Adoption in the DRC: small children end up "domestic or sexual slaves"

It is one of the African countries where traffickers compete with tricks to obtain "children to adopt" illegally. Congolese children sometimes find themselves thousands of kilometers from their native country, at the mercy of families who exploit them without scruple as “domestic or sexual slaves”. The fight is engaged in Kinshasa to try to put an end to it.

Individuals presenting themselves as members of a charitable organization do not hesitate to trap poor Congolese parents. They promise to send their young children to school. Often, it is already too late when the families discover the deception.

Sequestered in clandestine accommodation centers in Kinshasa, some of these young Congolese were able to find their families who alerted relatives. The unluckiest begin a journey of no return. They land in unknown hands, in Lebanon, India, or in European countries. Subject to second adoptions, outside of any legal framework, they come completely off the radar and suffer the ordeal of their executioners who make them their slaves.

"Acts that hurt the conscience"

The Congolese government has denounced “ a number of acts that hurt the conscience ”. Adopted children were allegedly " abused" and " mistreated".

Another practice, prohibited in the Democratic Republic of Congo, because it shocks the inhabitants, the placement of children with homosexual couples. Also, Kinshasa has decided to suspend the adoption of Congolese children abroad, until further notice. No more authorizations to leave the territory for children since September 2015. A single exception was authorized by the Minister of Justice in November 2015 for 69 children leaving for the United States, France, Belgium and Italy , particularly.

As a result, a thousand children adopted by Western families are still waiting in orphanages to join their new parents. France and the United States have intervened with the Congolese authorities to unblock the adoption files submitted by their nationals. But in vain.

" Adoption should not be a smokescreen behind which hide traffickers and all sorts of intermediaries who resell children before vanishing into the wild", explains to Radio Okapi, Maître Ruffin Luko'O, researcher Congolese in law which calls for the supervision of this sector by the public authorities.

A new law to secure adoption procedures

The Congolese government is asking adoptive families to be patient. He wants to make the adoption procedures as secure as possible by means of a new law which will soon be submitted to parliament.

“ The government has given clear and clear instructions which consist in verifying the authenticity of the judgments which have been rendered. Among the abuses that have been decried, it has been noted that there are judgments that have been attributed to jurisdictions that simply ignored them. We fabricated judgments in the corridors, in the cafes. And all these judgments unfortunately were almost used for the outings of children, ” deplores Albert Paka, legal adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, on the antennas of Radio Okapi.

In 2014, a Belgian national spent four and a half months in prison in Kinshasa following a six-month prison sentence for trying to smuggle the six-year-old girl she adopted.

The Congolese authorities explain that the country wants to protect its children who are sometimes " sold on the internet to the highest bidder".

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