UNICEF estimated in March that 750,000 children were out of school due to violence in the northeast and east of the DRC
June 16 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Around 21,500 children have been left without going to school this year in the Congolese city of Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, due to the violence of the armed groups that operate there, such as the bloodthirsty Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). ).
The balance has been provided by the NGO Network Associations for Sustainable Development (RADD), whose president, Florent Nzama, has warned that the vast majority of these children will end up on the street, hooked on the drugs.
Of the 21,494 children who no longer go to school, approximately 11,194 are girls who will run the risk of being raped or pregnant against their will, at a time when the entire province has been under a state of emergency for two years, declared by the Government, to facilitate military operations.
“They end up lying on the street, like in the Capa roundabout, where we have found 65 abandoned children, including a 13-year-old girl who has been raped and is pregnant,” lamented the president in statements collected by Radio Okapi .
Accompanying Nzama was Paulin Kahamire, Head of Child Protection at the UN Mission in DRC, MONUSCO, who has urged the parties to the conflict to respect the rights of minors even in the most difficult circumstances not only in Bunia, but also in Ituri territories such as Djugu or Mahagi, where another 28,000 children have been forced to leave school.
Last March, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 750,000 Congolese children have been left without going to school due to insecurity throughout the province of Ituri as well as in neighboring North Kivu, also under a military exception.
The UN agency, in its balance, identified at least 1,700 educational centers closed in both provinces due to insecurity, another 119 schools were attacked or occupied and more than 300 that have ended up being set up as shelters to care for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the conflicts.
