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Summary: The on going abduction and abuse of
children in northern Uganda is one of
the most serious violations of
children's rights anywhere in the
world. It is a situation that requires
extraordinary action.A Call to Action
The on going abduction and abuse of children in northern Uganda is
one of the most serious violations of children's rights anywhere in
the world. It is a situation that requires extraordinary action.
On behalf of these children and their families, UNICEF calls on
leaders and decision makers both inside and outside Uganda to:
· halt the abduction of children in northern Uganda
· facilitate the immediate safe release and return of all children
now in captivity
To support this call to action, factually and without bias, this
report provides testimonies of 15 abducted children who managed to
escape.
Background
For the last ten years, as the rest of Uganda has moved steadily
toward economic and political stability, the northern districts of
the country, particularly Gulu and Kitgum, have been engulfed in a
brutal conflict. A rebel force has run roughshod over the people of
the north, leaving behind them a trail of flames and destruction.
Every day, schools, homes, fields, villages and families are
destroyed. Fighters ambush communities; massacre hundreds of people
at a time, often targeting women and children; and torture and maim
civilians as a deliberate strategy of terror. Their tactics are
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, are
directed toward defence, yet the terror continues.
Child Abduction
Abduction has been used to terrorize populations and to 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
The number of children taken is unknown. Estimates range from 3,000-
6,000 over the past two years, with ages ranging from 10-20 years.
Some 2,000 children have managed to escape and return to Uganda.
Once captured, these children suffer unspeakable treatment and
violation of their most fundamental rights.
· From the moment of abduction, most of the 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 the 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 service
or in lieu of other payment
· The children are deprived of food and other basic necessities. Many
report eating live insects and soil in their attempts to survive
captivity.
· Both boys and girls are given rudimentary training in assembling
and dismantling guns, shooting and offensive tactics. They are then
forced to engage in combat, often being sent first into dangerous
situations or used to attack their own or neighbouring communities.
· Children who attempt unsuccessfully to escape are severely beaten
or killed. Other children are often forced to mete out this
punishment, beating their fellow captives to death with stones,sticks
or machetes.
· Children who do manage to escape risk losing their entire families
to the rage of their former captors. Other children taken from the
same villages are forced to identify the relatives of their friends
and to participate in revenge attacks, e.g., burning homes and fields
and murdering their inhabitants.
Children are pulled from their beds at home or in boarding schools,
waylaid as they dig in their family's fields or grabbed on their way
to fetch water or firewood. Villages lose several children at a time,
and often more than one child in a family is taken. Communities
robbed of these children receive the same warning from their captors:
try to find us and we will kill them; if they escape, we will return
to kill you.
Children who escape are offered various forms of support through
local authorities, NGOs and their own communities. A few centres of
rehabilitation exist where children receive individual and group
counseling, are provided various forms of therapy (e.g., drama,
music, vocational skills training) and begin the process of re-
unification with their families and communities. World Vision, for
example, runs two of these centres and supports a network of
community counselors, who help prepare families to receive the
children and who follow their progress for several months after re-
unification. Recently re-unification efforts have been hampered by
continued insecurity, 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
These children are the victims of a complex, protracted ccnflict they
neither understand nor can control. As the Executive Director of
UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, stated in a press release issued in November
l996: "The children abducted in northern Uganda highlight a 'moral
vacuum'... They are victims not only of war but of the unconscionable
failure of adults to protect the lives and welfare of their children."
Shattered Innocence does not attempt to analyze the conflict in
northern Uganda. Nor does it try to describe the widespread suffering
of all the children and families whose lives have been changed
forever by this tragedy. Its purpose is to give voice to the abducted
children of Uganda. It personalizes the suffering of all these
children by highlighting the experiences of a few who have survived;
in other words, it transforms the youngest victims of this conflict
from faceless numbers to children all Ugandans can recognize as their
own. It poses the continued trauma - as well as the hopes and dreams
- of these survivors as a challenge to all those who care about
Uganda's children.
Shattered Innocence is both an appeal for help and a call to action
on behalf of those children still in captivity, those suffering from
its effects and those who continue to live in fear.
We ask you, the reader, to lisfen carefully to these voices of
shattered innocence