Government, armed groups criticised on child soldiers

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, an umbrella of NGOs campaigning on the issue, has warned of “continuing reports of [Ugandan] government recruitment of child soldiers, despite legislation to the contrary”, in its ‘Global Report on Child Soldiers’, released on Tuesday. The Coalition, whose goal is to promote the adoption of and adherence to legal standards prohibiting the recruitment and use in hostilities of any person under 18 years of age, said it was also concerned about several armed opposition forces, particularly the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), abducting children and forcing them to serve as soldiers, domestics and sex slaves. The recognition and enforcement of national, regional and international legal standards prohibiting the use of child soldiers by all armed forces and groups - both governmental and nongovernmental - were vital to progress on this key human rights issue, the Coalition added. Uganda denied having conducted a recruitment drive of youths, many under 18 and often including street children, in late 1998, the Coalition reported on Tuesday. Despite this, reports continued to circulate last year of boys under the age of 18 being recruited by the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), it added. In addition, it said, the UPDF had provided direct assistance to opposition groups in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by training and equipping thousands of young recruits, including many children. In particular, the UPDF trained hundreds of recruits from the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups at camps of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie- Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) in Beni and Bunia. “Lendu children provided easy targets, because many have been orphaned by inter-ethnic killing,” the Coalition reported. Last year, recruiters for the RCD-ML routinely toured villages in recruitment drives, returning with truckloads of 100 to 200 children and youths aged 13 to 18 years. Ugandan army instructors would then provide three to six months of infantry and weapons training, the report added. On the home front, despite relative political stability, Uganda has suffered from internal conflict in the north and west. The Coalition cited several Ugandan opposition forces for involvement in forcibly abducting children as young as nine, who were compelled to fight and to serve as domestics and sex slaves. In April this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that about one third of the more than 26,000 cases of abduction recorded to date in Uganda involved children under the age of 18, it said. The abduction of children and youths by armed opposition groups and their forcible detention in virtual slavery at clandestine camps (serving as guards, concubines and soldiers) had been condemned in UNHCHR resolutions, the global report on child soldiers added. The LRA, which is active in northern Uganda from rear bases in Sudan, was particularly guilty of committing flagrant atrocities against civilian populations, particularly children. Last year alone, UNICEF estimated that the LRA abducted 700 children, the Coalition stated. As a result of the LRA campaign, some 400,000 people - or around 50 percent of the population - have been displaced in the northern districts of Gulu and Kitgum. “In Sudan we were distributed to men and I was given to a man who had just killed his woman,” Tuesday’s report quoted Concy Abanya, a 14 year-old girl abducted in Kitgum, as saying. “I was not given a gun, but I helped in the abductions and grabbing of food from villagers. Girls who refused to become LRA wives were killed in front of us, as a warning to the rest of us,” she added. “At the camp, we were trained to use guns. Those who disobeyed had their ears and fingers cut off,” said Odur Leko, a 14 year-old boy abducted at age eight. “I didn’t want to participate in the killing, but they threatened to shoot me if I refused to do it.” Similarly, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), active in the west and southwest of the country, had killed, tortured, maimed and abducted many civilians, including children, in a campaign that has left more than 100,000 people displaced in Bundibugyo and Kasese districts, according to Tuesday’s ‘Global Report on Child Soldiers’. Human rights abuses by the ADF escalated in 1999 and 2000, and it was estimated that over 441 people were abducted last year, with 30 or so children still missing at the year’s end, the report stated. “As with the LRA, there are credible reports that the ADF uses children as guards, labourers and soldiers,” it added. The Coalition also expressed concern over the reported abduction of children and use of child soldiers by the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) in the northwest, and by Karamojong militias involved in cattle rustling and armed raids in the northeast of Uganda. Meanwhile, rebels of the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) have also been recruiting child soldiers between 12 and 13 years of age in the Yumbe and Arua areas of northwestern Uganda over the past year, the semi-official ‘New Vision’ newspaper reported on 7 June. The paper cited a captive of the rebel group detained by the UPDF in Arua as saying that he was aware of recruitment centres in Yumbe and Arua, from where forced recruits were taken to a UNRF base in Rojo, Western Equatoria, southern Sudan. It was estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 children had been recruited by various armed groups in Uganda since 1986, and many of those children had been compelled against their will to fight as soldiers, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers reported on Tuesday. The tragic effect on children, not to mention terrorised civilian populations, are all too evident in the testimonies of the child victims themselves: “I killed another child. I did it three times. I felt bad, but I knew what would happen to me if I disobeyed,” said Bosco, abducted by the LRA from Gulu District at 12 years of age. “Now I see dead people and blood in my dreams, and I know the spirits of the children are coming to haunt me,” he added.