[ad_1]
KINSHASA, May 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – About 70 Congolese children who have been unable to find their families four days after a deadly volcanic eruption may be at risk of child abduction and child labor, respondents said on Wednesday. emergencies.
The United Nations says 31 people have died, 40 are missing and 20,000 were displaced when Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active and dangerous volcanoes, erupted on Saturday near Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF said 561 children were separated from their families as they finished – of which 487 were reunited and 74 were placed in family shelters or transit centers where they are receiving psychosocial support.
The children were scattered across the country, said Enyo Gbedemah, a UNICEF child protection specialist, adding that local authorities and charities, such as Save The Children, were even searching across the border in Rwanda for their families.
“We are in a region where there is a lot of child abduction … Some could end up in mines and even in armed groups,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone from Goma, the capital of the troubled North Kivu province.
Uncertainty has risen in eastern Congo in the past two years, exacerbating a long-running humanitarian crisis that has not been resolved despite the official end of the country’s civil war in 2003.
The government installed military governors in North Kiwi earlier this month to address the escalation of violence.
Thousands of children in eastern Congo have been exploited and abused as child soldiers and child laborers in gold and diamond mines, according to human rights groups.
Gbedemah said children were at risk of dropping out of school as many schools were damaged during the blast and poverty was likely to worsen among families who lost their homes and businesses.
Marrion Ngavo, who represents Gomas civil society groups, said unaccompanied minors could be tempted to take dangerous jobs in mines around the city to survive, and girls could be pushed into sex work.
The situation in Goma is catastrophic, he said.
“Unemployment is already in full swing. I can already see the insecurity and banditry rising into a crescendo … If the international community does not intervene, it (will be) complete chaos.” (Report by Jordan Mayenikini; Written by Emeline Wuilbercq; Edited by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers the lives of people around the world struggling to live free or fair. lajme.trust.org)
[ad_2]
picture credit