Photo Credit: Refugees International
04/27/2005

These two former child soldiers are being interviewed by Refugees International board member Sandra Tully. Their faces are blurred to protect their identities.

Muteyi is a fifteen-year-old boy who served in the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) militia in northern Ituri. He left the forces in March 2005. "I have been here in this transit camp for one month and four days," he told Refugees International. "I want to see my family again..." Deo is sixteen and had been at the transit shelter for demobilized boy soldiers in Bunia for only two and a half weeks when RI interviewed him. “I wanted to help my family so I joined the UPC. We had been chased from our community and displaced so many times..."

At the end of the interview, the boys ran for the door to join the volleyball game that other child soldiers are playing in the courtyard. Muteyi, stopped half way out, turned and asked, “Can you promise me that I can finish school when I return home?”