| dc.description.abstract | Northern Uganda has undergone a long civil strife period since the year 1986. Significant numbers of children have been recruited by the LRA as combatants or in other roles including cooks, porter and wives. Many have been victims of forced recruitment and attack, and many participated in killing. A brief glance at Africa, and in particular Northern U ganda, should suggest that the methods adopted to deal with conflict prevention have achieved little success. It is clear that there are complex causes of conflict and that one cannot view conflict in a narrow sense, but must take account of economic and social factors to truly understand its causes and process. The conflict that this study captures is that experienced in Northern Uganda where children are recruited by rebel group Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and made to fight each other as soldiers and often conduct killings.
Although obvious ethical problems attend descriptions of child soldiers as .damaged goods, even well-intentioned labels such as 'child soldiers' pose serious problems. While there may be value in designating separately children who have had particular kinds of experiences likely to have particular developmental impacts, categorisation often sets the stage for stigmatisation and marginalisation. It is imperative to protect children from armed conflict by passing specific legislation that outlaws recruitment of children to armed conflict. Once such legislation is in place, it is necessary to build a strong institutional framework for implementation. The Republic of Uganda has not been successful in this regard. | en_US |
