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Rwanda's poorest in parentless homes, report says

"Vast numbers of people are still in torment in Rwanda," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "But few remain as vulnerable as the children living in parentless households. They are the most marginalized of the poor in an area of almost unimaginable suffering and want."

The virtual obliteration of Rwanda's social fabric, UNICEF said, has made the problem of child-headed households far worse in that Central African nation than in other countries ravaged by war or disease. The spread of AIDS in Rwanda is also an increasingly important factor.

At the end of the conflict, the Rwandan Government put the number of such households at 85,000. But according to a report by the non-governmental group World Vision, that number may have fluctuated downwards as some children have been reunited with surviving parents; adopted by relatives or neighbours; or as heads of households have turned 18. Some estimates now put the number of child-headed households in Rwanda at about 60,000 -- a figure that represents more than 300,000 children.

"Whatever the exact numbers, the scale and persistence of the problem of child-headed households in Rwanda is daunting," Ms. Bellamy said. "The plight of these children is not only heartbreaking and unacceptable -- it raises deeply troubling questions about the long-term prospects for the country's recovery."

"UNICEF is well aware that Rwanda is doing all it can to assist these children," she went on. "But with the Government's meagre resources in enormous demand from many quarters -- not only for recovery and rebuilding, but to cope with the remaining insurgency -- we need an urgent, across-the-board effort, from the grassroots up."

The report, prepared by World Vision with UNICEF's technical and financial assistance, said children in such households are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation because -- in a region where women are widely discriminated against -- three out of four households are headed by girls.

The report, entitled Qualitative Needs Assessment of Child-Headed Households in Rwanda, found that 95 per cent of children in such households in Rwanda have no access to health care or education; are frequently exploited and abused sexually, not only by their own community but even by relatives; have little in the way of basic household or agricultural necessities; and are frequently denied inheritance rights that can deprive them of property that their parents left behind, including land and houses.

"The family structures that used to support the child no longer exist," the report said.

The World Vision report's findings are based on interviews with 1,649 child heads of households in nine prefectures throughout Rwanda, as well as with local authorities, teachers, and community groups. The children interviewed -- the majority of them girls -- ranged in age from 10 to 18.

Food shortages are chronic in child-headed households throughout the country, the report found, a problem that forces urban children to beg in the streets and rural children to rely on what little food they can produce or on handouts from neighbors. Shelter was also identified as a major concern, especially in the countryside, where many child-headed homes consist of little more than plastic sheeting.

Moreover, the report found that the very existence of such households "has barely been acknowledged" by the surviving Rwandan community. For children already traumatized, the psychological consequences of this invisibility and powerlessness can be devastating, the report said.

It noted that children in psychological therapy, asked to draw, sometimes depict people without mouths. Many of these children "can no longer talk, having learned that when they cry out in pain, or speak their feelings, no one listens," the report said. "So they become silent, choosing to keep their problems to themselves."

UNICEF is currently working with seven Rwandan and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are assisting some 16,000 children in child-headed households. The assistance includes vocational training, payment for school fees and educational supplies, and assistance in forming associations and starting up small enterprises.

"These children are survivors," Ms. Bellamy said. "We must intensify our efforts to give them the tools -- both material and psychosocial -- that will help them take their rightful places as healthy and productive members of Rwandan society."

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