‘Congo kids still separated from parents’

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that 776 children, including 429 girls, aged between six months and 14 years, still remain in the care of foster families a month after the fighting between government soldiers and March 23 (M23) movement rebels over the key eastern city of Goma forced thousands of people from their homes.

UNICEF coordinator for eastern DRC, Jean Metenier, said the agency had been able to identify around 30 children by circulating photographs in the displaced people’s camps around Goma.


He added that another 103 children, who were old enough to give their names and say where their parents lived, had already rejoined their families.

“Finding the families is a challenge because of the ongoing insecurity and because people are still on the move,” the International Committee of the Red Cross also said.

The rebels seized Goma on November 20 after UN peacekeepers gave up the battle for the frontier city which is home to about one million people. The rebels withdrew from the city on December 1 under a ceasefire accord.

The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese Army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

Since early May, over 900,000 people have fled their homes in eastern Congo. Most of them have resettled in Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.

MN/HMV

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/25/279989/congo-kids-still-separated-from-parents/

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