As such, many child orphans end up running households themselves having to abandon any hope of receiving education or skills training to take them out of a cycle of poverty in order to provide for younger siblings. Many of these AIDS orphans face further problems as they are often accused of witchcraft or sorcery. In fact, nearly all of the children there accused of witchcraft are either orphans, disabled or albinos with boys being at greatest risk (75%). Many of these orphans end up on the streets of towns and cities such as the capital Kinshasa where they are known as 'Shegue' and have to rob, steal, harass to stay alive and numb the pain by taking drugs, entering into violent gangs and sniffing glue. Cont/...

Many children in the Democratic Republic of Congo have become orphans due to the wars that have ravaged the country and continue unabated in the east of the country with children as young as six historically routinely recruited by militias and taught to kill. It is estimated that children aged 8-16 years old made up 60% of combatants in the region. Disturbingly, armed militias have even attacked orphanages demanding the children and babies from rival groups be handed over to be killed.

Those protecting the children from this are constantly placing their own lives at risk and, on occasions, have to flee with the orphans to a place of safety until some order can be restored. Today it is estimated that one hundred armed groups are still operating in the east of the country and, despite the presence of UN peacekeepers, these groups continue to rampage across poorly governed areas where the government can exercise little control. Millions have been forced to flee the fighting and, for those who do remain, violence at and around schools is a known barrier to education. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report that there are 5,268,000 IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in the Democratic Republic of Congo as of 31 December 2020 with 2,209,000 new displacements in 2020 alone.