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Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children The Democratic Republic of the Congo [ Country-by-Country
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Gender, Country ( UNICEF - The
Big Picture U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Children in the DRC have been negatively
affected by continuing armed conflict.
The number of orphans and street children is reported to be on the
rise. In November 2003, the UN Special
Rapporteur to the DRC reported that there were large
numbers of child refugees and war orphans engaged in street work, including
begging and prostitution. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - According to UNICEF, between 25
thousand and 50 thousand child refugees, war orphans, and children accused of
witchcraft or sorcery lived on the streets throughout the country, although
some of those who were not orphans returned to their families at day's end.
So-called child sorcerers were accused of having mystical powers and their
families often abandoned them, most often because of socio-economic
difficulties. The government was ill-equipped to deal with large numbers of
street children. There was widespread
discrimination and violence by average citizens against these children, who
were widely perceived to be street thugs engaged in petty crime, begging, and
prostitution. There were numerous reports of collusion between police and
street children, including street children who paid police officers for the
right to sleep in abandoned buildings, and children who paid police a
percentage of goods they stole in large markets. In addition there were reports
that different groups and individuals regularly rented groups of these
children to disrupt public order. Violence against street children
continued during the year. Soldiers and police subjected street children to
harassment. Security forces in During the year there were reports
that mobs killed street children. In Mbuji-Mayi, No action had been taken against
those responsible for killing alleged child sorcerers in 2004 or 2003. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2004 CHILDREN - Violence against street children
increased during the year. Soldiers and police subjected street children to
harassment. There were unconfirmed reports that security forces in Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2006 [DOC] [73] The Committee notes with satisfaction that the
revised asylum policy in place has enhanced the protection of asylum-seeker
and refugee children who are unaccompanied or separated from their parents.
However, the Committee is concerned that access to education and health is
not fully guaranteed for refugee children. The Committee is also concerned at
reports of increased violence and discrimination against refugee children,
especially from Rwanda, and at the fact that Rwandan children are not
integrated in the regular educational system. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001 [70] The Committee is concerned at
the high number and difficult situation of children living in and/or working
on the street. The Committee is concerned at, inter alia, the lack of access
of these children to food and health and education services and the exposure
of these children to several risks, including those related to substance
abuse, violence, sexually transmitted illnesses and HIV/AIDS. The Committee
is concerned in addition at the tendency of the criminal justice system to
treat these children as delinquents. WHAT HAS LED TO THE CAMPAIGN BEING
SET UP? - The last investigation
carried out in Kinshasa this year showed that there are 14,000 children on
the streets. It is serious for an African city, especially when people talk
of African solidarity. This investigation shows a reality and if we don't pay
attention, we are likely to have a human time bomb which will make our city
intolerable. We are likely to have a generation
which was born on the street and which grows up on the street, with increased
crime and insecurity. This is because the natural environment for the
development of a child is the family, and not the street. Around
20,000 street children wander in Kinshasa Kinshasa, capital of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a city of
more than 7 million people, is a host to about 20,000 street children,
commonly known as "shegues," thus
constituting an untenable and deplorable social phenomenon. According to Mafou,
out of all the street children living in Kinshasa, 74.59 percent are boys
with the rest being girls: orphans, who have lost both parents aged between 0
and 18 years represent 25.8 percent of this children. About 21.78 percent of
these children are beggars, 5.93 percent are street vendors while 30.98
percent are engaged in minor jobs. Mafou said the children can be grouped
under six categories, notably, abandoned children, orphans who have lost one
or both parents, children commonly known as wizards, displaced or non-
accompanied children, young street adults and street children who are off
springs of the young street adults. According to Godding,
many children left their homes in search of food and never returned; many
have equally fallen victim to the suffering of their parents who accuse them
of being evil, branding them wizards and throwing them into the streets. A
good number also fled their homes due to mistreatment from stepmothers and
stepfathers. NISS grad helping street kids in Congo “Street children organize
themselves in amazing manners in order to survive: many of the kids I have
met on the streets have seen more suffering in their seven years than most
could imagine in a lifetime,” says Aldersey. “Yes,
these kids are victims of unfortunate circumstance. But they are also heroes.
