Human Trafficking in [DRC] [other countries]Street Children in [DRC] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [DRC] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2009
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), various local militia (Mai-Mai), and the Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA), continued to abduct and forcibly recruit Congolese men, women,
and children to serve as laborers, porters, domestics, combatants, and in
sexual servitude. CNDP recruiters, fraudulently promising high-paying
employment, enlisted Congolese men and boys from Rwanda-based refugee camps,
as well as Rwandan adults and children from towns in western Rwanda, for
forced labor and forced soldiering in the DRC. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in
Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in the ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Survivors' Rights International - Press Release: June 2,
2004 www.survivorsrightsinternational.org/drc/pr_drc_june2_04.mv At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
EQUATEUR PROVINCE: Eyewitnesses reports from
different parts of Equateur indicate both transient
soldiers and resident DRC government FAC (Forces Armee
Congolaise) soldiers looting and destroying
property; confiscating and occupying homes and schools; conscripting and
brutalizing males for forced labor; raping women and girls; and abducting women
and girls for prolonged periods of sexual slavery. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs CURRENT GOVERNMENT
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - The Ministry of Family Affairs and Labor began to
implement an action plan against sexual exploitation of persons, and the
Government has attended regional meetings on trafficking and sought to
coordinate with neighboring governments to address the problem. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – There
was no information available on reports from late 2004 that persons were
recruiting children in Internal trafficking for forced
labor and forced sexual exploitation occurred and child prostitution were reported.
The majority of reported trafficking occurred in the northeast and east. In eastern parts of the country,
armed groups operating outside government control continued to kidnap men,
women, and children and force them to provide menial labor and sexual
services for members of armed groups
In addition armed groups abducted children to serve as combatants in
areas under their control. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001 [64] The Committee is deeply concerned at the direct
and indirect impact of the armed conflict on almost all children in the State
party. The Committee is concerned at the deliberate killing of children by
armed forces of the State party, armed forces of other State parties that
have participated in the conflict and by other armed groups, and by the
continuing impunity for such acts constituting very serious violations of
children's rights. The Committee is concerned at,
inter alia, the recruitment and use of children as
soldiers by the State party and by other actors in the armed conflict,
including children under 15. The Committee notes with appreciation the
creation of a special bureau for the demobilization and re-integration of
child soldiers (DUNABER), but is concerned about the effectiveness of this
bureau. [66] The Committee joins the State party in expressing
concern at the prevalence of child labour,
especially in informal sectors which frequently fall outside the protections
afforded by domestic legislation (see paragraph 87 of the State party's
report). The Committee is deeply concerned at the use of children to work in
the Kasaï mines, in locations in [68] The Committee is deeply concerned by information,
including for example in the State party's report, of the trading,
trafficking, kidnapping and use for pornography of young girls and boys
within the State party, or from the State party to another country, and that domestic
legislation does not sufficiently protect children from trafficking. Eastern
Congo: Kidnapped Boy Returns From Slavery www.wfp.org/stories/kidnapped-boy-returns-from-slavery
Dieudonné Nzatala
hugged the son he’d given up for dead and wept. Children taken by the LRA are
rarely seen again. If children do return, they are often mentally and
spiritually damaged. Many are forced to bear arms, rape, loot and kill. The
young girls usually come back pregnant. Dieudonné,
his wife and their four remaining children held an impromptu funeral for
17-year-old Dagumba. SEARCH FOR FRESH RECRUITS - On the morning of September 17
a group of LRA fighters flooded into Duru in search
of food, supplies and fresh recruits. “One hundred and eight children were
taken from Duru,” Dieudonné
said. “Sixty from that one school alone.”
