Child soldiers in Uganda

The Lord's Resistance Army is an armed rebel group based in Uganda that has abducted over 67,000 youth and 30,000 children for use as child soldiers and sex slaves since its inception in 1987. The Lord's Resistance Army began as an extension of the Holy Spirit Movement, which was a rebellion against President Museveni's oppression of the Northern region of Uganda in addition to being a religious sect. her cousin Joseph Kony took her place. By May 1988 Kony truly established himself as the new leader of the rebel army which consisted of a force of a thousand seasoned fighters. When the LRA began to lose popular support and soldiers, Kony devolved to tactics that have come to characterize the group such as stealing supplies and abducting children in order to have soldiers to fill the ranks. == The process of recruiting child soldiers ==

In Northern Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had been relying on forced recruitment at a rate of 90% for over two decades. According to former soldiers, the group had almost no material resources and no one in the organization is paid, but it persists by persuading a good share of the recruited or abducted soldiers to remain as a part of the group. Cleansing or rebirth are emphasized as fundamental to the recruit being inducted into the group. Once abducted by the LRA, children are told to commit atrocious acts such as being compelled to kill or maim their own family members or other children. In doing so, the LRA uses the ensuing fear of punishment for these acts as a tool to dissuade the children from returning home. The abductees then go through an intense period of integration and homogenization, during which they are trained to wage war and forced to participate in frequent killings. == Life of a child soldier ==

According to interviews from former child soldiers, life as a child soldier in the LRA in Uganda can vary depending on age and gender. Nearly all former child soldiers reported living conditions that they were subjected to as being harsh and that they themselves were victimized by violence by other soldiers in the LRA. Eighty-eight percent of the sample have also witnessed atrocities against other abductees, civilians, or soldiers, and seventy-six percent admitted to having committed atrocities, most of which were targeting civilians. Sixty-two percent of the child soldiers, who were mostly older males, in this study went through military training, where they learned how to use weapons and organize attacks. Fifty-six percent of females were assigned a rebel soldier as their husband and were subjected to extensive sexual abuse. The study also concluded that the older a child was when captured or the more time they served in the LRA the more likely they were to experience war. == Life after being a child soldier ==

Interviews with former child soldiers show that thousands of former abductees were plagued by physical, psychological, and social problems. Most liberated child soldiers were sent back into society by means of reception centers—largely triggered by the visit to the area by the UN Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs in 2003, the referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court in 2004 and the successful publicity campaign launched by Invisible Children the same year. The workers at the reception centers interviewed the children after they returned home and began to realize that within a few weeks or months, the children were having significant problems at home. Fear of cen was often mentioned specifically in connection with the LRA, because of the level of violence that was perpetuated, and those who had spent time in the bush could not have escaped it. Cen was viewed as something that those returning, including children, might bring with them to the home without wanting to do so. It was also apparent that not all child soldiers had the same experiences. Some parents stated that they were happy to be reunited and were adamant that their children had been taken by force. When this happened, the community accepted the children and sometimes did cleansing rituals on the child. However, only 69 people in the sample (less than 30 percent of those interviewed) stated that they had been involved in any cleansing rites. It was also apparent to the interviewers that, even where families seemed to be welcoming back their loved ones and purportedly viewed them as blameless victims who had suffered, it was known that those who spent time with the LRA were likely to have survived by being willing to witness or to perform atrocious acts. There were those whose detailed accounts of life with the LRA were narrated as if they were entirely passive. However, other children were able to understand the fact that they had to make a choice to survive, and were open to now re-learning how to live in society. ==References==