We are please to announce the lauch of the new website for our budding organization. Check out www.childprotectioninternational.org to learn more about our mission, the group’s history and our current work!

Then they staked claim to a patch of sandy soil under the punishing sun at the Showgrounds, an open athletic field that is the designated repository for refugees. The population hovers around 2,000. Each day new people arrive, and each day familiar faces depart.

The South African government issues temporary asylum papers to about 250 of these refugees a day, entitling them to six months without worry of deportation. Unaccompanied minors are ineligible for this status, though, leaving them in an odd limbo, with no specified place in the bureaucratic shuffle.

The perils facing boys are nothing compared to girls: an aid worker said “‘You’ll sometimes find boys sleeping in ditches and under bridges, but you won’t find the girls.  The girls get quickly taken by men who turn them into women.’”  In addition, the South African police have difficulty prosecuting rapists and robbers as most victims will be deported if they report any crimes.  

Equally sad is a story that was filed today in the BBC about children who are abducted by the LRA in South Sudan.  These children are abducted on the Western side of South Sudan, near Uganda.  The LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) has been fighting some twenty years under the leadership of Joseph Kony.  The article tells the story of an 11-year-0ld girl who was abducted by the LRA but later let free because she wasn’t keeping up with the rest of the group.  Children abducted by the LRA face a horrible life: boys become soldiers while girls are forced to have sex with the commanders of the army.  

Most frightening for those of us fighting for stability in South Sudan is a few lines near the end of the article: “Many fear those keen to destabilise oil-rich South Sudan ahead of an independence referendum in 2011 could use the group [the some 300 LRA fighters located in South Sudan] as a proxy force.”  Child Protection International has heard of other groups rumored to serve as destabilizing forces.  If South Sudan has any hope for a stable independence, these groups need to be controlled.  The greatest difficulty is the inaccesibility of the area, as a International Crisis Group worker states at the end: she “warned of a looming ‘humanitarian crisis in an area inaccessible to aid and assistance’”.

Whatever the circumstances of their return, the recovery of the children, while obviously an extraordinary relief, was unusual. Jonglei state remains one of the most volatile areas in Southern Sudan in terms of child abduction, cattle theft and raiding and inter-community conflicts.

However, while there is much work to be done, some important initial steps have been taken to create awareness of this pressing problem. Only six days earlier on December 19th, Jongeli State held a public rally to celebrate the Southern Sudan Human Right’s Commission (SSHRC) Human Right’s Day. Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) Minister for Presidential Affairs, John Luka Biong, asked Jonglei citizens to stop abusing human rights in all of its forms in order to have peace.

“Human rights are meaningless if a slave trade still exists here. Child abduction is a slave trade and you must end it in order to arrive at a peaceful state.” Mr. Biong advised.

The ceremony was inaugurated with a march and various dramas, plays and poems alerting the community of the dangers of human rights abuses.

Continued fighting in North Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, is placing children at risk of abuse and exploitation by armed groups, according to UNICEF representatives in Goma.

Throughout the region, reports of forced recruitment are on the rise, and displaced children are especially vulnerable.

Shooting between government troops and rebels broke out again today, only a few kilometres from Goma, and the situation remains tense for the tens of thousands of displaced Congolese living in settlements on the city’s outskirts.

UNICEF and its partners are in the process of vaccinating 13,000 children for measles and polio, trucking in clean water, and providing essential survival kits. The kits include blankets, plastic sheets, clothes and mosquito nets.

And then also discussed their worries about the recruitment of children as soldiers, an increasing problem in many volatile areas.  

One of the primary concerns for UNICEF has become forced recruitment of men and boys into the armed groups.

“We’ve received unconfirmed reports that in the Kitchanga area, 500 people have been recruited in the last several days,” Mr. Murthy noted. “We know that armed groups are actively recruiting and they’re actively seeking out people to bolster their forces.” The recruits reportedly have ranged in age from boys of 14 to men as old as 40.

UNICEF also ends the article by saying they have reunited 17 out of at least 152 children who have been separated from their families by the fighting.

The BBC also has a really good article about some Congolese children that have been forced to fight.

Both sides and the resultant insecurity have forced civilians to flee their homes.  Aid organizations like Save the Children and UNICEF have been assisting civilians but as with many unstable situations, their job is made much more difficult.  The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in the Congo, but because of their limited mandate, they have very little power to act in defense even of civilians.  On Saturday, the UN accused both the government forces and General Nkunda’s forces of war crimes in the deaths of at least 26 civilians in the town of Kiwanja last week.

Civilians, especially children, are most vulnerable during fighting and instability.  UNICEF released a warning about affected civilians last week:

“Apart from disease and malnutrition, displacement results in serious disruptions to normal life, especially for children.