They are courageous, capable, and determined, and all they need is people who
have faith in them, people who believe in them, and people who encourage
them.” Ministry
helps unite families in poverty-stricken Africa The girls, aged 12 and 13, were
among five children in a Christian family. Like many other families in the
area, their father had no job. Food was hard to come by, and tempers were
short. One day, the girls' stepmother accused them of being witches and
blamed the family's misfortunes on them. The girls decided to leave home
but soon found themselves without jobs, money, or shelter. They were like many
other street children living in the Congo's streets--accused of being witches
by their families, so they were abandoned or forcibly evicted by the very
parents who should have loved and supported them. Twelve
Dead in Congo Street Clashes The fighting started when forces
loyal to Mr Bemba, now a
businessman, defied a government order to disarm under a plan to cut his
security detail to just 12 police officers.
Residents reported incidents of looting across the city by soldiers
from both sides as well as gangs of street children. Rights
Groups Protest Eviction of Street Children From Congo's Capital Tshetshe says she was not scared, because
she is used to the rough conditions of living on the street. She says she turned to life on the street
at the urging of peers who told her she should leave home, because life would
be better as a prostitute. She says her clients are homeless men, but she
gets enough money for food. The ranks of street kids first
surged in the early 1990s, when the country, still known as Zaire, faced an
economic downturn that pushed unemployment through the roof. Looting closed
many businesses, and parents could often no longer afford to feed their
children. Many children and young
adults have now spent more than a decade on the streets, and many have formed
into gangs. MONUC supporting street children From June to October 2006, 14
hectares of ground were cultivated, and that made it possible to pay for the
food, schooling, healthcare and clothes of 50 street children often accused
of sorcery. “We did not kill our
parents so that means we are not sorcerers. We are a part of society, but we
are maltreated and exploited by society for their own interests,” said one of
the children. This project proved
that, when given the opportunity under the right conditions, these children
can live like everybody else and be integrated into society, explained the
representative of the center. "Sorcerers"
swell ranks of Congo street children His father had abandoned him,
leaving the Congolese boy to be raised by his grandmother. But Bofata's uncles blamed the child for casting a spell on
his parents and they started to beat him. Now a cheerful 13-year-old, his
face still darkens as he recalls the years he spent on Kinshasa's vicious
streets after he ran away. "It was hard on the streets.
To eat, we would help women carry their bags for a little money," said Bofata, who now lives in a centre for abandoned children.
"At night, we slept on sand or on the pavement in front of shops." Rights
groups want arrested Congo children freed Even before the elections, the
first free vote in the vast, former Belgian colony in more than 40 years,
rights groups had warned that feuding politicians might try to exploit
Kinshasa's thousands of street children in their campaigns. More than 700 street children have
been rounded up in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa over the
past few days, said police sources on Friday.
"We are holding in custody about 700 homeless young people, who
were responsible for acts of disorder in central Kinshasa, where they threw
stones at the police and passers-by," Kinshasa police chief Patrick Sabiti told AFP. More than 100 street dwellers,
mostly children and young people, caused havoc in central Kinshasa on
Tuesday, burning tyres and throwing stones at police. They were protesting about a fire that had
broken out at a television station, owned by presidential contender
Jean-Pierre Bemba, on Monday. "These young people have been behaving
like bandits for some time now, attacking members of the public. We have had
several complaints," said Sabiti. Homeless Youths Throng Congo's Cities Sixteen-year-old Baruti Ilanga ran away from
home four years ago and now lives in the rusty brown shell of a Toyota,
discarded in a cemetery-turned-garbage dump in Kinshasa. Even though there's too many mosquitoes at night and he often goes
hungry, he believes he's better off than most of his countryman. "Everyone in Kinshasa is poor and
hungry. At least we are happy," the boy shrugged,
a half-empty bottle of pale yellow French Pastis
beside him. "It is good in the street. I am free. I do what I want, when
I want." Children abused in
electoral campaign The United Nations children’s
fund, UNICEF, is conducting a census of street children. "The
preliminary results suggest there may be 20,000 in Kinshasa alone,"
Christina Torsein, a UNICEF protection officer,
said on Saturday. Zibigniew Orlikowski,
a Roman Catholic priest who works with the Kinshasa-based NGO Ouevre de reclassement et de
protection des enfants de la rue, tried to warn
candidates against using street children when the campaign began in June.
