Congo’s street kids could be election weapon: group

By David Lewis

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of street children
across Congo risk being recruited by political parties to
create chaos, intimidate voters and contest the results of
up-coming elections, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

The New York-based watchdog warned that the children faced
death or injury as Congo’s security forces — who killed or
wounded scores of anti-government demonstrators in 2005 —
frequently respond to protests with excessive force.

Presidential and parliamentary elections due around
mid-year will be the first in over four decades and are due to
draw a line under a five-year war that sucked in six
neighboring armies and splintered the mineral-rich but chaotic
country.

“In the coming months there is a risk that street children,
as in the past, will once again be manipulated, wounded or
killed in political unrest,” HRW said in a report published on
Tuesday.

“Political party leaders and their followers, opposed to
the electoral process or the final results, may again attempt
to recruit street children to intimidate voters, disrupt the
elections, or contest the outcome,” the report said.

The elections were due to take place on June 18 but
obstacles in registering dozens of presidential candidates and
the thousands aiming for a parliamentary seat mean a new date
will have to be announced.

PROTECTION

Polls were originally due to take place in 2005 but were
delayed due to wrangling between the former warring factions
now in government, continued fighting in the east, and the
logistical nightmare of holding a vote in a vast country
lacking even basic infrastructure.

The delays sparked widespread protests in 2005 and HRW said
that troops and the police “killed or wounded scores of
demonstrators, including street children, who were recruited to
protest the extension of the transitional government’s
mandate.”

The number of street children in Kinshasa alone is between
20,000 and 25,000, according to government estimates.

“As a first step, the Congolese government must protect
street children during the election period. UN agencies in
Congo should redouble their efforts to prevent abuse,” Tony
Tate, HRW’s Africa children’s rights researcher, said in a
statement.

During the last ten years, the Congolese have gone to war
twice. The first led to the ousting of the former dictator
Mobutu Sese Seko, but fighting broke out a year later between
the late President Laurent Kabila and his Ugandan and Rwandan
backers.

The wars, coupled with HIV/AIDS and high school fees have
doubled the numbers of children on the streets, HRW said.

“Instead of providing street children with protection,
police and soldiers routinely use physical violence and threats
of arrest to steal from these children,” the group added.

Experts have said Congo’s 1998-2003 war sparked the worst
humanitarian crisis since World War II, killing four million
people, mostly from hunger and disease.

Several factions from the war have signed up for elections
but a popular veteran opposition party with a strong following
in several cities has not, raising concerns of violence during
the electoral process.

“Our worry is this, what will become of these kids
tomorrow?” asks a street child educator quoted by HRW in
Lubumbashi, another southern mining town.

“Thousands of children living on the streets with no
supervision, no education, no love or care, accustomed to daily
violence and abuse. What future for these children and for our
country?”