Reuniting families, foolproof happiness?

One of UNICEF’s main mandates is child protection. This consists of ensuring that children have a family environment that protects them and gives them what they need to grow up and be happy. For this, multiple activities exist, and important support is given to the DIVAS (the governmental department in charge of social affairs) but also to multiple local NGOs that take care of children.

In the context of the crisis following the volcanic eruption, this activity has been made all the more necessary by the numerous separations between parents and children. Indeed, one has to imagine those nights of fear, during which nearly 400,000 people fled their homes, following the eruption and then following the government’s evacuation order: families with an average of 6 to 7 children walked for miles in the dark. It is estimated that nearly 1,100 children have been separated from their parents in the last three weeks as a result of the population movements.

Since then, UNICEF, with its local partners, has launched a major effort to reunite them with their families. A process has been implemented. The first step is to collect all possible information on the child (identity papers, photos, etc.), and in particular to understand the child’s background, what he remembers, and the places he knows. Then, the second step consists of communicating this information to the families so that they can have access to it and hope to find their children. Finally, when parents say that they have found their child(ren), it is a matter of verifying their link with the children themselves.

Several obstacles exist. Firstly, as the displacement is still ongoing, the families are often far from the foster care centers where the children are taken in, and from the administrations that allow them to be found. Secondly, some children are very young (2–3 years old), and even if they speak, they know very little: after all, a child calls his mother “Mom”, and does not know her civil status. Finally, one cannot help but be struck by the sad faces of some of the children in the reunion photos with their parents. It is difficult to know what goes on behind the scenes in the families, but in fact, the foster care centers for unaccompanied children are like oases for children from the poorest classes of Congolese society: three hot meals a day, one bed per person, no work or fetching of water or wood, schooling. As a result, some children prefer to lie, or at least not answer certain questions, in order to delay the moment of reunification, preferring to be separated from their parents but benefiting from more favorable living conditions. These looks continue to leave me wondering…