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FEATURE-Burundi's former child soldiers struggle to fit in

by (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. Click For Restrictions. http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 27 October 2005 00:00 GMT

Former child fighters demobilise in Gitega, Burundi, Dec. 2004. REUTERS FILE PHOTO/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana

BUJUMBURA (Reuters)

- Jean-Noel was 12 years old when Tutsi militiamen scooped him off the streets, forcing him to lug heavy ammunition as they battled Hutu rebels on the outskirts of Burundi&${esc.hash}39;s capital.

"It was terrible," he said. "I&${esc.hash}39;d never experienced war before. When you heard shooting all you wanted to do was run away, but if you did your own guys would shoot you."

Jean-Noel, now 17, is one of about 3,000 child soldiers demobilised in the central African country since the return of relative peace after 12 years of civil war.

Most have been resettled in their former communities with help from international organisations like the U.N. children&${esc.hash}39;s fund, UNICEF, and a handful of relief charities.

But for many of the young recruits who took part in the ethnic conflict that killed 300,000, the struggle to start new lives is just beginning.

"The biggest problem is just to be accepted as a normal child in society," said Dieudonne Girukwishaka, head of a programme to help reintegrate child soldiers run by the charity Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD).

"There&${esc.hash}39;s a tremendous stigma. Some still fear them, thinking they&${esc.hash}39;ll be delinquents or take up arms again and destabilise the community."

Rights groups say all parties to Burundi&${esc.hash}39;s violence used children as cheap and expendable tools of war, with many abducted from their families and forced to serve as combatants, sex slaves, porters, cooks and informants.

Others were persuaded to volunteer as the war pitting rebels from the Hutu majority against the politically dominant Tutsi minority tore the country apart, uprooting hundreds of thousands.

"It&${esc.hash}39;s easy to manipulate a child," Girukwishaka said. "Many child soldiers were recruited (when the war started) in 1993 as many of them were displaced, their parents killed. They were alone and it was easy for someone to say come into the bush with us and fight."

CHILDREN WITHOUT CHILDHOODS

Last year Burundi began demobilising child soldiers from all but one of the country&${esc.hash}39;s armed groups, including the national army, the civil defence forces and a clutch of rebel factions.

Only the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), a Hutu rebel group, remains outside the peace process and aid agencies say it still bolsters its ranks with children drawn mostly from the poverty-stricken hills around Bujumbura.

In July, Burundi&${esc.hash}39;s now ethnically mixed national army said it had captured about 100 child combatants recruited by the FNL, some as they crossed the border from neighbouring Congo where they had been undergoing training.

Some Burundian child soldiers have been even further from home.

One Hutu boy nicknamed Safari was just 11 years old and already an orphan when violence engulfed his neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bujumbura in 1993.

Running for his life, he found himself caught up in a tide of refugees fleeing the country. Eventually he arrived in southern Sudan, where he was recruited by Sudanese rebels waging their own civil war.

For the next nine years, Safari fought alongside them, taking orders from men twice his age who beat him if he put a foot wrong.

"If they said kill, you killed," said Safari, who was finally rescued in the desert by a U.N. helicopter after he became separated from his battalion in heavy fighting.

"If they told you to get them food, you couldn&${esc.hash}39;t say no. There was nothing to eat out there. You had to shoot some animal and cook it up."

DIRE POVERTY

The difficulties Safari faced on his return to Bujumbura are common to many former child soldiers -- psychological problems, social exclusion and few opportunities to make a living.

"After so many years in the bush, it&${esc.hash}39;s impossible to talk about returning to a normal life right now," he said. "Maybe with time. It&${esc.hash}39;s really hard."

The smooth election in August of a Hutu president at the head of an ethnically mixed government marked a major milestone on Burundi&${esc.hash}39;s road to peace, but dire poverty remains one of the biggest challenges facing the world&${esc.hash}39;s second-poorest country.

Many Burundians survive on the equivalent of 25 cents a day, and the U.N. World Food Programme says 16 percent of the country&${esc.hash}39;s 7.1 million people need permanent humanitarian aid.

For former child soldiers, it can be extra hard to eke out a living as they find themselves marginalised in villages and towns still haunted by memories of the war.

"We had to start by sensitising communities," said Gopal Sharma, chief of the child protection programme at UNICEF&${esc.hash}39;s Burundi office.

"We needed to convince them of the advantages of bringing the child back -- to the community, to the family and to the child itself."

UNICEF and other aid groups have helped by funding vocational training programmes for former child soldiers, teaching them skills such as tailoring and auto mechanics.

They also offer psychological and psychiatric support, and provide financial assistance to impoverished families struggling to cope with the return of children.

It&${esc.hash}39;s as much about prevention as it is rehabilitation.

"Some of the kids still have contact with the FNL," said Sophie Havyarimana, Burundi coordinator for ACORD.

"They know they can always join the group, so sometimes they say if you don&${esc.hash}39;t help us we&${esc.hash}39;ll just go back."

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