Shortly after Ezechiel Birusha’s 17-year-old son, Justin Niyonzima, left home to work in a mine last year, Birusha feared he had been killed. Fighting between armed groups had erupted in the area Niyonzima had gone to, and most people scattered from the site in panic. After the attack, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Birusha did not hear from his son for weeks.
“I just prayed to God to find him,” said the 70-year-old. It was more than a year before the two were reunited in North Kivu’s Rutshuru territory, where they live. Seated in their small hut by the side of the road in Kalengera town, Birusha holds back tears, ecstatic that his son is home, yet fearful about what he has returned to.
Since November 2021, Rutshuru has been blighted by violence between the DRC’s army and rebels from the March 23 Movement (M23), who have resurfaced after nearly a decade. Hundreds of people have died in the fighting and nearly 200,000 have had to leave their homes and land. While eastern DRC has been rife with violence linked to about 120 armed groups for years, the current fighting in Rutshuru is separating families. Since March, when violence flared, more than 1,000 children have been separated from their families, according to the child protection coordination group in the region.
“In any situation where a family unit is disrupted due to armed conflicts or other situations of violence, there are many negative effects on the separated family members due to the fact of not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones,” says Pamela Ongoma, responsible for protecting family links in DRC for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “Children can be faced with numerous risks when they get separated from their parents, adult relatives or guardians who provide for them on a daily basis in terms of food, shelter, security and education,” she says.
Tracing people in order to reunify families can be even harder during conflict, she says, as people may be in places where field teams have no access.
Families can be splintered for all sorts of reasons, such as natural disasters or migration, but violence is one of the main drivers. When Niyonzima left home in May last year it was the first time he had left his family. His father cannot afford to send his seven children to school and Niyonzima wanted to earn his keep. “I wanted to find money quickly, but instead I found war,” he says.
Niyonzima had worked in the mine for only a few days before violent clashes forced him to flee into the forest. “We were desperate, spending one week in the bush without food and water or seeing anyone,” he says. Niyonzima was helped by a stranger who sheltered him and gave him money in exchange for work, so he could catch a bus to another town. From there, Red Cross workers helped him to get home.
But not all families have been so lucky. Most of the family separations in Rutshuru are accidental, a result of communities scattering during attacks, said Louis Broutet Rocha Lima, a Unicef officer in DRC. “Cases of children who were in different locations at the moment of the displacement, or children who lost their parents in the mass movements are common causes of separation,” he says.
In September, the Guardian visited a displacement camp on the outskirts of Rutshuru town as people were returning from Uganda where they had fled in June after M23 seized the DRC border city of Bunagana. Ugandan authorities were keen to push Congolese people to leave the country, and in the chaos several families became separated.
“The last thing I told my children was to be vigilant because we could get expelled from Uganda at any minute,” says Elizabeth Mahoro. The 35-year-old has not seen four of her children – the youngest of whom is three – for a week, after the family was forced into vans returning to DRC, she says. “The Ugandan military was hitting people and I went into a car and the kids didn’t follow. I thought they were in another car … I’m worried and troubled,” she says. Mahoro wants to go back to search for them but says she cannot afford to.
The ICRC and DRC’s Red Cross have a free telephone service for displaced families who have been separated, and about 200 people a day call from the camp trying to track down relatives.
Rights groups say DRC’s government must do all it can to bring families back together. “After enduring displacement, the fear and horrors of war at such a young age, children need the support of national authorities, their international partners, and their families to build their future,” says Thomas Fessy of Human Rights Watch.
Rutshuru authorities say they are doing what they can to care for the population amid frequent attacks by M23, which has increased its firepower and is said to have backing from Rwanda, according to the UN. Luc Albert Bakole, the territorial administrator for Rutshuru, says the group has captured about 30% of territory, which the army is planning to retake.
Despite the joy of having his son back, Birusha worries it’s just a matter of time until M23 attacks their village. The only comfort, he says, is that at least they will have each other. “It’s better that he’s come back because if we’re displaced we can flee together.”
