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My father left my mother while she was pregnant – she gave birth when he had already left. People call me “daughter of a bitch”. They disturb and hurt me so much. They say they will chase me because I am a foreigner. I am suffering.These are the words of Emma* – a 13-year-old girl from Beni, a city in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) near its border with Uganda. Emma’s mother Grace* was still in school when she met and became involved with a Uruguayan soldier working in DRC as a United Nations peacekeeper. When Grace got pregnant, ‘Javier…
About 2,770 children in eastern Congo lost one or both parents to the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak, the United Nations estimates, and have ended up living with relatives, in orphanages, or even on the streets.
Traumatised and shunned due to discrimination around the disease, many children must work in order to eat, according to local advocates, who said efforts to care for and educate Ebola orphans were falling short due to a lack of funds and interest.
In May this year in Goma, a city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a volcano erupted. "In the chaos that followed, families fleeing the eruption became separated," says this article and accompanying video from BBC News. "Two months on and many people are still living in temporary camps, unable to return to their homes, and some children still haven't found their families." The video highlights the work of one young local woman, Sarah, who works with street children, who has made it her mission to reunite children and parents.
"The number of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who have been orphaned or left unaccompanied due to the Ebola epidemic has more than doubled since April, requiring a rapid ramp-up of specialized care in the Ebola-hit provinces of Ituri and North Kivu," according to this press release from UNICEF. For those children who are separated from their parents or caregivers while they undergo treatment for the disease, UNICEF has established nurseries "where Ebola survivors, who are immune to the disease, care for and closely monitor infants and very young children until their…
"A court in Belgium is investigating an orphanage for alleged abduction and trafficking of children from the Democratic Republic of Congo," according to this article from BBC News. "Children were brought to Belgium and adopted by families who had been told they were orphans. Years later, DNA tests have proved that in some cases they were not." The article tells the story of a family in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who sent their child to the city of Kinshasa to attend what they thought was a holiday camp, and the child never returned. Two Belgian journalists later discovered that…
"Belgian authorities have asked for DNA samples of children adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo to establish if their biological parents are still alive," under the suspicion that the children may have been kidnapped, according to this article from BBC News. "Fears of child-smuggling in DR Congo prompted the central African country to halt exit permits for adopted children in 2013," says the article. However, some intercountry adoptions were able to go through past 2013 because the processes had already begun, previous to the country's decision to halt exit permits. The article…
This article shares the stories of girl child soldiers in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and their experiences of sexual abuse and exploitation and reintegrating into community and family life.
Congo has drafted new adoption legislation and reviewed cases pending since it halted international adoptions in 2013, the government said. Among the recommendations in the legislation, international adoptions will only be allowed if solutions in Congo are lacking, both in the family and public. The new law also states that those seeking to adopt must present themselves before a tribunal in Congo and adoptions will only be considered from countries with good diplomatic relations with Congo. The new law also obliges the government "to fight against human trafficking as well as other…
Le groupe Emmaüs CAJED (RDC) agit depuis 1992 pour la réinsertion scolaire et professionnelle des enfants et adolescents en rupture sociale. Enfants des rues, enfants soldats, enfants déplacés…. l’équipe les accompagne dans leur processus de reconstruction. Entretien avec Gilbert Munda, coordinateur du groupe.