Lord’s Resistance Army: Child Soldiers In Indigenous Communities

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Child Soldiers
Globally, it is estimated that there are more than 300,000 children who have been involved in child combat (Kelly, Jocelyn TD et al.). Suffering prolonged exposure to psychological and physical trauma (Kelly, Jocelyn TD et al.). The children are forced to kill their victims or maim them, using guns or crude weapons such as machetes. At the heart of East Africa is Uganda. This is a country bustling with life, a complete shift from what it used to be in the 80s. The Lord’s Resistance Army was a rebellion that was a force to reckon with and formed of majority children. This was a rebellion that was one of the most horrid in the history of wars in the country. To put this into perspective, more than 30,000 children had been abducted to become child soldiers to fight in the war against the government (United Nations). One of the most disturbing elements of the child soldiers was that some of the children recruited into the army were as young as eight years old (United Nations). The recruitment were not as peaceful as one would imagine in a volunteer program, rather it was associated with raids in the villages where children would be abducted, houses burned down, parents killed and those who tried to escape were met with the same fate. The recruitment and the initiation processes were also as horrid, where the children would sometimes be required to kill a victim to be part of the system. As such, most of the soldiers killed victims who were much older than they were (United Nations).
The majority of the children were recruited as soldiers, however there was also the element of taking girls who were underage to become wives of the rebels. This was a common practice where the rebels would take girls and force them to bear children. This led to massive exodus as people moved to camps for security. Close to 2 million people were hosted in camps, travelling in the thick of the night to avoid the LRA. Those that were far from the camps would move closer to the towns seeking in places such as the bus stops, schools, hospitals, government compounds and even turning into street families (The Center for Victims of Torture).
Today Uganda is...