Success Story

 

Children of War, Children of Hope

Uvira, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — To this day, Bukeni Tete Waruzi Beck does not know why he keeps helping child soldiers after they arrested him and beat him twice. His voice quivers as he recalls the most painful of the beatings, which took place five years ago.

Beck was returning home after documenting child soldiers when he was arrested by other rebels. They saw his camera and accused him of being a spy. He was ordered to stare at the sun for one hour, and when he faltered, for two hours. Unable to comply, he was beaten by four child soldiers with rifles and belts.

“Fifty times,” Beck said. It was at that point that he nearly quit his advocacy work on behalf of the child soldiers of the DRC. But he said to himself, “If I stop helping them, who will take them home?” Very early the following day, they released him in exchange for his sandals.

There are an estimated 30,000 child soldiers in the DRC, children from 8 to 15 years old who were conscripted by rebel armies in conflicts that have raged since 1996. The Uvira district, in eastern DRC, is at the epicenter of the conflict. Beck was a student in the region’s main town of Bukavu when his relatives wrote to him, asking him to find 22 children who were forced to become soldiers.

He found that 11 of them were still alive. Beck and his friends then visited 4 of Uvira’s 22 villages and gathered 112 more names. In 1998, they organized Association des Jeunes pour le Développement Intégré–Kakundu (AJEDI-Ka or Youth Association for Integrated Development–Kakundu) to deal with the problem.

At first, they focused on advocating for these children, pleading with the rebels to release them. With the help of a New York–based group, Witness, they made videos about the children’s plight. AJEDI-Ka was instrumental in convincing the International Criminal Court, based in the Netherlands, to list the conscription of child soldiers as a war crime.

Early on, Beck and his friends realized that they had to be more than advocates. Eventually, through AJEDI-Ka’s Projet Enfants Soldats (Child Soldiers Project), they established a center where child soldiers can stay as they receive vocational training and are reintegrated into their families. Each village now has a five-person committee to monitor and assist the returnees. More than 300 former child soldiers have been demobilized by AJEDI-Ka. Three from the original list of 22 child soldiers—Kashindi, Shukuru, and Bahati—are now in secondary school.

Last year, using a Johnson & Johnson Health and Well-being grant from The Global Fund for Children, AJEDI-Ka began giving checkups to 50 child soldiers who were getting vocational training. Seven of them, including one girl, tested positive for HIV. Beck and his friends are exploring ways to help these HIV-positive returnees. They prepared a video highlighting the problem of HIV among child soldiers and presented during the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August 2006.

“We should not forget that HIV/AIDS is a serious post-conflict issue,” said Beck. “We do not have many resources, but we will try and help these infected children as much as we can.”

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