through Save the Children's supplementary feeding centres. Save the Children also trained Ministry of Health staff as well as non-government organisation (NGO) partners in the treatment of malnutrition.
In response to the most recent fighting in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, Save the Children is distributing non-food items including shelter materials, household utensils, soap and blankets to 25,000 displaced people. Save the Children is positioning itself to intervene in case a second wave of displacement takes place.