Child soldiers in Uganda
Introduction
Children in Uganda are facing a tremendous problem that has, and will affect their lives because of the war that has been ongoing in their country for the past 25 years. The children are being used as soldiers despite their young and tender ages while children in other parts of the world of the same age are enjoying and spending their childhoods in a more peaceful and creative way. Moreover, these children are fighting a war that should be fought by adults and not them. This child soldiers are affected in a number of ways but to be specific my focus in this essay will be on the mental or psychological effects the war has on them and what can be done to help them. The war involves torture, murder, rape that combined give a child serious mental or psychological effects leading to multiple trauma related issues like major depressive order and posttraumatic stress according to a research by the US National Library of Medicine National Institute of Health.
What causes the trauma related effects?
Night commuters
Because of the war, Ugandan children are in continuous movement and especially those who stay in Internally Displaced Person camps. These areas are either not protected or not well protected hence making them vulnerable to attacks. Therefore, in order to be safe the children commute every night to protected areas or cities that are kilometers away from their homes. Wherever they go, they sleep in bus parks, hospital verandahs, local factories, and church grounds that at that moment are safe havens for them. They do this so that they can feel a sense of comfort and safety as said by one of the UNHCR spokesperson who is currently assisting an NGO called Invisible Children in Uganda. Ugandan children nightly experience this phase of life that is a horrible reality, where they have nobody to protect them apart from themselves, and where they constantly fear being killed and being abducted. The Invisible Children documentary shows that this threatens the children’s stability, increases their likelihood of not advancing educationally, and engaging in early-unprotected sex.
Abductions
Estimates have that the LRA have abducted almost 20,000 students and forced them into child soldiers. Abductions occur in small villages, schools, and IDP camps, which are heavily populated. Schools in particular are the most hit. The LRA soldiers through intimidation and mass violence then conscript fresh members into certain ranks. A twelve-year girl, Janet M., tells of her abduction experience in 2002 by the LRA. She says the LRA abducted thirty-two from her village comprising both adults and children. The LRA then gathers the adults and her father, beat them with machetes, and badly cut them in front of their eyes. With such a life, scarring experience what would not make one have trauma related issues.
Bush conditions
Furthermore, the LRA torture the kids. They beat them up with sticks, whips, and back of their weapon during initiation. As if that is not enough they then force them to kill one another and kill innocent villages as way of turning them into soldiers as explained by one of those abducted children. This totally turns the children from innocent little angels to killing machine monsters that are deprived of their humanity.
Girl’s treatment
In the war, the boys are taught to be fighters while majority of the girls kidnapped become slaves to the families of the commanders of the LRA. Their roles revolve around mainly household chores that include cooking, carrying huge loads, cleaning and others. According to a UNHCR spokesperson Abigail Leibig in 2005, 20-30% percent of abductees in Northern Uganda are girls. When the girls attain puberty they take roles of wives to commanders and most of the times are treated as sex slaves. They are raped repeatedly and bear children of their rapists. This is according to an article by a Ugandan writer Kristin E. Cheney, ‘Our Children Have Only Known War’. Some are killed and others are infected with HIV.
Psychological effects of the war on children soldiers
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
The first is post-traumatic stress disorder, which is the most protuberant mental effect on a child soldier. According to National Institute of Mental Health PTSD develops after one goes through an ordeal that is terrifying where severe physical harm happened or is endangered. The traumatic events that the children faced including abductions, killings, torture, and domestic violence triggers PTSD in them. Ishmael Bear, once a child soldier says that he has terrible nightmares and has problem sleeping and further it escalates to insomnia since he experiences flashbacks of the horrible times when he was a child soldier. Moreover, he says that he once had a dream of a gunman placing a gun on his head, which made him wake up immediately and start shooting bullets in his tent. This is how bad the effects of war on child soldiers can be.
Adjustment disorder
Secondly is the adjustment disorder. This disorder occurs in many children due to the abrupt change of life from being a civilian to being a soldier. The lifestyle change is rapid. This happens in phases in which phase 1 involves the child losing his/her identity to the ongoing war, but most importantly, they get deprived of their childhood. Child soldiers not only lose their innocence, which is a child’s, most valuable aspect, but also their childhood stolen. It changes from playing in mud to killing people in a couple of days. Second phase is where the disorder comes in. The child being forced to reconnect with society so that their identity is regained becomes a problem. This is so since they find themselves far behind the others who may be in school, and moreover the feeling of droopiness that comes with the horrifying experience they endured. According to the Invisible Child documentary, these children continue to face adjustment disorder for a long period even though they seem to adjust to new environments.
Personality disorder
Third is the personality disorder, which happens due to exposure to impressed ideologies, violence, and being forced to accept a tenacious moral code. Child soldiers lose the capability to empathize and get involved in actions that are aggressive, violent, or manipulative, and may decide to in a manner that is unnatural. Ishmael Beah talks of his personality disorder experience, saying that his gun was his protector and provider, his squad his family, and his rule was to be killed or to kill.
Eating disorder
Fourth is the eating disorder. It is common for soldiers in war not to be fed well in the impoverished nations, the children also face the same consequence. The children train their bodies to use less food since starvation state they are in is constant. A survey says that 27% of 301 prior child soldiers are forced into drinking urine of their own due to starvation. This affects the child in a way that on one hand even when they are offered enough food they eat only the minimum required for them to remain alive. On the other hand, some eat a lot of food due to being ecstatic of their freedom to eating.
Depression
The fourth mental disorder is depression. Children soldiers later on get this feeling of regret, shame, and having to live for since they come to see the wrongs they have done. So even if a child soldier can overcome other types of mental disorders, this child will never get away from his/her prior memories of his actions that will haunt him/her forever. A UNHCR reporter interviewed this man Peter Chinua in Uganda who said that he keeps on remembering what he did to people and that it does not give him peace at all.
Conclusion
In order to solve the problem that this child soldiers are facing the government of Uganda should take local and international measures. Locally they should involve their full army and police department in providing protection in the affected areas. They should also create awareness to the people of their nation of the existing problem. Internationally they should ask for help through additional aid financially and qualified, experienced people in the specified field of dealing with mental problems. The additional aid they can get from donors, well-wishers, and international NGOS who see a reasonable cause in helping the ones affected. In addition, the Ugandan government should let the international community to interfere with the situation since it will ease the process of helping them.
References
Cheney, K.E. (2005). Our Children Have Only Known War: Children’s Experiences and the Uses of Childhood in Northern Uganda. Children’s Geographies.
Invisible Children Inc, & San Diego, CA: Invisible Children Inc. (2005).Uganda Programs: Schools for Schools [Video File]. http://www.invisiblechildren.com/history-of-the-war.
Leibig, A. (2005). Girl Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda: Do current Legal Frameworks Offer Sufficient Protection? Northern University Journal of International Human Rights, 3. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v3/6/
http://www.american.edu/cas/economics/ejournal/upload/Global_Majority_e_Journal_2-1_Beard.pdf
http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/01032/impacts.html
