Child Soldiers In Uganda Research Paper
Legal Studies Assessment – Human Rights
Child Soldiers in Uganda
Child Soldiers in the Uganda
Human rights are the basic rights that allow human beings to live with dignity. These rights are inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, nationality/ethnicity, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. Universal human rights are often expressed through law, in the forms of treaties, international laws, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law sets responsibilities of Governments to act …show more content…
in certain ways or to refrain from certain actions, in order to protect human rights and the freedom of all people. An example of an international law protecting human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 10th of December 1948. In the case of children, a specific declaration had been written; the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC) adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 20th of November 1989 and entered into force a year later. Although these rights have been stated, human rights are still violated all around the world and specifically in the case of child soldiers.
The military use of children takes mainly 3 different forms.
Children can take direct part in warfare (child soldiers) (see Appendix 1), or they can be used in support roles (porters, spies, messengers, look outs) or they can be used for political advantage either as human shields or in propaganda. In Uganda children are being used as soldiers in all these areas especially since the beginning of the war between Joseph Kony’s LRA (Lords Resistance Army) and the Ugandan …show more content…
Government. Origins: This war began in 1986, when Yoweri Museveni (see Appendix 3) gained the presidency of Uganda. A woman named Alice Lakwena (see Appendix 4), from the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda (see Appendix 2) started the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) in opposition. The group recruited followers and created alliances with rebel militias with the purpose of entering Uganda’s capital city, Kampala, and freeing the north from government oppression. The Holy Spirit Movement had regional support, but nothing else. When Alice Lakwena was exiled, there was no person to take over leadership of the Holy Spirit Movement. Joseph Kony: This is when Joseph Kony (see Appendix 5)was introduced claiming to be a distant cousin of Alice Lakwena and the natural successor to lead the Holy Spirit Movement. Soon after Joseph Kony gained leadership of the group, he changed the name to the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Joseph Kony wasn’t able to sustain the group’s numbers and regional support, so he started stealing food and abducting children to fill the ranks of his army. Due to these actions he lost any remaining regional support. Joseph Kony’s tactics were, and still are, brutal. He often forced children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officers. He brainwashed and indoctrinated the children with his lies and manipulated them with his claim of spiritual powers. At the climax of the conflict in Uganda, children “night commuted” (see Appendix 6). Every evening they would walk miles from their homes to the city centers. There, hundreds of children would sleep in school houses, churches, or bus depots to avoid abduction by the LRA.
Kony and the LRA abducted more than 30,000 children in northern Uganda. UDHR and CROC: (See Appendix 7) Due to the actions of Joseph Kony a great number of rights given to Children through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention of the Rights of the Child were violated. In the UDHR, Articles 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 18, 19, 22, 25 and 26 were violated by Joseph Kony. Article 3 of the UDHR states that:
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.
Article 4 states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.
Article 5 states:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Also, according the CROC Joseph Kony violated principles 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 as well. Specifically principle 2, which states:
“The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration”.
Article 9 also states:
“The child shall be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be the subject of traffic, in any form. The child shall not be admitted to employment before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to engage in any occupation or employment which would prejudice his health or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral development.”
Interview by IRIN: (Appendix 8)
An interview by a UN body called IRIN, gave us an insight to the life of a child soldier living in the LRA. Moses Rubangangeyo was abducted by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army at the age of 15 and served as a soldier in its ranks for nine years. “On 22 August 1996, at around midnight, 29 LRA soldiers, each with a gun, surrounded our school. They attacked us, tied our hands together, and we were forced to move off into the night”… “they gathered us together, picked two people at random – one of whom was my brother – and killed them in front of us to make sure we were too afraid to escape”. This boy went through the same beatings, starvation, brainwashing and training that every child soldier went through, and his rights, along with countless others were severely neglected and violated. By 1996 Joseph Kony, in over 30,000 occasions, violated these declarations which had been signed, ratified and implemented in Uganda. Action had to be taken to prevent further damage.
Legal Action:
ICC Action: In 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and four of his top commanders: Dominic Ongwen, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo, and Vincent Otti. Of those 5, only Kony, Ongwen, and Odhiambo remain at large.
Juba Peace Talks: (see Appendix 9) In 2006 the LRA showed an interest in peace negotiations.
