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"We would go look for food and women," Eric says about his life as a soldier. He describes carrying a Kalashnikov and killing civilians to take what he wanted. "We were always shooting bullets. … Many of us would die there."

But Eric himself managed to survive. In September, 2006, he escaped from his militia and made his way to the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After handing over his military clothes and gun, he was put in the care of the Rwandan government and sent to the Muhazi Child Ex-combatant Rehabilitation Centre in Eastern Rwanda.

Eric's family has since been located. "I'm happy that I'm going home to join my parents," he says.

(Because of fears of reprisals against the boys, The Globe and Mail has agreed not to publish full names or identifiable images.)

According to UN estimates, Eric is one of at least 300,000 child soldiers worldwide, says Dr. Samantha Nutt, executive director of War Child Canada.

"Kids make great combatants, and I say that with great despair," Dr. Nutt says. "They are compliant, they are easily intimidated, they'll take risks, they follow instructions and they can be brutalized into submission."

All sides — governments, militia, rebel forces — use boys and girls to fight or perform other tasks, she says. "People are using children because they are not being held accountable."

Some are abducted. Others become soldiers to protect their families, to earn income, for ideological reasons, or because they are orphans with no choice but to fight or die.

At the Muhazi centre, the children are all from eastern Congo, which has long been the front line in the fight for control of DRC. It is also a place for Rwandan Hutu exiles to launch incursions back to Rwanda to try to overthrow the government of President Paul Kagame.

For children like Eric, reintegration back home is the real challenge. After missing years of school, child ex-combatants don't want to go back to Grade 1. Many are addicted to drugs and alcohol. And after years of fighting, they have a high level of aggression — many end up forming gangs and continuing their violent ways, the only life they have ever known. For this reason, many communities do not want them back.

Alex Rusagara, a child-protection specialist who supervises the work at Muhazi, says the boys need intensive care to fit back into society.

"Some children were forced to rape women, even to death," he says, also describing how the children would taunt their victims about where their limbs would be hacked off by referring to short- or long-sleeved shirts.

Ali Mugema, a social worker at the centre, has observed the same problem. The children arrive wild and miserable from the Congolese forests, he says, and then demonstrate "unusual behaviours like being aggressive." As part of the therapy, he says, "we discuss with them and create some kind of trust."

When he left Congo, Eric also left behind his one-year-old son and the boy's 16-year-old mother. He misses them, he says. But he'll never go back to fight again with the militia.

"I think they would kill me if I rejoined them because I took their gun. But if they ever attack," he says, "I can help Rwanda fight them."

Eugène Kwibuka is a fourth-year journalism student at the National University of Rwanda in Butare.

Kevin Van Paassen's trip to the Muhazi centre was sponsored by the Rwanda Initiative in partnership with Photosensitive.