Driven mostly by poverty, children as young as 10 have been enlisted by the country’s militias, while NGOs try to reach and reintegrate those who escape

Despite her slight frame, Constance* carried a rocket-propelled grenade into battle against Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. She bears scars on her face from the hot bullet casings that flew through the air in the heat of combat.

Constance was 13 years old when she left her home in the hills of North Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to join a militia. “I went to war,” she says, from a displacement camp near the regional capital, Goma. “It was a nightmare.”