They were hosted by Juba, Sudan (now South Sudan), and dubbed the Juba Peace Talks. In August of 2006 a Cessation of Hostilities agreement was signed by the LRA and the government of Uganda. The peace talks took place over the course of two years. Joseph Kony sent a representative to participate on his behalf, but when the Final Peace Agreement was ready to be signed, Joseph Kony constantly postponed the date or failed to show up.
Combined Effort: In December 2008, when it was clear that Kony wasn’t going to sign the agreement, Operation Lightning Thunder was launched. This was the coordinated attempt of Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, with intelligence and logistical support from the United States, to capture Kony and his commanders. However the operation failed. Joseph Kony learned of the attack hours before the air-raid and he was able to escape. In revenge for the attempted attack, the LRA, lead by Dominic Ongwen, attacked villages in the DR Congo on December 24, 2008, killing 865 civilians and abducting 160 more children over the course of 2 weeks. Again a year later in north eastern Congo the LRA struck again, this time they killed 321 people and abducted a further 250 children.
USA
Action: In May 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law, the Lord 's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act legislation, aimed at stopping Kony and the LRA. In November 2010, President Obama went to Congress, asking for more funding to disarm Kony and the LRA. In October 2011, President Obama approved the deployment of 100 combat-equipped U.S. troops with the goal to help regional forces remove Kony and senior LRA leaders from the battlefield.
UN Action: Ever since Joseph Kony arose the UN has been monitoring and assisting in Uganda but in the last 5 years the UN has been a lot more active. In 2011, the UN Security Council requested UNOCA (United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa), to work with UN bodies and the African Union to create a regional strategy on the LRA. UNOCA, as well as the UN Integrated Peace-building Office have been working with the UN peacekeeping operations in the DR of Congo and in South Sudan as well as with the UN’s agencies, funds and programmes to increase the UN’s response both to humanitarian needs and the protection of civilians.
Non-Legal Action:
Kony 2012: For many years the actions of Joseph Kony never made it to the Western Countries. He was known in Central Africa, by the UN and by some leaders of major countries, but the world didn’t know him. This was until ‘Kony 2012’, an online video launched by the ‘Invisible Children’ organisation to raise awareness to the western world and the major governments about the LRA and Joseph Kony. This video was viewed 100 million times in six days and started a movement to stop Joseph Kony and his treatment of children. Due to the enormity of this project, the campaign made it on to newspapers, TV programs and then to the government.
Effectiveness of Legal and Non-Legal Actions:
Non-Legal Effectiveness:
The KONY 2012 film by the Invisible Children reached 100 million views in 6 days, making it the fastest growing viral video in history. Due to the response of the country, on April 25th, President Obama personally announced the renewal of the US commitment to help end the violence of the LRA, and soon after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the KONY 2012 resolution which condemned Joseph Kony 's atrocities and encouraged the U.S. to support efforts to stop the LRA. 690,000 defection fliers were printed and distributed across all of DR Congo and CAR and due to the support of KONY 2012 in Europe, the European Union pledged support for efforts to stop the LRA on April 19th, 2012. Also eight countries and institutions sent representatives to attend the Invisible Children 's Global Summit on the LRA in Washington, DC, to discuss stopping the LRA. Just this year on January 2013, Congress passed new legislation authorizing a reward of up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest of Joseph Kony.
Legal Effectiveness:
Because of the global campaign for Kony to be brought to Justice and all the pressure on governments to act, there has been a lot of action. Since the 2006 Juba Peace Talks the LRA has left Uganda. Although they have left they have still carried out their attacks in the border regions of north-eastern Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic. The LRA have spread out but ultimately answer to Joseph Kony. Due to Kony 2012 and global efforts by the UN, USA, Uganda, DR Congo and the African Union to stop Kony, the entire fighting force of the LRA has been reduced from approximately 1,000 in 2008 to about 300 fighters in 2012, excluding the abducted women and children who are used as “wives” and porters. Also, on May 12, 2012, Caesar Achellam, the oldest member of the LRA and one of Kony’s top three commanders, was captured by the UPDF in the Central African Republic. Through all the actions by the major countries and international organisations, Joseph Kony and the LRA are slowly being brought to justice. There numbers have been dramatically reduced, the world now knows about him, the children of Uganda are progressively getting safer and more and more child soldiers of the LRA are getting out. Although the LRA is still operating in the DR Congo and parts of Uganda, it won’t be long before those who are responsible are brought to justice. There are still millions of child soldiers in many countries all around Africa, all around the world and still even in Uganda. I think some of the focus should be taken off Joseph Kony and placed on helping the children who were, and still are, victims of Kony’s operations and working on how their rights as children and human beings can be protected.
