DRC: ex-militiamen leave Mubambiro demobilization camp

Former combatants of armed groups take their meals in the Mubambiro demobilization camp, near Goma in the DRC, on January 18, 2022. AFP - GUERCHOM NDEBO

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

In North Kivu, several hundred former combatants of armed groups have left the Mubambiro camp, about twenty kilometers from Goma, to, they say, return to their village.

They were confined to this demobilization camp with a view to their reintegration into society or into the army.

But the 4th disarmament, demobilization, community recovery and stabilization program is slow to materialize.

Advertising

Read more

Denouncing hunger and lack of care, nearly 500 former militiamen from armed groups have left the Mubambiro camp.

They had been waiting there for months, with more than a thousand other men, for the beginning of the process of community or military reintegration promised after their demobilization. 

But the 4th DDRCS (Disarmament, Demobilization, Community Recovery and Stabilization) program is still not operational, one year after its launch by

, its coordinator.

In the DRC, the merger of the structures that oversaw the previous DDR programs took time.

And the donors, chilled by the appointment of this former warlord, do not agree with the Congolese authorities or among themselves on the community reintegration programs, the outlines of which are still unclear.

One of the problems is that the donors don't seem to be really clear on what should be a community insertion, reintegration.

They don't agree with each other.

Christoph Vogel, researcher at the University of Ghent

Claire Fages

In the meantime, the former rebels are growing impatient.

This is not the first time that some have left a demobilization camp.

That of Mubambiro is not enclosed by any wall and they circulate freely.

It is difficult to say now whether they will return to their village as they claim or join the armed groups.

Some would have meanwhile returned to the camp.

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_EN

• ground floor