Controversial information released by the United Nations accuses the Rwandan government of providing child soldiers to neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the explicit accounts, Rwandan officials vehemently deny the allegations.
Dee Brillenburg Wurth, chief of child protection at the UN’s Rwanda peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, said child soldiers who received training from the Rwandan Defense Force were mislead to believe they were joining the Rwandan army. Instead, they were handed to the M23 Congolese rebel group. Children from Rwanda are also enticed away from their country by M23, following promises of education, jobs, or cash rewards.
“We know from children – and this is corroborated by other children and by adults – that children are being recruited, we had an example of a football coach and a police officer. At the beginning they told us they had this system in place, like a pyramid scheme; $5 for every child that was recruited,” explained Wurth.
MONUSCO interviewed 122 boys enlisted by M23; 37 were found to be Rwandan, and four of these boys allegedly received military training at Rwanda camps. According to Wurth, a few hundred children are still directly involved in the Congolese rebel group. Ages of the child soldiers range from 11 to 17, with most 15, 16, or 17 years old.
Brillenburg Wurth described the violent situations the children are involved in and said “within the group there is an extremely tough hierarchy and discipline. People who didn’t obey orders were just killed. One child told how he had to kill two adults who had done some infraction.”
Wurth also explained, “many of them were abducted…. this is very, very common with any armed group… You go and loot or you need to carry your arms from A to B, you just take kids from the villages and they don’t let them go back. Most of the children, in fact nearly all of them, started their life as a M23 child carrying stuff from the Rwandan border.”
Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo denied these allegations, explaining “our track record in terms of military is very clear: Rwanda does not tolerate children being enrolled in any way near armed groups, not in our army” and described the claims as “ludicrous.”
In reponse, international communities have frozen aid into the country while the United States recently blocked military support.
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Written by Rachel Pozivenec