Appendix:
Appendix 1: Child Soldier in Uganda
Appendix 2: Map of Uganda showing the Acholi region
Appendix 3: Yoweri Musevini – President of Uganda at the Time.
Appendix 4: Alice Lakwena of the Acholi tribe – Head of the former Holy Spirit Movement
Appendix 5: Joseph Kony of the Acholi Tribe – Head of the Lords Resistance Army
Appendix 6: Night Commuters in Uganda
Appendix 7: CROC book (left) and the UDHR logo (right)
Appendix 8: (Interview by IRIN to former LRA child soldier Moses Rubangangeyo) humanitarian news and analysis a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Moses Rubangangeyo was abducted by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) at the age of 15 and served as a soldier in its ranks for nine years. Formed in 1987, the LRA is a rebel paramilitary group that operates mainly in northern Uganda. It has been engaged in armed rebellion against the government for nearly 20 years. The LRA has been accused of widespread human-rights violations, including the mass abduction of civilians and the use of child soldiers.
QUESTION: How did you become a member of the LRA?
ANSWER: I was abducted in 1996 from my boarding school in Gulu when I was 15 years old. On 22 August 1996, at around midnight, 29 LRA soldiers, each with a gun, surrounded our school. They attacked us, tied our hands together, and we were forced to move off into the night. They took us to join the force of a commander some distance away, who has since died.
After two days on the move, they gathered us together, picked two people at random – one of whom was my brother – and killed them in front of us to make sure we were too afraid to escape. Then we were beaten – each person was given 50 strokes. This was to mark us as LRA soldiers. We were not used to that kind of beating and torture, and so suffered from a lot of pain.
We continued to move for months. On 9 October, the same commander who abducted us abducted some other people. We were all trained together and told that if we escaped, we would be killed, and that if someone else escaped, we would all be beaten. In December 1996, we were shipped to Sudan, where our intensive training took place and where we were equipped with AK-47s. All the abductees were very well armed – we each had our own gun.
Q: Did having a gun change your experience?
A: If you have a gun, you are respected. A gun means that you have been trained and are now a soldier. For the first six months in the LRA, you are doubted. You are just a recruit and are not taken seriously. They beat you and do not give you enough food. They make you carry heavy loads, and if you complain, they will beat you to death with a gun. When you have your own weapon, you have a greater sense of identity - you are much more free. Almost nobody will monitor you, nor think that you will escape.
Q: What sort of weapons does the LRA have, and how do they operate?
A: The LRA has underground stores - the Sudanese government supplied the weapons and the LRA then buried them. They have pistols, AK-47s, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] B10 recoilless rifles, SPG9 Kopye guns, mortars, 12.7 anti-aircraft guns and GPMGs [general purpose machine guns]. The LRA are more heavily armed than the government, and their weapons are much more sophisticated. The Sudanese also gave the LRA four tanks with trained drivers.
In addition, the LRA uses telephones, walkie-talkies and satellite phones, and they depend on the local community to gather information. The local people would tell us: “They [the UPDF, Uganda People’s Defence Force, the official armed forces of Uganda] have a mortar and 200 soldiers.”
Q: How do abductions take place, and whom does the LRA target?
A: Five soldiers alone can abduct 100 people. They can overrun a village. Just four soldiers can carry out a successful ambush. The LRA likes to abduct nine- to 15-year-olds because it is easy to turn the mind of a young person. “We will overthrow Museveni, and you will be a minister,” they told us. “We are not abducting you, we are saving you from Museveni.”
Kony [Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA, who claims to be a mystic and a prophet] has a spirit that everyone fears: It follows you wherever you go. If you do something wrong, it will see and will kill your parents.
Children between the ages of seven and nine are the best fighters, so they will not be tortured. In fact, if a child between seven and nine years old died under my charge, I would have to explain why. But if they are older, they could be tortured or left to starve, and I wouldn’t be questioned about the death.
The girls who are abducted are the 11- and 12-year-olds. When they reach 16, they are given to men, but some will have previously been sex slaves.