“All schools in the Rutshuru territory are closed, and many schools in the Masisi territory are closed, “ said Mr. Murthy. UNICEF is providing school kits and plastic sheeting to set up emergency classrooms in displacement settlements. But for families and children who are forced to continually flee fighting, consistent access to education is impossible.

UNICEF is also worried about children who have been separated from their families during displacement, as well as continuing evidence of forced recruitment of child soldiers by all armed groups.

“We know that there were 37 children that were recruited by armed groups during the fighting in Rutshuru and Kiwanja,” said Mr. Murthy. “We’re extremely concerned with the serious tensions in the area, that those children that were recently recruited could be used in fighting.”

The BBC today published a set of eight photos of the conflict in the DRC.

We cannot forget about the situation of children and civilians in all conflicts.

IRIN Africa reports: 

“Children are often the first…and most affected by conflict. And soldiers are the first people deployed on the ground,” said SC-S West Africa regional representative, Anniken Elisson Tyden. “If they understand and better recognise the specific rights and needs of children, they’ll know how to respond to them better. That’s the aim of our training sessions, which have shown that behind the military uniforms are mothers and fathers.” 

The educational materials created for this workshop include a book of cartoons entitled ‘The Good Soldier,’ which Save the Children Sweden has printed in a number of West African languages, in addition to French and English. The book is meant to instruct military personnel about the basic needs of the children they meet during the course of their service as well as some of their rights — include the right to not be enlisted in the armed forces and the right to be free from sexual assault. 

The conclusion of the workshop marked another milestone for SC-S’s dedication to child protection. IRIN reports, “Thirteen countries in the Economic Community of West African States took part in the Senegal training, which prepares officers to train their soldiers. Over the past eight years, 86,000 soldiers have been trained by SC-S about child protection before, during and after conflicts, according to the organization.” 

See a page from ‘The Good Soldier’ here.

Fortunately CARE, one of the largest international relief and humanitarian organizations in the world, has recognized the crucial needs of this state and is initiating a 20 month livelihoods program in Jonglei.  CARE’s South Sudan Twic East Transitional Livelihoods Program (TETLP) “uses an integrated/ multi-sectoral approach to address key underlying causes of poverty for both returnees and host populations”.   According the CARE:

“ … the planned activities to achieve the above-described objective include:

·     Provision of seed and tool inputs to 10,000 households that include returnees, displaced and vulnerable host community. Improving farming practices through the introduction of new seed varieties, technologies and crop husbandry practices, as well as integrated pest management and post harvest handling.

·     Rehabilitation of 6 Primary Health Care Units (PHCUs) and construction of 1 Primary Health Care Centre (PHCC) and 1 Resource Training Centre (RTC). This activity is focused on improving access to health care services by positioning such facilities closure to the beneficiaries. Emphasis will also be laid on developing a cadre of service providers and management systems. The Resource Training Centre will be established for trainings of all stakeholders in Twic East.

·     Building capacity among the stakeholders on water sanitation and hygiene. These will be crosscutting activities as explained later in the proposal.”

CARE anticipates that by the end of the program “the situation of the returnees, the displaced and the vulnerable host community will have improved in terms of access to basic but essential primary health care services through the provision of complementary service infrastructural rehabilitation and development. In this regard, the transfer of knowledge and the application of water, sanitation and hygiene practices will have been significantly increased and above all, livelihood opportunities will have been strengthened especially in relation to food production.”

For more information on CARE’s work in Sudan please click here.

Post by: Tracy Baumgardt

“The Charities and Societies Draft Proclamation purports to address perceived inadequacies in the existing legal regime and to ‘provide for the proper administration and regulation of charities and societies.’ … However, the substantive provisions of the Draft Proclamation do exactly the opposite, and contain extraordinary measures that would thwart the work of individuals and independent civil society organizations, and which are aimed at putting the operation of non-governmental organizations directly under the control of the government. The Draft Proclamation characterizes legitimate human rights work as “illegal acts and illegal activities” in a bid to clamp down on any NGOs that are deemed too critical of government policies.” 

In addition to limiting foreign organizations, the Draft Proclamation makes it more difficult for Ethiopian nationals to form civil service organizations by increasing the number needed to found an organization from two to ten, and giving the government broad power to deny formation of organizations. (EthioPolitics.com)

This legislation is scheduled to be reviewed when the Ethiopian legislative session begins in October.

Thanks to Jill Anderson for suggesting this article. 

Post by: Robyn Skrebes

The Child Soldiers Accountability Act has received great support from human rights organizations in the United States including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Child Protection International stands with these organizations and applauds efforts end to the use of children in armed conflict.

Post by: Robyn Skrebes

Post by: Robyn Skrebes