"Put yourself in the place of the
children," Orlikowski said. "There is a
demonstration in the street and the organisers
offer money. What else can the children do but follow?" Marie
Paule's story: Surviving life on the streets of Kinshasa The girls were saved from being
burnt alive when a vigilant neighbour alerted
police. That night, however, they were thrown out of the uncle's house – and
that's when their life on the streets began. Election Poses Dangers for Street Children As presidential elections approach,
Congo’s tens of thousands of street children risk political manipulation and
physical harm, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In recent
years, leaders of political parties have enlisted street children to create
public disorder in mass demonstrations. In many cases, the security forces
have responded to these protests with excessive use of force, leading to the
death and injury of dozens of children. What
Future? Street Children in the
Democratic Republic of Congo VI. FACTORS PUSHING CHILDREN INTO
THE STREETS - An ever
increasing number of children live and work in the streets of the DRC. Although exact numbers are unknown, child protection
activists estimate that the number of street children in Kinshasa and other
urban areas has doubled in the last ten years. They have identified multiple
and sometimes inter-related causes to explain the increase. The two
successive civil wars, one that began in 1996, the other in 1998, left more
than 3.5 million Congolese civilians dead and has devastated the country.
Some children living on the streets lost parents in the war––either directly
in the conflict or due to hunger or disease––or were separated from them
while fleeing violence, particularly in the war-ravaged east of the country.
Entrenched poverty made worse due to the fighting has taken an equally heavy
toll on Congolese families. Unable to feed their children, much less pay for
their education, some parents send their children out into the streets to beg
or look for work, or parents abandon their children when, faced with
unemployment, they leave their homes in search of work in other regions or
countries. Congo removes 10,000 street
children to orphanages1 The proliferation of reception
centers is a strong signal that shows the breakdown of the traditional family
ties that made the child a community property put under the protection of the
community The Street
Children Of Kinshasa During a visit to "Nobody respects street
children in Situation
Of Human Rights In The DRC - Report Of The Special Rapporteur 104. The cities are swarming with thousands of
street children known as shégué. While this is not a new phenomenon, it has
increased as a result of the war and the loss of parents. There are cases of
murder, such as the well-known case of “little Ndingari”,
who was killed by a police officer in the Congo Casts Out Its 'child Witches' ORPHANS CREATED BY WAR AND AIDS ARE BEING ABANDONED BY POVERTY-STRICKEN RELATIVES WHO CALL THEM SORCERERS - Three years ago his mother succumbed to the virus marauding through Kinshasa's slums, leaving him an orphan. An uncle took him in, but with five children of his own to feed Olivier's was one mouth too many. Within a week he resorted to another phenomenon raging through Kinshasa's slums, accusing the child of witchcraft and casting him onto the streets. The education system is
under-funded and pupil drop-out rates have increased. The number of street
children has also considerably increased in Goma
and Bukavu.
While it is extremely difficult to gather reliable statistics on the
issue, the local human rights organization Héritiers
de la Justice (Heirs of Justice) "there is a perceptible and evident
link and correlation between the war, the high number of school drop-outs and
the increase of street children in RCD-Goma
controlled eastern DRC." Congo deal
boosts hope for street kids BREAKDOWN OF GOVERNMENT - Abandoned children -- AIDS orphans, runaways, victims of abusive or broken homes, children recruited and then deserted by one of the many armies or regional militias operating in the country -- have suffered most. The number of abandoned children is difficult to gauge but it appears to be increasing. The U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF estimated in 2000 that there were 50,000 abandoned children. Violence
Against Girls in Conflict with the Law POLICE VIOLENCE, INCLUDING RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT - In the Democratic Republic of Congo, girls also reported beatings by police. Seventeen-year old Rebecca reported that in 2005, … A few kids were stealing from the market, and the police arrested a whole group of street kids in the area. We were more than twenty kids in one small room at the lockup. We were whipped with a plastic cord on the buttocks. The kids would cry and scream. My friends paid the police 400 francs (U.S. $0.80) to make them stop. Committee
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Initial report of the DRC 55. Ms. CHUTIKUL
expressed concern about the treatment of street children, who were considered
offenders and were subjected to arbitrary arrest and police harassment. Such children were generally victims of
circumstances, such as dysfunctional family structures, armed conflict or a
lack of schooling. Because they were victims, they should be provided with
social integration and rehabilitation programs, including education and
vocational training. UNICEF and International &
Local NGOs in the Area of Child Protection1 To address the issue of the street
children and traumatized children, special attention will go to the reunion
programs for street children, demobilized and unaccompanied minors with their
families and communities, the reinforcement of basic social structures such
as PHC and formal/non-formal education activities
targeting these categories of children, and the reinforcement of national
capacities to treat psycho-social problems of traumatized children. Child Witches: The Democratic
Republic of the Congo The latest horror that the
Congolese people have gotten into is that they are accusing their children of
being witches and either killing them or casting them out into the streets. 1. The linked article has been
taken down, moved or restricted All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
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