An Army of Children: The Hidden Form of Human-Trafficking
There is no Amber Alert in Northern Uganda.
Children aren’t told by their mothers to watch out for strangers with candy. They don’t have a 911 number to call that lets them know safety is mere minutes away. They are forced to learn through the experiences of friends and acquaintances that safety precautions from abduction often entails fleeing for your life in the dead of the night. The alternative is to become a child soldier, to become, physically and psychologically, a slave.
The same can be said for a large number of children from the southern edges of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. The cruel organization that victimizes these children is the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The Lord’s Resistance Army formed in the late 1980s as a rebel group to fight the Museveni government in Uganda, and supposedly to protect the Acholi people of northern Uganda. However, from the get-go, the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, launched a campaign of brutality against these civilians, and built itself up through the violent abduction and enslavement of children.
Over the past two decades, villages in northern Uganda have been attacked and decimated, families murdered, and children lost through abduction by the LRA. These children are physically and psychologically enslaved through the addiction to drugs, threats, and sickening manipulations. They are forced to commit acts of violence against each other and terrorize other members of the population. A boy may be forced to rape a woman who is old enough to be his mother. Others must choose to kill someone, or cutting off his or her hands or lips, in order not to be killed themselves by LRA commanders. Girls are gang-raped and turned into “wives;” if the girl has a child, that child is used as a bargaining chip to prevent her from attempting to escape. U.S. Representative Brad Miller highlighted the degree of the LRA’s violent crimes when he spoke with the advocacy organization Invisible Children this past May: “The LRA has abducted more than 20,000 children over the past decade for forced conscription and sexual exploitation. Almost 90 percent of the LRA’s soldiers are children, some as young as eight. They are brutalized and forced to commit atrocities on each other and on their own siblings.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) defines a “child soldier” as:
“[A]ny child- boy or girl- under 18 years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity… and anyone accompanying such groups other than family members. It includes girls and boy recruited for forced sexual purposes and/or forced marriage.”
Child soldiers are indeed a hidden form of human trafficking. Their subsequent actions after abduction may not be black and white, but they remain children, and certainly slaves.
The conflict in Uganda has been complex and has created long-lasting tears in Uganda’s social fabric. While LRA crimes have died down in Uganda following the shift in its base of operations into the northeastern area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2005, its atrocities continue regionally. Not only has the LRA created a national crisis in Uganda, it is also enhancing and extending regional conflicts in Eastern and Central Africa. It continues to terrorize innocent civilians in the DRC and in the Central African Republic and spread its brutal campaign. The LRA abductions of children have far from ceased.
In 2001 the United States placed the LRA on its list of terrorist organizations. The U.S. also supported Juba Peace Talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government in 2008 (Kony later refused to sign the peace agreement and the talks were suspended). But it is important that political will within the U.S. to take action against the LRA and towards peace not only continues but intensifies. Silence and inaction will only let this movement of using child abductions and enslavement as a tool for war expand.
On May 24, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama. This crucial, bipartisan law gained more co-sponsors than any piece of legislation pertaining to sub-Saharan Africa in decades. It calls for “political, economic, military and intelligence support for viable multilateral efforts” to eradicate the threat of the LRA. Additionally, it calls for the humanitarian needs of past victims to be met, and for destroyed communities to be aided. This is the first law that sets forth a viable U.S. role in the protection of civilians from the LRA, and for the recovery of those whose lives have been broken by LRA attacks.
Uganda still lives in the shadow of this conflict. Parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic live its horrors in the moment. When you think about slavery, stop and think about these children, the most innocent of victims, who are dealing with an unimaginable reality. Think about the trauma that lingers with children who were forced to walk miles in the middle of the night to avoid abduction, who were forced to kill friends, or burn down buildings, or keep their tears to themselves for fear of death. Think about the children who are still trapped in this life with drugs and threats. And make the decision that the use of child soldiers, child slavery, needs to be confronted head on.
