At least 1,600 students, mostly children from the ISP/Bunia displaced persons site in Ituri, study in difficult conditions in the only school on the outskirts of the city. These students who walk five kilometers every day have no school supplies, no notebooks, no pens, let alone a uniform.

These students from the ISP/Bunia IDP site study at the Sagesse Kabazo school complex, a private school on the outskirts of the city center. Every day around 9:30 or 10 a.m., these students get ready to walk to school, after doing household chores to help their parents.

“We have a lot of difficulties here. We don’t have uniforms, we don’t even have pairs of shoes. Also, we study very far from the city. Sometimes we go to school hungry. We ask the authorities to help us in this place. We don’t have food. Some of our friends go to the city to beg, others are kidnapped,” said one of the students.

The head of this school, Jean de Dieu Bahati, indicates that this situation exposes many children to the risks of accidents, drowning or kidnapping. He pleads for the intervention of people of good will to allow these children to study also in good conditions:

"It is always difficult because the children in the first and second year have difficulty accessing school, following traffic accidents because they cross the centre of Mudzipela. Moreover, they get lost very often. Since the beginning of the year, we have already lost four children, some were found the same day, others the next day."