Q: How are children born in captivity treated?
A: If you are born in captivity, you are part of a new generation. They will not torture you, but will teach you: “This is an RPG; this is an AK-47.” Such children are not just trained in one arm, but can set landmines and shoot RPGs and mortars. Even a child who is one metre tall can fire an RPG.
Seven- to nine-year-old children are the best fighters, as if they are told to kill someone, they will do it. They have no values. They do not think - they just do it. They are brave, brutal and active in the field. A child soldier cannot question. However, if they do, they will be punished. A recruit was given a gun while an officer bathed, and when he had soap in his eyes, the child escaped with the gun. He was quickly caught, and beaten 600 times and told to recover the gun. When he ran away again, they went after his relatives.
Q: How did the LRA obtain supplies when you were with them? And what effects did these tactics have on the local population?
A: When we were in Sudan, there was a period during which we had no food. We had to fight for food, and when there were no internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, we had to rely on looting. The Sudanese government did not give us enough food. At least 1,000 LRA soldiers died in Sudan due to malaria, malnutrition and a lack of medicine. If they had not been taken to fight in the bush, they would not have died in this way.
Many women and children were killed in the conflict. A [helicopter] gunship will shoot any women and children, because they do not know how to dodge the fire – they walk in a line, and it is very easy to target them. Women were also raped at gunpoint. If a man with a gun tells a woman, “I want to have sex with you,” what will she do? Where will she go? She has to comply.
No one knows how many people have died – the UPDF and UNICEF [UN Children’s Fund] don’t know. They just guess. The LRA does not bury people, especially those killed in battle. Rather they leave the body under a tree and cover it with leaves. So the LRA also does not know how many have died, as there are no graves to count.
Appendix 9: Juba Peace Talks
Appendix 10: One of many KONY 2012 posters:
Bibliography:
http://invisiblechildren.com/kony/#epic-progress http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/apr/16/has-kony-2012-changed-anything http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/undpa/main/activities_by_region/africa/central_africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony#Action_against_Kony http://www.irinnews.org/indepthmain.aspx?InDepthId=8&ReportId=58968 www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://invisiblechildren.com/about/history/ http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/briefing/soldiers/soldiers.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children
Child Soldiers in Uganda
Child Soldiers in the Uganda
Human rights are the basic rights that allow human beings to live with dignity. These rights are inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, nationality/ethnicity, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. Universal human rights are often expressed through law, in the forms of treaties, international laws, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law sets responsibilities of Governments to act …show more content…
in certain ways or to refrain from certain actions, in order to protect human rights and the freedom of all people. An example of an international law protecting human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 10th of December 1948. In the case of children, a specific declaration had been written; the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC) adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 20th of November 1989 and entered into force a year later. Although these rights have been stated, human rights are still violated all around the world and specifically in the case of child soldiers.
The military use of children takes mainly 3 different forms.
Children can take direct part in warfare (child soldiers) (see Appendix 1), or they can be used in support roles (porters, spies, messengers, look outs) or they can be used for political advantage either as human shields or in propaganda. In Uganda children are being used as soldiers in all these areas especially since the beginning of the war between Joseph Kony’s LRA (Lords Resistance Army) and the Ugandan …show more content…
Government. Origins: This war began in 1986, when Yoweri Museveni (see Appendix 3) gained the presidency of Uganda. A woman named Alice Lakwena (see Appendix 4), from the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda (see Appendix 2) started the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) in opposition. The group recruited followers and created alliances with rebel militias with the purpose of entering Uganda’s capital city, Kampala, and freeing the north from government oppression. The Holy Spirit Movement had regional support, but nothing else. When Alice Lakwena was exiled, there was no person to take over leadership of the Holy Spirit Movement. Joseph Kony: This is when Joseph Kony (see Appendix 5)was introduced claiming to be a distant cousin of Alice Lakwena and the natural successor to lead the Holy Spirit Movement. Soon after Joseph Kony gained leadership of the group, he changed the name to the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Joseph Kony wasn’t able to sustain the group’s numbers and regional support, so he started stealing food and abducting children to fill the ranks of his army. Due to these actions he lost any remaining regional support. Joseph Kony’s tactics were, and still are, brutal. He often forced children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officers. He brainwashed and indoctrinated the children with his lies and manipulated them with his claim of spiritual powers. At the climax of the conflict in Uganda, children “night commuted” (see Appendix 6). Every evening they would walk miles from their homes to the city centers. There, hundreds of children would sleep in school houses, churches, or bus depots to avoid abduction by the LRA.
