Gang Violence In The Congo

Over the last decade approximately 300,000 children around the globe have been coerced into becoming foot soldiers and being part of armed groups and gangs. Children associated with armed forces or armed groups are exposed to tremendous violence – often forced both to witness and commit– while they are being abused, exploited, injured or even killed as a result. Their situation deprives them of their rights, often with severe physical and emotional consequences. Gangs often recruit young boys by threatening them and their families, and torturing or killing them if they fail to follow orders. This issue has a major impact in African countries, in the Congo, children are forced to murder their families and commit massacres on the behalf of rebel groups. Although the recruitment of children into such groups has been forbidden with numerous pieces of international human rights law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it has been difficult to solve this problem because most gangs and rebel groups are separate from governments.
Many countries have been thinking of how to build strategies that can combat gang violence, to educate children about the dangers of gangs and rebel groups, and to think of long-term solutions that can eradicate this
problem.