Voice of abducted person wishing action for peace

By Kilambus Charles, formerly abducted by Lord’s Resistance Army

29. April 2004

 

The ongoing abduction and abuse of children in northern Uganda is one of the most serious violations of children right now anywhere in the world. It is a situation that requires extraordinary action
On behalf of my fellow returnees and their families, I, call on leaders and decision makers both inside and outside Uganda to halt the abduction of children in northern Uganda, and to facilitate the immediate safe release and return of all children now in captivity.

Background

For the last 18 years as the rest of Uganda has moved steadily toward economic and political stability, the northern districts of Uganda particularly Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader, has been engulfed in a brutal conflict. A rebel force has run over the people leaving behind a trial of flame and destruction.

Every day schools, homes, fields, villages, and families are destroyed. Rebels ambush communities, and massacre hundreds of people at one time. Others target women and children, torture and maim civilians as a deliberate strategy of terror.

Their tactic is effective. Fear and uncertainty have become permanent features of life in northern Uganda.

An increasing amount of government resources, desperately needed to improve social services, is directed to the defence, yet the terror continues.

Child abduction

Abduction has been used to terrorise the population and sustain the rebel army since the beginning of this conflict. While people of all ages have been taken, the majority of those abducted have been teenage children. Once captured, these children suffer unspeakable treatment and violation of their fundamental rights.

From the moment of abduction, most children become beasts of burden, carrying heavy loads over long distances. Children unable to shoulder sufficient loads are beaten or killed, often in front of other children.

In rebel camps, children are used as slave labour. The girls are often given to rebel commanders as wives as a reward for services or in lieu of other payment.

The children are deprived of food and other basic necessities, many of us have eaten live insects and soil in the attempt to survive captivity.

Both boys and girls are given rudimentary training in assembling and dismantling guns, in shooting and offensive tactic. They are then forced to engage in combat, often being sent to situations, which are dangerous or to attack their own or neighbouring communities.
Children who manage to escape risk losing all family members to the rage of the former returnees. Other children taken from the same village are forced to identify their relatives or friends and participate in attacks, e.g. burning homes and murdering the inhabitants.
Children who escape are sometimes offered support through local authorities, NGOs and their communities.

A few rehabilitation centres exist where children receive individual and group counselling and are provided with therapy, e.g. drama, music, vocational training, and then begin the process of re-unification with their families and communities.

Recently, re-unification efforts have been hampered by continued conflict causing many children to return to centres despite their families’ willingness to take them back. Their readjustment is also hampered by the traumatic effects of their captivity and by physical injuries. For some families the joy of their children’s return is marred by shock, confusion and fear of retaliation by the rebels.

Purpose of this report

The children abducted in northern Uganda highlight a moral ‘vacuum’. We are the victims of a complex, protracted conflict, we neither understand nor can control. We are the victims not only of war but of the unconscionable failure of adults to protect the lives and welfare of their children.

I do not attempt to analyse the conflict in northern Uganda. Nor do I try to describe the widespread suffering of all children and families whose lives have been changed forever by this tragedy. My purpose is to give voice to the abducted children of Uganda and transform the youngest victims of this conflict from faceless numbers to children that all human beings can recognise as their own. It posses the continued trauma as well as the hopes and dreams of the survivors as a challenge to all those who care about Uganda’s children.

I appeal for help and call for action on behalf of those children still in captivity, those suffering from its effects, and those who continue to live in fear.

I ask the international body and government officials to listen carefully to the voice of the people in northern Uganda.