11.06.10 United Nations Radio: Fresh child soldier recruits in the new army

COOMARASWAMY: What we are seeing there are that children are being
recruited and especially into the armed forces, the FARDC, not directly but
through the integration process, where the former armed groups are being
integrated into the armed forces, children are being integrated with them. So
though the law exists, there is still a lot that's happening with regard to the
recruitment and use of children.

LIEBERMAN: Is there a way to quantify at all, how many children are
presently serving in armed forces?

COOMARASWAMY: We can't quantify, but we have the last years' report
about 800 actually reported incidents. That's only a small quantity of what is
taking place. But these are people who the UN system has actually met, and
talked to and interviewed. In other countries, we don't go beyond a 100 or 200
in the first year. So 800 is quite a large number of reported cases, and all
from the eastern Congo.

LIEBERMAN: And I know that at the same time, the UN has put forward a
recommendation plan, is that right, to the DRC government?

COOMARASWAMY: What we're asking for that is that all children in the
FADRC be released but for that also we're asking for unlimited access to their
barracks, so that we can check whether the children are there. We are also
suggesting some re-integration programmes for the children once they're
released. So this is being negotiated at the moment. In the meantime, I must say
in some of the divisions, the FARDC and MONUC, do, when they see children,
report to MONUC's Child Protection Division and they come and take the children.
But in other cases, we have commanders hiding the children when the UN officials
come.

LIEBERMAN: What do you think must happen for the safety of children
before MONUC must pull out?

COOMARASWAMY: Well, I think MONUC can perhaps pull out from other
parts of DRC but definitely eastern DRC, ts so crucial that MONUC is there,
because it provides both the security and the transportation for humanitarian
workers and protection workers, and without MONUC that whole system will just
break down, and in a situation where there is at the moment, no real government
structure to take over from, this will just lead to greater chaos. Once it was
very easy to speak to government officials about these issues and they would
respond in a pretty constructive way. Now they first give us a long lecture on,
a defensive lecture, about the outside world interfering in those kinds of
issues. So there seems to be a bit of a backlash to the increased international
attention. So I think we have to navigate that and to show that, really, we're
doing this for the children, it's not really a judgement on the DRC.

LIEBERMAN: What about the issue of birth registrations?

COOMARASWAMY: A very, very small number of children who's births are
registered in the eastern Congo and age verification procedures are not in place
in a lot of these places. One of the things that happened to me is when I
landed, I think it was in Masisi airport, the Mai Mai that had just been
integrated into the FARDC, sent out an honor guard to greet me. And when I got
off the plane, the child protection people on the plane said 'look, three of
those are children', and so then we said at least they don't have to be
demobilized. And it led to their demobilization. But you can see it's so
widespread, they didn't even think that these people should come and greet the
Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict who's fighting against
recruitment and use of children and meet me at the airport as part of my honor
guard.

LIEBERMAN: How do you think the case of the DCR is different from
that of other countries, in terms of first, the number of children that are
being recruited into armed groups?

COOMARASWAMY: I don't think it's different from any other country and
it's not a good idea to say that because, as I said there's a backlash and
they're feeling that they're being picked upon. It's still, I don't think as bad
as Sierra Leone was at its worst, and Liberia at its worst. What has happened
really if you look at that whole region, is that the genocide in Rwanda
unleashed such violence, that this, in many ways, eastern Congo being linked to
Rwanda, Uganda, has become the final end product of that genocide, that awful
violence in now continuing in different forms.

PRESENTER: The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed
Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, speaking to Amy Lieberman.