Kony and the LRA abducted more than 30,000 children in northern Uganda. UDHR and CROC: (See Appendix 7) Due to the actions of Joseph Kony a great number of rights given to Children through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention of the Rights of the Child were violated. In the UDHR, Articles 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 18, 19, 22, 25 and 26 were violated by Joseph Kony. Article 3 of the UDHR states that:
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.
Article 4 states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.
Article 5 states:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Also, according the CROC Joseph Kony violated principles 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 as well. Specifically principle 2, which states:
“The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration”.
Article 9 also states:
“The child shall be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be the subject of traffic, in any form. The child shall not be admitted to employment before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to engage in any occupation or employment which would prejudice his health or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral development.”
Interview by IRIN: (Appendix 8)
An interview by a UN body called IRIN, gave us an insight to the life of a child soldier living in the LRA. Moses Rubangangeyo was abducted by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army at the age of 15 and served as a soldier in its ranks for nine years. “On 22 August 1996, at around midnight, 29 LRA soldiers, each with a gun, surrounded our school. They attacked us, tied our hands together, and we were forced to move off into the night”… “they gathered us together, picked two people at random – one of whom was my brother – and killed them in front of us to make sure we were too afraid to escape”. This boy went through the same beatings, starvation, brainwashing and training that every child soldier went through, and his rights, along with countless others were severely neglected and violated. By 1996 Joseph Kony, in over 30,000 occasions, violated these declarations which had been signed, ratified and implemented in Uganda. Action had to be taken to prevent further damage.
Legal Action:
ICC Action: In 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and four of his top commanders: Dominic Ongwen, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo, and Vincent Otti. Of those 5, only Kony, Ongwen, and Odhiambo remain at large.
Juba Peace Talks: (see Appendix 9) In 2006 the LRA showed an interest in peace negotiations.
They were hosted by Juba, Sudan (now South Sudan), and dubbed the Juba Peace Talks. In August of 2006 a Cessation of Hostilities agreement was signed by the LRA and the government of Uganda. The peace talks took place over the course of two years. Joseph Kony sent a representative to participate on his behalf, but when the Final Peace Agreement was ready to be signed, Joseph Kony constantly postponed the date or failed to show up.
Combined Effort: In December 2008, when it was clear that Kony wasn’t going to sign the agreement, Operation Lightning Thunder was launched. This was the coordinated attempt of Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, with intelligence and logistical support from the United States, to capture Kony and his commanders. However the operation failed. Joseph Kony learned of the attack hours before the air-raid and he was able to escape. In revenge for the attempted attack, the LRA, lead by Dominic Ongwen, attacked villages in the DR Congo on December 24, 2008, killing 865 civilians and abducting 160 more children over the course of 2 weeks. Again a year later in north eastern Congo the LRA struck again, this time they killed 321 people and abducted a further 250 children.
USA
Action: In May 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law, the Lord 's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act legislation, aimed at stopping Kony and the LRA. In November 2010, President Obama went to Congress, asking for more funding to disarm Kony and the LRA. In October 2011, President Obama approved the deployment of 100 combat-equipped U.S. troops with the goal to help regional forces remove Kony and senior LRA leaders from the battlefield.
UN Action: Ever since Joseph Kony arose the UN has been monitoring and assisting in Uganda but in the last 5 years the UN has been a lot more active. In 2011, the UN Security Council requested UNOCA (United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa), to work with UN bodies and the African Union to create a regional strategy on the LRA. UNOCA, as well as the UN Integrated Peace-building Office have been working with the UN peacekeeping operations in the DR of Congo and in South Sudan as well as with the UN’s agencies, funds and programmes to increase the UN’s response both to humanitarian needs and the protection of civilians.
Non-Legal Action:
Kony 2012: For many years the actions of Joseph Kony never made it to the Western Countries. He was known in Central Africa, by the UN and by some leaders of major countries, but the world didn’t know him. This was until ‘Kony 2012’, an online video launched by the ‘Invisible Children’ organisation to raise awareness to the western world and the major governments about the LRA and Joseph Kony. This video was viewed 100 million times in six days and started a movement to stop Joseph Kony and his treatment of children. Due to the enormity of this project, the campaign made it on to newspapers, TV programs and then to the government.
