Dispatches

It's rare for Congo to hit the headlines but it did - briefly - last November. And just as quickly it was forgotten again as the world's attention turned to other global trouble spots. That's been the pattern of the last 12 years. In Congo's eastern region conflict flares and subsides but the underlying violence never goes away - and nor does the suffering.

For this programme, we decided to focus on children as a way of reflecting all the problems the Congolese people are enduring. We wanted to show the impact of the latest fighting but also emphasise the long term impact - physical and mental - on a generation that's grown up knowing almost nothing but war.

Setting off from the main town of Goma we flew north to Butembo - an hour's flight over staggeringly beautiful mountains and lush forest. Beautiful from the air but brutal on the ground, if you're one of the thousands who fled into that forest to escape the latest fighting. Families were separated in the panic, thousands of kids lost one or more of their parents. Children became sick and died because they were sleeping in the open with no clean water and almost no food.

In Butembo we saw children barely alive, suffering from gunshot wounds. Most people there had fled from the fighting, which was about 100 kilometres away. While we were in Butembo, word came that the road south might be safe, for the first time in weeks, so we set off with a convoy from the British aid agency Merlin, who wanted to get drugs to a clinic in the town of Kanyabayonga.

It took eight hours of dust and potholes to reach Kanyabayonga. In all we spent about four days there uncovering exactly what had happened when the rebels ringed the town, which was held by the Congolese army. The human rights abuses that took place there - rape, looting, murder - have been investigated by the UN. Their report is due out at the end of February but we understand that they confirm exactly what we found - that the aggressors were Congolese army soldiers, rampaging through the town.

We also spent a couple of weeks in Goma, filming in an orphanage and a centre for former child soldiers. A major war crimes trial is just starting at the International Criminal Court in The Hague involving a different Congolese militia group that was active a few years ago. Sadly, however, all the armed groups currently operating in eastern Congo still recruit kids - often at gunpoint.

The conflict has been fuelled by Congo's enormous mineral wealth, which includes gold, tin and copper. That's why so many factions - both Congolese and from other neighbouring countries - have battled for control of the region. Much of Congo's mining is artisanal - in other words it's not controlled by a company. Instead, it's hundreds - if not thousands - of individuals all scrabbling to earn enough money to survive. Many of the workers we saw at a goldmine were young boys, almost all of whom have lost parents or relatives in the years of fighting.

In the last five years Channel 4 has filmed in Congo on numerous occasions, for Channel 4 News, for Unreported World and for Dispatches - continuing to remind the world of a terrible and ongoing humanitarian crisis.