Fostering terror: child soldier crisis in Uganda.

For the rebels in northern Uganda, children have become their killing machines. Some are as young as eight years old when the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) abduct and introduce them to the rebellion movement. Since the 18-year-old rebellion against the Government began, some 30,000 children have been abducted to work as soldiers and porters. Young girls have been made to serve as the "wives" of rebels and bear their children. In the past 18 months, 10,000 children have been abducted as a result of a Ugandan military offensive against the LRA.

To evade the rebels and escape attacks and killings, streams of children, often with their mothers, flee their homes to squalid and overcrowded camps. Some 40,000 "night commuters" sleep under verandas, in schools, hospital courtyards and bus parking lots. The number of internally displaced persons has almost tripled since 2002. Any economic strides made by Uganda, which revitalized its gross domestic product (GDP) growth to more than 8 per cent over the past three years, hangs loosely in the hands of the insurgency, threatening to undermine the country's progress. The unrest in the northern and eastern parts of Uganda has created the largest displaced populations.

In its continuing efforts to combat the growing menace of using children as soldiers, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1539 (2004) on 22 April, recalling States' responsibilities to "end the impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other egregious crimes penetrated against children." The resolution also calls upon parties to "prepare within three months concrete time-bound action plans to halt recruitment and use of children in violation of the international obligations applicable to them". Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the enlistment of children under 15 years of age or using them to participate actively in hostilities is classified as a war crime, while the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires States parties to set a minimum age of 18 for compulsory recruitment and participation in hostilities.

Although various advances have been made for the protection of children affected by armed conflict, particularly in the areas of advocacy, the resolution notes a lack of overall "progress on the ground", where parties to the conflict continue to violate relevant provisions of the international laws aimed at protecting these children.

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Despite the gravity of the situation in Uganda, less than 10 per cent of the $130 million requested by the humanitarian community for 2004 has been received. In some areas, malnutrition rates as high as 30 per cent have been recorded among children. Fear of rebel attacks badly hit the planting season this year, threatening to aggravate in the coming months the already severe food shortages.

Even as a peace process makes significant progress in neighbouring Sudan, the rebel faction has made peace in Uganda tenuous, representing in the minds of the world's economic policy makers a jarring contrast with the tragedy of conflict in the north and east, which shows no signs of abating.

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The Lord's Resistance Army, with 90 per cent of its force being children, has become a classic case of the most disturbing aspect of a humanitarian crisis. Children are brutalized and forced to commit atrocities on fellow abductees and even siblings. Those who attempt to escape are killed.

A study published on 13 March 2004 by the United Kingdom-based scientific journal, The Lancet, reports that child soldiers who had served in the LRA rebel group and were forced to kill or watch other people being killed, may remain traumatized for years after being released. The study that surveyed some 300 former child soldiers found that over half of those abducted at an average age of twelve had been seriously beaten, 77 per cent had witnessed someone being killed, 39 per cent had killed another person, and 39 per cent had abducted other children. Over one third of the girls had been raped, while 18 per cent had given birth while in captivity. "Since these former child soldiers are often blamed and stigmatized for the countless atrocities they committed--mostly against their own people--their psychological recovery and reintegration can be seriously complicated", according to the study.

Of 71 children who completed a questionnaire to assess post-traumatic reactions, 69 showed clinically significant symptoms, The Lancet reported. Almost all of them had experienced a number of traumatic events, on average six each. About 6 per cent had seen their mother, father, brother or sister being killed, while 2 per cent had participated in killing their father, brother or another relative, the study revealed. Over one third of the children were found to have no mother, while two thirds had no father.