SOS from DR Congo

An email in my inbox titled “SOS”, catch my attention, despite my attempt to ignore the outside world during my holiday. It starts with:

“…you may have been informed about my kidnapping last week by armed people in Rutshuru, I was released and I am back now in Goma, even if security is fragile now and everything can happen.”

It is Ilot, who is the Executive Director of Congo Men’s Network, and also a dear friend. We last met in Stockholm in November, just after yet another attempt on his life, and he had been forced to evacuate his family to a neighbouring country. Despite all the dangers both present and past, Ilot firmly believes in working for peace. A year ago when I landed with the UN World Food Programme plane in North Kivu, it was a stranger who met me at the airport, and dedicated many days of his time to my research without ever asking for compensation. Now it is a friend, who is a living beacon of hope for human rights and peace in the conflict zone.

Ilot and I together at UNICEF, Goma together with the officer for SGBV

-When I was a child I was wounded by a grenade, and lost most of my eyesight. Then I had two options; the first one was to join the armed group so I could revenge what I faced and saw. But after a while I realised that, after some time, violence is just reoccurring. I was born in a village called Ruthsuru, it is in the most conflict torn region in the DRC. I decided to just work for peace building, because it was the only way I could help my village to find peace. 

North Kivu

It is this region, of the eastern part of the DR Congo, and North Kivu that Ilot is talking about now, that is in urgent need of assistance:

-I have personally been in the fighting zones and witnessed sufferings of villagers during this period. Two of our offices on the ground cannot function, and all our community facilitators are staying now in camps here in Goma. This message is a call for help for our brothers and sisters who are in urgent need now. The collected donations will go directly to beneficiaries as non food items.

Together with young children from the village of Kibumba, who are now displaced together with their families due to the violence in the region.

Ilot is a trusted human rights officer, and know by many of the internationals working and visiting Goma and North Kivu. He has also himself used his local connections to work on the ground with the needs of the locals, his family, friends and country men. The organisations working on the ground are necessary for peace building, and for the daily struggle of survival in the region, as well as to report on the developments in the region on the ground. One of the villages now suffering displacement is Kibumba where I interviewed child soldiers together with Ilot last year, with the support of PEREX and Congo's Mens Network and their local facilitators. 

- The first organisation I applied to was PEREX. I was accepted and started working as a Peace Building officer, then one day I discovered that there is so many excombatants, and so many were men. So I started Congo’s Mens Network that is active in sexual gender based violence prevention. We believe it also important to focus on women, because whilst most ex-combatants are men, the children are the most vulnerable group and the women as well affect the situation in the family. Women they have specific problems other than men, and also we were thinking of children. What can we do for them? If you go to the streets you will find that most of the children they are child soldiers, and you  can see that they are not receiving any help, their families are struggling to support them. Those children that we left behind, what are their future now?

Child soldiers and SGBV victims in the village of Kibumba, outside the house of PEREX-CV in the community.

A year later, our research shows that at least 75% of those children we interviewed expressed determination to return to the life of the rebel groups. It means that without the assistance in reintegration and rehabilitation they will be returning to a life of child soldiers. And this is why the work of Ilot, is so important. If the children have no choice but to take part in the conflict, how can it ever end?

-I still believe that when you recruit a child it is something like putting an end to his life. He will be traumatized all his life. Yes it is very critical the situation of child soldiers. Children in general here in our country are suffering, but child soldiers have another problem where they are first of all victims of discrimination in society. They are not really taken into account as other children. Even for parents it is a little bit difficult to understand that it is possible to recover the family that the child had before. For the children they need really so much attention and advocacy for them because they are really discriminated.

Last year I asked Ilot: What kind of assistance would you like from the international community?

-We have to be responsible for our own and ask for support when we have done the first step. What I have been doing for seven years was not for my own interest first. And as you can notice for seven years I did not get any salary, all of us are volunteers, to not get paid, that is my daily life. I know how to volunteer for the common interest. I think that is my own motivation and I hope that one day I will be granted for that. So practically we have so many problems, and in such cases we usually give the opportunity to the person and the donor who want to give to choose, and find what they want to give that can be helpful for us.

But now Ilot is asking, the man who does not even get a salary for his daily work, is asking for help. And it is therefore imperative that he receives help, help for those in Congo who cannot themselves ask for help. Help them, you can!

Congo is chaos, according to a high ranking UN official I met in the region of North Kivu, an assessment now even more accurate due to the accelerated violence in the region. So it is important that we act, that we care and that we help!

What defines a selfless, brave and inspiring person? For me, it is all personified in Ilot, or Ilot Alphonse Muthaka.

Help here!