Democratic Republic of Congo

The first 34 of a total 159 demobilised child soldiers were flown home on Wednesday from Uganda to Bunia in the Ituri district of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to be reunited with their families, UNICEF announced on Thursday. The children have been staying in a World Vision-Uganda transit centre in Kiryandongo, 220 km north of the capital Kampala, under the supervision of UNICEF-Uganda since February this year when the government of Uganda handed them over.

Seminars on community peace building in Bukavu have contributed to the restoration of a "relatively peaceful" situation in certain zones, Save the Children UK (SC UK) said in its July update. Bunyakiri, Walungu and Kaziba were some of the zones in which the positive results were realised. SC UK supported some partner organisations working in Bukavu, ran these seminars which focused on the reintegration and protection of the child soldiers and the prevention of child recruitment.

Health workers will try to vaccinate 16 million children in central Africa this week in an attempt to rid the region of polio. The five day campaign aims to immunise all children under five in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. By simultaneously targeting the population at risk in one of the last reservoirs of polio, the campaigners hope to cut the viral transmission chain and finally eradicate the crippling disease.

During the past three years, thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, women, journalists and human rights defenders, have been subjected to torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), said Amnesty International today in its latest report Torture: a weapon of war against unarmed civilians.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday recommended a career diplomat from Egypt to chair a panel of experts investigating the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the DRC.

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