A family back together again just in time for Christmas.
Travellers at Dublin Airport were this morning treated to a very special scene as a family were reunited with each other after five years apart.
The Kanyamuhanga family embraced each other at the arrival gates of Dublin airport, and when you consider the story of their life over the last five years, you get a sense of why the moment was so poignant.
In 2012 Serge Kanyamuhanga and his brother Giresse were kidnapped from school and forced into the army by the rebel group M23 in the North Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
After spending two weeks in captivity, the brothers managed to escape to Uganda where they met a Catholic priest organized for them to travel to Ireland.
Upon arriving in Ireland, they were granted refugee status.
The boys’ mother and other siblings fled to Zambia and then to South Africa.
Their father Willy went missing while searching for them and until recently was feared dead.
Serge, who studies Science at Trinity College Dublin and lives in County Laois, began tracking down his family last year and succeeded in bringing the rest of the family to Ireland, except for his dad.
However, this morning, the entire family of ten were back together for the first time in five years as Willy flew into Dublin from Mozambique, via Ethiopia.
Willy was able to make the journey under a travel assistance programme, operated by UNHCR, the Irish Red Cross, and IOM.
Over 100 people have come to Ireland in 2017 under the programme.
