Hundreds of children being kidnapped, recruited into armed groups and denied humanitarian help in CAR - report
DAKAR (AlertNet) - Peter, 13, is afraid of going to sleep some nights because when he closes his eyes, he sees things he doesn't want to remember.
"I see someone doing bad things to people and I think it's me," he says from his home in Central African Republic (CAR).
A former child soldier snatched by rebel fighters from the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Peter recalls the atrocities -- looting, killings and abductions -- he was forced to commit alongside other children.
Hundreds of children like Peter are being kidnapped, recruited into armed groups and denied humanitarian help in CAR, the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (Watchlist) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report released on Wednesday.
"We must protect and provide adequate support for these children," Eva Smet, director of Watchlist, a rights group, said in a statement.
IDMC researchers say as many as 1,500 boys and girls have been abducted and used as fighters or ‘sex slaves’ by the LRA, since it began to operate in the south-east of CAR in 2008.
The group has been roaming across central Africa, terrorising civilians, since it was chased from northern Uganda, driven out by Ugandan military operations.
But the LRA is not alone in using child soldiers in the CAR.
The Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP) an armed group still fighting the CAR government, is still recruiting or using child soldiers and attacking schools in the northeast of the country.
In many parts of the country, communities have created self defence militias to protect themselves from attacks from these gunmen and bandits, but these militias also recruit children as young as 12 years old and use them to fight, the report said.
LACK OF ATTENTION
Situated at the heart of one of the most volatile regions in the world, where it shares borders with Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Sudan, CAR has been ranked the world’s fourth most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crisis, the report said.
“What is urgently needed is to raise (awareness of) the situation of the Central African Republic because it is quite comparable to those of its neighbours including the Democratic Republic of Congo but there is very little attention from the international community,” Smet told AlertNet.
CAR's government is weak, lacks support from the international community and cannot protect its people from violence including widespread banditry and sporadic fighting between rebels and government forces despite a 2008 peace deal to end a civil war that erupted in 2005.
These factors combined make it easy for armed groups to operate with impunity, analysts say.
Smet said a lack of international interest meant the country lacks enough funding and assistance to strengthen monitoring of violations of international law against the recruitment and use of children in conflict.
FUNDS NEEDED
Watchlist and the IDMC urged the United States and European Union to urgently give money to fund programmes for former child abductees in need of help to deal with the trauma of the experience. The organisations also called for funds to develop reintegration programmes for children who have been demobilised.
“We are calling for funding for durable programmes for reintegration so that children can really learn new skills and not be tempted again to be recruited into armed groups,” said Laura Perez, one of the IDMC researchers who wrote the report.
Insecurity in CAR has prevented U.N. agencies and humanitarian organisations from effectively working in the areas where armed groups are active, particularly in the south-east where the LRA is operating and in the north-east controlled by the CPJP rebel group.
The report urges the international community to support the government of the Central African Republic to improve security, train, equip and deploy troops to communities that have had to rely on self-defence militias to protect themselves, negotiate a cease-fire agreement with groups such as the CPJP in order to restore humanitarian access to displaced communities.
"We want to see an increased U.N. presence in areas where children are being recruited right now because this will make it easier for other NGOs to start providing assistance to the children immediately,” Perez said on the phone from New York.
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