War, hunger and disease have killed nearly 4 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the last seven years. One in every five children dies before reaching their fifth birthday. In the east, more than 1 million internally displaced people still need help to meet their basic needs. The fighting has destroyed the economy and infrastructure, as well as the social fabric of families and communities.
I recently became the Alternative Northern Civil Society Representative for the IHP+ so this meeting was a great opportunity to catch up on the latest developments and to meet other civil society organisations (CSOs) involved in the IHP+ and aid effectiveness.
The plot is simple. A 13-year old girl is asked by her father to collect water. On the way, she meets a man who offers her free water and food. This sounds too good to be true, and it is.
But the common phrase in the three stories was: Run, run as fast as you can! often shouted out by teachers who at seeing armed individuals occupy the school grounds, or fire gunshots around the school area, knew that the only thing to save children’s lives was to run.
This year’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which is launched today, shines a welcome light on the fact that almost half of the world’s 69 million out of school children are caught up in conflict.
This is the story of Ntimadieu, the first child witch I met in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. He had run away from his own family in fear of his life, after being accused of witchcraft. He was a charming boy, with a lovely smile and, I think, a very sweet nature. I can only think that it was poverty that made his family turn against him, because I couldn’t see a shred of evil in him, let alone believe he travelled at night and drank human blood. This is his story. Afterwards, you can find a folk story he told me. After hearing it, it’s a wonder to me he or any of the other street children ever wanted to go to hospital again…
I was in Democratic Republic of Congo recently and met a young man, Jean Claude (not his real name), who is living with HIV. We are starting a new programme in DRC that’s responding to HIV, and I was very keen to have people living with HIV involved right from the beginning, so we invited some people who are open about their HIV status to join us for our start-up workshop.
Violence against women has been called “the most pervasive yet least recognized abuse of human rights in the world.” A project in the Democratic Republic of Congo might be having a positive impact. It adopts a family-centred approach where children and adolescents living with HIV and their communities are supported to challenge traditional gender roles and relationships.
I had another facinating day yesterday, beginning with meeting the religious leaders. They were a charming group of men, full of laughs, who regarded their work as being equally that of social workers as religious men. There were pastors, prophets, evangelists, doctors and apostles there, and they explained to me what each one was — but that’s for another time. Almost everyone here belongs to one church or another, and these are people who carry a great deal of weight.
By my own count, I was a child witch on at least four counts – five when I was a teenager and thought myself hideous.
I’d like to invite my readers to try these tests on themselves or their own children. It may be of interest to try and find someone who isn’t a witch. There can’t be many of us left.
A mixture of a day today. We spent the morning visiting the OCPR, one of the main partners of Save the Children here in Kinshasa.
They operate five centres around the town, all dealing with the street kids – some of the m open centres for children to drop by, some of them residential to look after children and to try to reunite them with their families.
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