Effectiveness of Legal and Non-Legal Actions:
Non-Legal Effectiveness:
The KONY 2012 film by the Invisible Children reached 100 million views in 6 days, making it the fastest growing viral video in history. Due to the response of the country, on April 25th, President Obama personally announced the renewal of the US commitment to help end the violence of the LRA, and soon after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the KONY 2012 resolution which condemned Joseph Kony 's atrocities and encouraged the U.S. to support efforts to stop the LRA. 690,000 defection fliers were printed and distributed across all of DR Congo and CAR and due to the support of KONY 2012 in Europe, the European Union pledged support for efforts to stop the LRA on April 19th, 2012. Also eight countries and institutions sent representatives to attend the Invisible Children 's Global Summit on the LRA in Washington, DC, to discuss stopping the LRA. Just this year on January 2013, Congress passed new legislation authorizing a reward of up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest of Joseph Kony.
Legal Effectiveness:
Because of the global campaign for Kony to be brought to Justice and all the pressure on governments to act, there has been a lot of action. Since the 2006 Juba Peace Talks the LRA has left Uganda. Although they have left they have still carried out their attacks in the border regions of north-eastern Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic. The LRA have spread out but ultimately answer to Joseph Kony. Due to Kony 2012 and global efforts by the UN, USA, Uganda, DR Congo and the African Union to stop Kony, the entire fighting force of the LRA has been reduced from approximately 1,000 in 2008 to about 300 fighters in 2012, excluding the abducted women and children who are used as “wives” and porters. Also, on May 12, 2012, Caesar Achellam, the oldest member of the LRA and one of Kony’s top three commanders, was captured by the UPDF in the Central African Republic. Through all the actions by the major countries and international organisations, Joseph Kony and the LRA are slowly being brought to justice. There numbers have been dramatically reduced, the world now knows about him, the children of Uganda are progressively getting safer and more and more child soldiers of the LRA are getting out. Although the LRA is still operating in the DR Congo and parts of Uganda, it won’t be long before those who are responsible are brought to justice. There are still millions of child soldiers in many countries all around Africa, all around the world and still even in Uganda. I think some of the focus should be taken off Joseph Kony and placed on helping the children who were, and still are, victims of Kony’s operations and working on how their rights as children and human beings can be protected.
Appendix:
Appendix 1: Child Soldier in Uganda
Appendix 2: Map of Uganda showing the Acholi region
Appendix 3: Yoweri Musevini – President of Uganda at the Time.
Appendix 4: Alice Lakwena of the Acholi tribe – Head of the former Holy Spirit Movement
Appendix 5: Joseph Kony of the Acholi Tribe – Head of the Lords Resistance Army
Appendix 6: Night Commuters in Uganda
Appendix 7: CROC book (left) and the UDHR logo (right)
Appendix 8: (Interview by IRIN to former LRA child soldier Moses Rubangangeyo) humanitarian news and analysis a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Moses Rubangangeyo was abducted by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) at the age of 15 and served as a soldier in its ranks for nine years. Formed in 1987, the LRA is a rebel paramilitary group that operates mainly in northern Uganda. It has been engaged in armed rebellion against the government for nearly 20 years. The LRA has been accused of widespread human-rights violations, including the mass abduction of civilians and the use of child soldiers.
QUESTION: How did you become a member of the LRA?
ANSWER: I was abducted in 1996 from my boarding school in Gulu when I was 15 years old. On 22 August 1996, at around midnight, 29 LRA soldiers, each with a gun, surrounded our school. They attacked us, tied our hands together, and we were forced to move off into the night. They took us to join the force of a commander some distance away, who has since died.
After two days on the move, they gathered us together, picked two people at random – one of whom was my brother – and killed them in front of us to make sure we were too afraid to escape. Then we were beaten – each person was given 50 strokes. This was to mark us as LRA soldiers. We were not used to that kind of beating and torture, and so suffered from a lot of pain.
We continued to move for months. On 9 October, the same commander who abducted us abducted some other people. We were all trained together and told that if we escaped, we would be killed, and that if someone else escaped, we would all be beaten. In December 1996, we were shipped to Sudan, where our intensive training took place and where we were equipped with AK-47s. All the abductees were very well armed – we each had our own gun.
