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[ Country-by-Country Reports ] DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO (TIER 2 Watch LIst) [Extracted from U.S.
State Dept TIP Report, June 2008] The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a source and
destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes
of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Much of this trafficking occurs
within the country’s unstable eastern provinces and is perpetrated by
armed groups outside government control. Indigenous and foreign armed militia
groups, notably, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR),
the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and various local
militia (Mai-Mai), continue to abduct and forcibly recruit Congolese men,
women, and children, as well as smaller numbers of Rwandan and Ugandan
children, to serve as laborers (including in mines), porters, domestics,
combatants, and sex slaves. CNDP troops, dressed in civilian clothes and
fraudulently promising civilian employment, conscripted an unknown number of
Congolese men and boys from Rwanda-based refugee camps, as well as dozens of
Rwandan children from towns in western Rwanda, for forced labor and soldiering
in the DRC. The failed “mixed” brigade experiment, which
attempted to combine full CNDP battalions into single brigades with other
battalions answering to FARDC command and control, ended in September 2007.
This process abruptly brought into the FARDC ranks an estimated 200 children,
including girls, who were not demobilized during the reporting period. In
December 2007, the terrorist rebel organization, Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA), intensified its operations in the DRC’s Dungu Territory, abducting
civilians. An estimated 300 women and children remained with the LRA in
DRC’s Garamba National Park. More than 1,000 Congolese women remained
in Uganda after being forcibly transported there as sex slaves or domestics
by departing Ugandan troops in 2004. An unknown number of unlicensed
Congolese miners remain in debt bondage to supplies dealers for tools, food,
and other provisions. Some reports suggest that Congolese children were
prostituted in brothels or in camps by loosely organized networks. Congolese
women and children were reportedly also trafficked by road to South Africa
for sexual exploitation. Congolese girls were also believed to be trafficked
to the Republic of the Congo for commercial sexual exploitation. A small
number of Congolese children are also reportedly trafficked to Uganda via
Rwanda for agricultural labor and sexual exploitation. Reports suggest some
members of Batwa, or pygmy groups, were subjected to conditions of
involuntary servitude. The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo does not
fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking;
however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Nevertheless, DRC is
placed on Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to provide evidence of increasing
efforts to combat trafficking in persons over the last year. Some significant
initial advances were noted, particularly regarding the arrest of at least
three suspected traffickers. However, a number of other arrest warrants were
not carried out, and no convictions of traffickers were obtained. Under the
national Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) plan, the
government demobilized 3,563 child soldiers found largely in the ranks of
rebel militias; at the same time, however, it did not take efforts to identify
or protect victims of trafficking among 200 child soldiers in its own army,
the FARDC. The government lacks sufficient financial, technical, and human
resources to effectively address not only trafficking crimes, but also to
provide basic levels of security in some parts of the country. The military
lacked the capacity to forcibly demobilize armed groups. The country’s
criminal and military justice systems, including the police, courts, and
prisons, were practically nonexistent from years of war; there are few
functioning courts or secure prisons in the country. Recommendations for
the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Work with international partners to ensure
that all children in government custody, some of whom may be trafficking
victims, receive appropriate protective services; step up efforts to arrest
and prosecute traffickers, particularly those who unlawfully conscript child
soldiers or utilize forced labor; and develop legislative proposals to more
comprehensively address human trafficking. Prosecution These efforts notwithstanding, the government’s capacity
to apprehend, convict, or imprison traffickers remained weak. In March 2007,
Commander Jean-Pierre Biyoyo, formerly of the Mudundu-40 armed group and the
only person ever convicted by Congolese courts of conscripting children (and
who escaped prison in June 2006), resurfaced in Bukavu in a delegation of
mixed brigade officers; he has not been re-apprehended. In January 2007, the
FARDC Chief of Staff issued a warrant for the arrest of “Captain
Gaston,” an armed group commander allegedly responsible for the
mid-2006 murder of an NGO child protection advocate; he remained at large
during the reporting period. In May 2007, military authorities issued an arrest
warrant for FARDC soldiers of the 6th Integrated Brigade in Bunia alleged to
have abducted four girls to use as “wives,” but these soldiers
too remained at large. Protection The government had little capacity to encourage victims to
participate in investigations or prosecutions of trafficking offenders. Some
FARDC elements essentially outside government control continued during the
reporting period to harass, arrest, and physically mistreat children formerly
associated with armed groups, including potential trafficking victims, and
local authorities occasionally charged demobilized child soldiers with being
members of illegal armed groups. Minors detained for child soldiering were
generally released quickly if discovered by MONUC or NGOs. However, 31
Congolese, Rwandan and Burundian child soldiers were detained, interrogated,
and mistreated for several months to obtain information on their former armed
groups, and then transferred to a prison in Kinshasa for further questioning.
The government released these children to UNICEF in March 2008. Prevention |