The students were forced to walk north for two days, into the bush of Survivors' Rights International - Press Release: June 2,
2004 www.survivorsrightsinternational.org/drc/pr_drc_june2_04.mv At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
EQUATEUR PROVINCE: Eyewitnesses reports from
different parts of Equateur indicate both transient
soldiers and resident DRC government FAC (Forces Armee
Congolaise) soldiers looting and destroying
property; confiscating and occupying homes and schools; conscripting and
brutalizing males for forced labor; raping women and girls; and abducting
women and girls for prolonged periods of sexual slavery. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil
Liberties: 6 Status: Not
Free Human Rights
Overview by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights
Worldwide Preventing the
Use of Child Soldiers: the Role of the International Criminal Court THE Congo,
Democratic Republic of the (DRC) www.hrw.org/reports/2004/childsoldiers0104/6.htm GOVERNMENT FORCES - The Congolese Armed Forces
(FAC) continued to have children in their ranks despite commitments to
demobilization. Children at War www.teenwire.com/infocus/2003/if-20031118p072-soldier.php At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
"We were told to kill people by
forcing them to stay in their homes while we burned them down," says
15-year-old Kalami, a six-year veteran serving in
one of the armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
"One day, my friends and I were forced by our commanders to kill a
family, to cut up their bodies... My life is lost. I have nothing to live
for." news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3123794.stm I met Manja just after he had walked in alone out of the rain. He
carried nothing with him but a sleeveless nylon jacket and his memories. "I heard that there were
other boys without parents who were living here," Manja
says in the high-pitched voice of a 12-year-old. "I decided to leave the militia and
join them. I left my gun there. I told them I was suffering, but they said I
had to stay, so I went away secretly."
He walked for two days to reach the safety of this centre. "I left in the evening, just before
sunset. I came here all the way on foot, but sometimes other civilians gave
me a lift on a bicycle." "I was farming," Manja told us. "One day I went away to the market.
There was fighting in my village that day, and
everybody scattered. When I came home there was no-one, everybody was
gone." He joined a group of
people heading south, fleeing from their Lendu
attackers. He found himself utterly
alone, without anyone willing, or able, to help him. "I don't know where my father and
mother are," he said. "I had nothing to eat. I joined the gunmen to
get food. Sham demobilisation hides rise in Congo's child armies Armed groups in the Democratic
Republic of Congo have stepped up their recruitment of child soldiers in
expectation of the civil war continuing despite the peace accord, Amnesty
International says. Boys and girls as
young as eight are being mobilised in their
thousands to murder and plunder -undermining the hope that after five years
the conflict is winding down, its report, Children at War, says. The Use of Child Soldiers in the Democratic www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/congo.htm At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
President Kabila
of the Democratic Republic of Congo has used child soldiers to support his
military since 1996. As the rebel leader of the Alliance of Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), he recruited thousands of young child
soldiers, known as "Kadogo," or "the
little ones," to support his military campaign against the Mobutu
government. Despite pledges from the Congolese government to demobilize
children from the FAC since the end of the 1996-1997 war and the
establishment of several fledgling demobilization programs, the Kabila government has continued to recruit children as
young as seven years old for military service. While no reliable statistics
were available regarding the number of child soldiers, the total number is
likely to be at least several thousand. In a new report released today
Amnesty International (AI) criticized demobilization of child soldiers in
eastern Congo as timid and ineffective, claiming that among certain rebel
groups demobilization is merely a public relations ploy that often ends in
the re-recruitment of those recently demobilized. The
Protection Project - Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [DOC] FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE
TRAFFICKING INFRASTRUCTURE - Sexual violence was used as a weapon of war by nearly all the factions
involved in the conflict in the eastern DRC. Groups frequently and
systematically raped women and girls in order to terrorize communities into
accepting their control or to punish them for giving real or supposed aid to
opposing forces. Combatants abducted women and took them to base camps, where
they were forced to be sex slaves or domestic servants. Rape and other sexual
crimes were not carried out solely by armed groups in the DRC; police,
government authorities, and common criminals were “taking advantage of the
prevailing climate of impunity and the culture of violence against women and
girls.” All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery – |
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Human Trafficking in [DRC] [other countries]Street Children in [DRC] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [DRC] [other countries]