Q: Did having a gun change your experience?
A: If you have a gun, you are respected. A gun means that you have been trained and are now a soldier. For the first six months in the LRA, you are doubted. You are just a recruit and are not taken seriously. They beat you and do not give you enough food. They make you carry heavy loads, and if you complain, they will beat you to death with a gun. When you have your own weapon, you have a greater sense of identity - you are much more free. Almost nobody will monitor you, nor think that you will escape.
Q: What sort of weapons does the LRA have, and how do they operate?
A: The LRA has underground stores - the Sudanese government supplied the weapons and the LRA then buried them. They have pistols, AK-47s, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] B10 recoilless rifles, SPG9 Kopye guns, mortars, 12.7 anti-aircraft guns and GPMGs [general purpose machine guns]. The LRA are more heavily armed than the government, and their weapons are much more sophisticated. The Sudanese also gave the LRA four tanks with trained drivers.
In addition, the LRA uses telephones, walkie-talkies and satellite phones, and they depend on the local community to gather information. The local people would tell us: “They [the UPDF, Uganda People’s Defence Force, the official armed forces of Uganda] have a mortar and 200 soldiers.”
Q: How do abductions take place, and whom does the LRA target?
A: Five soldiers alone can abduct 100 people. They can overrun a village. Just four soldiers can carry out a successful ambush. The LRA likes to abduct nine- to 15-year-olds because it is easy to turn the mind of a young person. “We will overthrow Museveni, and you will be a minister,” they told us. “We are not abducting you, we are saving you from Museveni.”
Kony [Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA, who claims to be a mystic and a prophet] has a spirit that everyone fears: It follows you wherever you go. If you do something wrong, it will see and will kill your parents.
Children between the ages of seven and nine are the best fighters, so they will not be tortured. In fact, if a child between seven and nine years old died under my charge, I would have to explain why. But if they are older, they could be tortured or left to starve, and I wouldn’t be questioned about the death.
The girls who are abducted are the 11- and 12-year-olds. When they reach 16, they are given to men, but some will have previously been sex slaves.
Q: How are children born in captivity treated?
A: If you are born in captivity, you are part of a new generation. They will not torture you, but will teach you: “This is an RPG; this is an AK-47.” Such children are not just trained in one arm, but can set landmines and shoot RPGs and mortars. Even a child who is one metre tall can fire an RPG.
Seven- to nine-year-old children are the best fighters, as if they are told to kill someone, they will do it. They have no values. They do not think - they just do it. They are brave, brutal and active in the field. A child soldier cannot question. However, if they do, they will be punished. A recruit was given a gun while an officer bathed, and when he had soap in his eyes, the child escaped with the gun. He was quickly caught, and beaten 600 times and told to recover the gun. When he ran away again, they went after his relatives.
Q: How did the LRA obtain supplies when you were with them? And what effects did these tactics have on the local population?
A: When we were in Sudan, there was a period during which we had no food. We had to fight for food, and when there were no internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, we had to rely on looting. The Sudanese government did not give us enough food. At least 1,000 LRA soldiers died in Sudan due to malaria, malnutrition and a lack of medicine. If they had not been taken to fight in the bush, they would not have died in this way.
Many women and children were killed in the conflict. A [helicopter] gunship will shoot any women and children, because they do not know how to dodge the fire – they walk in a line, and it is very easy to target them. Women were also raped at gunpoint. If a man with a gun tells a woman, “I want to have sex with you,” what will she do? Where will she go? She has to comply.
No one knows how many people have died – the UPDF and UNICEF [UN Children’s Fund] don’t know. They just guess. The LRA does not bury people, especially those killed in battle. Rather they leave the body under a tree and cover it with leaves. So the LRA also does not know how many have died, as there are no graves to count.
Appendix 9: Juba Peace Talks
Appendix 10: One of many KONY 2012 posters:
Bibliography:
http://invisiblechildren.com/kony/#epic-progress http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/apr/16/has-kony-2012-changed-anything http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/undpa/main/activities_by_region/africa/central_africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony#Action_against_Kony http://www.irinnews.org/indepthmain.aspx?InDepthId=8&ReportId=58968 www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://invisiblechildren.com/about/history/ http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/briefing/soldiers/soldiers.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children