Region: Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa

Main Areas Of Interest: armed conflict, human rights

Fellowship Period: June - August 2006

Keywords: demobilization, reintegration, psychosocial support, child soldiers, advocacy

Biographical Profile:
Bukeni is a human rights activist and filmmaker from Uvira, in the South Kivu region of the DRC. Since 1998 he has served as the Executive Director of the Association des Jeunes pour le Développement Integral Kalundu (AJEDI-Ka), a child soldiers project, which provides social and psychological support to former child soldiers and works to identify, demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers into their communities.

The organization advocates on a regional and international level for the cessation of the recruitment and the use of child soldiers and for increased support for the reintegration of former child soldiers. In addition to speaking engagements to promote efforts at reintegration of former child soldiers, Bukeni has collaborated with Witness to make two short documentaries about child soldiers in the DRC.

During his ICTE fellowship, Bukeni met with a wide range of human rights based organisations and international development organisations to discuss his work on child soldiers .In addition, he spent time on establishing links with organizations working on human rights advocacy and education.