Africa – Girl Soldiers – Uganda Girl’s Story
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: September 10, 2007
WUNRN
Africa/Uganda –
Progress Made to Keep Children Off Battlefield
By Katy Pownall
August 30, 2007
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)
At 12, Lucy Aol was clutching an assault rifle and preparing to ambush
government soldiers. At 13, a rebel commander a decade older made her his wife.
At 16, she was a mother.
At 21, fresh-faced and beaming in a clean T-shirt and neatly braided hair,
Mrs. Aol is studying environmental health at college in Uganda’s capital, and
planning to use her knowledge to improve the health of her war-battered nation.
Mrs. Aol has made a remarkable journey from child soldier to young woman
with a future, but millions of children across Africa continue to be victims of
war — orphaned, forced from their homes, denied education and, like Mrs. Aol,
forced to fight in the conflicts waged by their elders.
But slowly, the world’s campaign against child soldiery, and its pursuit of
the perpetrators as war criminals, has begun to yield results.
Girls make up an estimated 30 percent of the young fighters. They face
challenges boys don’t, such as rape and the stigma it inflicts, making it
harder for girls to return to their communities.
Mrs. Aol was 12 when she was abducted by a feared Ugandan rebel group,
forced to walk hundreds of miles to a base in neighboring southern Sudan and
taught to use a gun.
“We were used like slaves,” Mrs. Aol said, staring at the wall of
the cramped student dormitory at Kampala’s Mulago Medical College. “We
used to work in the fields or collect firewood from 7 in the morning until 5 in
the evening and we were given no food. If you made a mistake or refused, they
would beat us. … The three girls who were taken from my village with me were
beaten to death.”
Mrs. Aol was snatched by the Lord’s Resistance Army, rebels based in
northern Uganda who are estimated to have abducted 25,000 children during their
20-year anti-government insurgency. Peace talks are under way, but pleas to
free the children are met with denials that they are being coerced into
soldiery.
According to Human Rights Watch, child soldiers play various roles,
including spies, porters, minesweepers and concubines as well as active
combatants, often serving on front lines and sustaining some of Africa’s
bloodiest and longest-running conflicts.
The number of child soldiers — defined in international law as those younger
than 18 — cannot be estimated, humanitarian groups say. Although most are
forcibly recruited, many join out of desperation. For those separated from
their families or orphaned, enlistment may be the only way to get shelter, food
and companionship.
Children are easily manipulated and can be groomed from an early age to obey
instructions unquestioningly. Child protection workers cite numerous tactics
used by ruthless commanders to coerce young captives into obedience. In Sierra
Leone, child soldiers were given a cocktail of gunpowder and cocaine before
battle. In Liberia, they were forced to do things that would isolate them
permanently from the community such as slaughtering family members.
Those who returned from the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group with only the
vaguest of political platforms, tell of oil being smeared on young fighters to
make them think they are bulletproof.
Mrs. Aol said most of the LRA fighters at her base were ages 10 to 15.
“You get trained in guns for one or two weeks, then you are sent to a
battle but most don’t know how to fight so they are killed,” she said.
“I felt sad because young people like me die not for something they
believe in but because they are forced to fight. The rebels tell you, ‘Don’t
surrender, don’t run,” or they will kill you.”
At 13, Mrs. Aol was made the third wife of an LRA commander. She says she
suffered “sexual abuse” and was regularly beaten by her older
co-wives. She considered suicide.
Three years into her ordeal, Mrs. Aol decided to escape. She managed to
persuade her rebel husband that a better life awaited them back home. One
morning, fearing for their lives, they fled Sudan.
It took them three weeks to reach Uganda. Once there, they were ambushed by
government soldiers. Mrs. Aol was captured and her husband, the commander, was
fatally shot. She was taken to a center for former combatants where she
received counseling and learned that she was pregnant. She gave birth to her
daughter, Winifred Bianca, four months later.
Returning to normal life was tough. She had no money to continue her
schooling, and although her family welcomed her home, her neighbors — whose
daughter had been killed by the rebels — were less accepting.
“They asked why am I alive and their daughter is not. They said that
I’ve killed people and that I might kill my parents,” she said.
The young mothers find their babies ostracized as “Kony’s
children,” referring to Joseph Kony, the self-proclaimed prophet who leads
the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Returning female soldiers have it tougher, said Susan McKay, a professor of
Women’s and International Studies at Wyoming University who has studied the
subject.
“Girls who return to communities are perceived to have more thoroughly
violated social norms than boys,” she said. “They find it hard to
marry and their children are often stigmatized.” Poverty drives many to
prostitution, she said, and even back into the ranks of the rebel armies they
escaped.
Peace agreements in recent years, including those of Sudan, Ivory Coast and
Burundi, have included a framework for returning children to society. Radhika
Coomaraswamy, the U.N.’s Special Representative for Children and Armed
Conflict, hopes to see standard paragraphs on child protection in all
agreements ending wars where children fought.
Though she emphasizes that much work remains to be done, the world has made
significant steps. More than 100 countries have ratified a U.N. treaty banning
the conscription of children, and a working group that reports directly to the
U.N. Security Council on situations involving child soldiers has had successes.
Among them was the decision by rebels in Ivory Coast to enter into dialogue
with U.N. teams and accept a plan to release children.
The law has also had results. On June 20, the U.N.-backed court trying
crimes committed in Sierra Leone’s civil war convicted three former junta
leaders of using child soldiers — the first verdict of its kind, said Corinne
Dufka of Human Rights Watch. They were sentenced to prison terms of 45 to 50 years
each.
The International Criminal Court treats the recruitment of children younger
than 15 into armed forces as a war crime. The first case before the Hague-based
court, to begin later this year, is that of a former militia leader from Congo,
Thomas Lubanga, and it will focus on his use of child soldiers.
The Lubanga case is already acting as a deterrent in Africa, analysts say.
Many analysts think the decision by the Lord’s Resistance Army to enter into
peace negotiations last year was forced by the indictment of its top five
leaders, including Kony, on counts including forcible enlistment of and use of
child soldiers. The LRA is not thought to have abducted any children since the
peace talks produced a cease-fire last August.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Aol is now a bright and talkative 21-year-old. With help
from her mother, a small inheritance from her father — who died last year — and
her own hard work and determination, she saved enough money to enroll at Mulago
Medical College, based at Uganda’s most prestigious hospital.
================================================================
To leave the list, send your request by email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.
Categories: Releases