English

30,000: the number of children who have been enrolled, voluntarily or by force, in the armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although it is one of the most shocking aspects, the issue of press-ganged children (generally called ‘child soldiers’) does not cover all of the problems encountered by children in armed conflicts. They may be abducted, killed, injured, mutilated or uprooted from their original community. They may be orphaned, separated from their parents, subjected to violence or sexual abuse or deprived of education and healthcare.

“At lunchtime we heard gunshots. We left the house as quickly as possible. It was too late. A group of about 80 LRA men arrived and encircled us. They tied us up and then shot and killed my grandfather right in front of me. They took me and my three brothers into the bush, leaving behind my mother and grandmother. After an hour of walking they separated us and I was left with my 14-year-old brother Patrick. My two other brothers were never seen again.

In the UN General Assembly’s review of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), DRC’s MDG indicators are among the worst in the world – and not only in the east of the country where the world is aware of the conflicts and humanitarian crisis but in the west too. It is well known that DRC has all the makings of providing an economic motor for Africa but the brakes on its progress are, most importantly, governance and state authority, security, and infrastructure, all of which are chronically weak.

Along with being one of Africa’s long-standing chronic crises, the Democratic Republic of Congo is also the world’s largest humanitarian response laboratory. The humanitarian reform agenda, launched in 2005 and piloted in DRC, set out to overhaul the provision of relief, by making humanitarian aid more accountable, predictable, better led, better coordinated and more responsive to identified needs. Since 2005, implementing these reforms in DRC has provided a unique opportunity to gain insight into what works, what does not and where challenges remain.

Annuarite Tagenge, aged 17, is still searching for the surviving members of her family, having spent almost a year walking through the forest to find them. She and her family fled the territory of Dungu in the northeast in December 2008, after attacks by Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and a subsequent joint Congolese and Ugandan government army offensive to oust the rebels. Tagenge, who was then 16, was wounded and admitted to hospital in Dungu for surgery; along with thousands of civilians, she later fled the hospital for the bush.

Bandundu province, located adjacent to Kinshasa and bordering Angola, has not suffered the same degree of conflict as provinces in eastern DRC; nevertheless, it has been a hotspot for forced migration. Two factors have triggered population movements within Bandundu province: the border situation with Angola during and in the aftermath of the civil war there, and the insecurity surrounding diamond mining on the Angolan side of the border.

Recent research into the role of civil society in DRC suggests that international organisations involved in the Congolese peace process have tended to assume that civil society in the Kivus mirrors its Western counterpart, in which ‘civil society’ represents the needs of the people to the state and keeps the state accountable to the people. Civil society in the Kivus, however, developed quite differently, with today’s distinctive social and bureaucratic structures having been shaped by the colonial administration of earlier years.