Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Johns Hopkins University Press, Human Rights Quarterly, 2(30), p. 404-411

DOI: 10.1353/hrq.0.0007

SSRN Electronic Journal

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.1448370

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

The Lord's Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda

Journal article published in 2008 by Phuong N. Pham ORCID, Patrick Vinck, Eric Stover
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a spiritualist rebel group with no clear political agenda, has abducted tens of thousands of children and adults to serve as porters and soldiers. Experience of forced conscription into the LRA is traumatic and varies in scope and intensity. Children and youth - some as young as 7 and 8 years old - have been forced to mutilate and kill civilians, including members of their own families and communities. In 1994, a group of parents of abducted children to establish the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), a reception center in Gulu that provides medical care, counseling, and a number of other services. More than 20,000 children and youth have since passed through GUSCO and other reception centers throughout northern Uganda.In December 2005, the Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations launched The Database Project to better document abduction and help improve the capacity of 8 reception centers in the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Apac, and Lira to collect and analyze information about former LRA abductees. At the time, these centers were still providing housing and care to hundreds of children and youth. This report presents the findings of the project, which analyzes the overall incidence of abduction based on those data and provides recommendations aimed at improving the process of reintegrating former LRA abductees into their communities.