Articles Contained in SIRS Enduring Issues 2005.

Originally Published: Arms and the Child, Feb. 9, 2004; pp. 34-36.

"The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country where beauty, wealth, brutality and poverty have long existed side by side. Belgium annexed the area at the turn of the 20th century, and quickly began the exportation of Congolese resources, including rubber and ivory. With colonialism came forced labour and killings, but after independence in 1960 the Congolese fared little better. President Mobutu Sese Seko, who took over in 1965, plundered the country for more than three decades. In May 1997 civil war forced Mobutu into exile in Morocco, where he died shortly after of cancer. But the accession to power by Laurent Kabila and his rebels that same year did not stop the conflict, in which more than three million people have died--and in which almost half of the fighters have been children. Now, stability is slowly returning: peace negotiations between the various factions resulted in a transitional government last July [2003], and many child soldiers are being demobilized." (MACLEAN'S) The author, reporting from the Congo, discusses her encounters with former child soldiers and describes the difficulty of the demobilization process.

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