CIAO DATE: 08/07

GJIA

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2006

 

Coming Home Whole: Reintegrating Uganda's Child Soldiers
Lorea Russell and Elzbieta M. Gozdziak

 

Excerpt

Lorea Russell is a program assistant of the Emergency Response Humanitarian Media at Internews Network.

Elzbieta M. Gozdziak is a research director at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.

 “Our children are the future of Africa. If we program them to kill we’ll find ourselves in a cycle we won’t be able to settle for the next 50 years.”
- Anonymous social worker1

“There is not one family in the Acholiland that hasn’t had a son or daughter taken by the LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] to be a fighter,” a young woman explained on the bus ride to Kampala.2 The LRA is charged with using the world’s youngest child soldier, aged five, as part of its rebel forces.3 Human Rights Watch estimates that over the past 20 years the LRA has abducted 30,000 children in Northern Uganda who were forced to serve as child soldiers.4 While attempting to bring down the National Resistance Movement (NRM), led by President Yoweri Museveni, the LRA has also committed many atrocities against their own community, the Acholi, including forced recruitment of child soldiers. Although there is no peace agreement in sight, many international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) hope to assist in bringing all the child soldiers home once the war has ended. As a result, numerous NGOs have created programs to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of children once they have escaped or been dismissed by the LRA.

In some countries, such as Sudan or Colombia, armed conflicts have lasted for decades and result in cycles of violence that transcend generations. Violence and aggression are often the leitmotif of socialization processes of child soldiers, render them at risk for violent behavior, and make them an easy target for manipulation by unscrupulous guerilla leaders. Ostracized by their community, marginalized by lack of education and unable to find employment, former child soldiers may pick up arms against and become a threat to their communities. Well-executed demobilization programs can facilitate reintegration of child soldiers and create stable environments in which peace can take root. Psychosocial reintegration programs for former child soldiers are an important step in rebuilding peace and ensuring security; “psychosocial” has been defined as “the influence of social factors on an individual’s mind or behavior, and to the interrelations of behavioral and social factors; also, more widely pertaining to the interrelation of mind and society in human development.” 5,6 While various reintegration program models may be appropriate in different circumstances, it is essential that they include some element of psychosocial programming for former child soldiers to prevent renewed conflict in these communities and enable their children to resume normal lives.

This article first examines the growing prevalence of child soldiers and the effects conflict imposes upon them. The second section defines psychosocial programming and examines its role in reintegration processes before offering a critique of various psychosocial reintegration models in a third section. Ultimately, this article argues that while various reintegration program models may be appropriate in different circumstances, it is essential that they include some element of psychosocial programming for former child soldiers to prevent renewed conflict in these communities and enable their children to resume normal lives.7

Child Soldiers

Approximately 300,000 children are currently being used as soldiers in more than 30 armed conflicts around the world, including armed conflicts in Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. While most of those recruited are adolescents, children are being conscripted at younger and younger ages, both for direct and indirect participation in hostilities.8 The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (Optional Protocol) provide a strong legal framework for the protection of children in armed conflict and strictly prohibit the use of children under the age of eighteen as combatants. In reality, however, the ability to enforce these laws and standards is limited, leaving children vulnerable to abuse.

Many factors complicate the enforcement of child soldier prohibitions. It is often difficult to verify if combatants are under the age of eighteen. Children may lie about their age, and military officials in need of combatants often conveniently “lose” paperwork related to the age of recruits. In countries where birth registration systems are nonexistent or rarely used, age verification may be impossible. The intrastate nature of most contemporary conflicts further complicates this matter; rebel forces are not held to the same international legal standards as national militaries and are not signatories of CRC or the Optional Protocol. Unsurprisingly, the majority of armed forces using child soldiers tend to be opposition and paramilitary forces. Although Uganda has signed the Optional Protocol, the LRA in Northern Uganda is allegedly comprised of mainly abducted children–with estimates of over 30,000 children having been abducted from their homes to serve as rebels fighting against the government of Uganda...

1Liz Sly. The Child Soldiers. Chicago Tribune. 9 August 1995.
2Interview. Gulu – Kampala, 21 August 2004.
3P.W. Singer, Children at War, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005).
4Human Rights Watch, Uganda Campaign: What You Can Do, available at: http://hrw.org/campaigns/uganda/.
5This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Uganda in 2004 as part of a student research fellowship supported by the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University with funding from the Mellon Foundation. Desk study carried out in 2005 augmented the data collected in Uganda. The research sought to determine the effectiveness of psychosocial programming for war-affected children in Northern Uganda.
6Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, American Edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
7This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Uganda in 2004 as part of a student research fellowship supported by the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University with funding from the Mellon Foundation.  Desk study carried out in 2005 augmented the data collected in Uganda. The research evaluated the effectiveness of psychosocial programming for war affected children in Northern Uganda.
8Rachel Harvey, Children and Armed Conflict. A Guide to International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, International Bureau for Children’s Rights, University of Essex, available at: http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000044.pdf.