WUNRN
FORMER GIRL SOLDIERS TRADE ONE
NIGHTMARE FOR ANOTHER
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14
2012 (IPS) - “When I was still at school I was abducted by the Lord’s
Resistance Army, along with 139 other girls,” says Grace Akallo. “I spent seven
months in captivity, but I survived, I escaped and I went back home.”
Twelve
years ago, when Akallo was still a child, her life took an unexpected turn when
she fell into the hands of Joseph Kony’s notoriously brutal rebel force known
as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Today, she is married with a
child, a masters degree and a mission in life: to give a voice to the female
child soldier.
Formed in
“When girls are first abducted,
it is the same as for boy soldiers,” Akallo told IPS. “They are beaten and
mistreated, they are trained to become child soldiers, given AK-47s, and forced
to kill.
“Most of the children are sent
to the forefront, with the leaders behind them. Your bullets are finished? You
shoot your friend in order to get more bullets. At the same time the leaders
used children as shields, so that the children get shot and they survive.”
What makes a girl child soldier
different is the sexual abuse that they are forced to endure, says Akallo.
“Most girls were sexually abused, including me. I was lucky I did not return
home with a child, or get infected with HIV or any other disease.
“Many of these girls had to
give birth while in captivity, some of them had to go fighting with children on
their backs, and some gave birth on the battlefield,” she said.
But the plight of the female
child soldier is largely hidden from view, masked by the leaders of armed
groups who refer to girl combatants as “wives” or “sisters”.
Girls are summarily awarded to
male combatants, and Kony is reported to have had up to 50 girls in his
immediate household at one time.
“Some are given to just one
commander, and some are given to multiple men,” Akallo told IPS.
Disarmament,
demobilisation and reintegration
Due to the roles that girls
play, including cooking, domestic tasks, transporting provisions and sexual
services, they are rendered almost invisible, under the radar of international
law and disarmament initiatives.
Disarmament, Demobilisation and
Reintegration (DDR) programmes have been in operation since the 1980s and the
U.N launched its formal set of guidelines in 2006. But progress has been
patchy, especially regarding girl soldiers.
“When you disarm somebody, you
ask them to return their arms. Many of the female child soldiers do not carry
arms. They are used as sex slaves and bush wives. From that point of view, I do
not think that DDR has been successful,” Ugoji Adanma, founder of the Eng Aja Eze Foundation, which helps
women and girls emerging from conflict, told IPS.
International law has also
“dramatically excluded” female soldiers, according to Matthew Brotmann,
director of international programmes and adjunct professor of law at Pace Law
School, speaking at a Jun. 4 conference titled “The Incidence of the Female
Child Soldier and the International Criminal Court”.
By failing to include specific
gender-related definitions in legal instruments and policy guidelines, “We are
forcing a square peg into a round hole,” Brottman told IPS.
“We cannot treat all victims
the same regardless of gender,” he said.
In the recent trial of
Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the enlistment of children as soldiers
was enshrined as a war crime for the first time.
But commanders of Lubanga’s
militia group, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), were not held to account
for allegations of rape, which raises fundamental questions about the bias of
international law.
“The incidence of the female
child soldier was not really taken into consideration. It was noted, but why
did the prosecutors not tender the evidence of core witnesses as to the sexual
violence against females? That is my concern,” Adanma told IPS.
Reconciling communities
The reintegration of female
child soldiers poses one of the greatest challenges for ex-combatants and those
endeavouring to protect them, from grassroots NGOs to governments and the
international community.
Funding is lacking, and though
donors are quick to respond in emergencies, reintegration often falls into the
murky area between emergency assistance and development assistance.
“In
But the complexity of
reintegrating ex-combatants defies simple solutions.
“Neither boy nor girl child
soldiers are really accepted back into society, but for the girl child soldier
it is (harder) when they have unwanted children,” Akallo told IPS.
“The boy child soldier can go
back to school, train and develop life skills but for a girl, for her to go
back to school and try and acquire life skills they have to think of their
children, arrange babysitting or stay at home.
“With boys, people can forget
that they used to be soldiers, but the girl soldier walks with a child, which
makes her past unforgettable. The stigma stays with her,” Akallo explained.
“Personally, I struggled a lot.
I was called names – ‘Kony’s wife’, ‘Kony’s prostitute’ – even the girls that I
worked with would call me names.
“Social workers, and people
working with girl child soldiers have to be really very strong to be able to
walk with these girls in the community.”
Akallo recently founded an NGO
based in northern
“What we do is mostly focused
on the reintegration and rehabilitation of children,” Akallo told IPS.
The NGO is currently in the
process of building a community health centre and a counselling centre, which
will focus on reconciling the community.
“It is very important that girl
child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to
fend for themselves,” she said.
Looked upon as soiled,
stigmatised as HIV carriers, and ostracised as mothers to children born of war,
without support female ex-combatants have few doors open to them in society.
“Many female ex-combatants turn
to prostitution,” she said. “They may no longer be child soldiers but they are
forced to trade in their freedom once more.”