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NEWS STORY
By Katy Powell August 27, 2007 Kampala, Uganda -- At 12, Lucy Aol was clutching a rifle in an ambush of government soldiers. At 13, a rebel commander made her his wife. At 16, she was a mother. Now 21, Aol is studying environmental health at college and planning to use her knowledge to improve the health of her war-torn nation. But millions of children across Africa continue to be victims of war - orphaned, driven from their homes, denied education and, like Aol, made to fight in civil wars. Slowly the world's horror at child soldiery and its pursuit of the perpetrators as war criminals has begun to yield results. Girls account for 30 percent of the young fighters. They face challenges boys don't, such as rape. Aol was 12 when she was abducted by Uganda's feared Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), forced to walk hundreds of kilometres to a base in Sudan and taught to use a gun. The LRA is estimated to have abducted 25 000 children in its 20-year insurgency. "We were used like slaves," said Aol, sitting in the cramped students' residence in which she stays at Kampala's Mulago Medical College. Peace talks are under way, but appeals for the LRA to free the children meet with denials that they are being coerced into soldiery. But the LRA is believed not to have abducted children since the cease-fire a year ago. The number of soldiers younger than 18 cannot be estimated, humanitarian groups say, although some guess there may be 300 000 in Africa. Aol said most of the fighters at her base ranged in age from 10 to 15. "You get trained in guns for one or two weeks, then you are sent to a battle, but most don't know how to fight, so they are killed. The rebels tell you 'Don't surrender, don't run' or they will kill you." At 13, Aol was made the third wife of a commander. She suffered "sexual abuse" and was beaten by her older co-wives. She considered suicide. Three years later she persuaded her "husband" that a better life awaited them back home. One morning, fearing for their lives, they fled Sudan. Back in Uganda, government soldiers killed her "husband" and took her captive. She was taken to a centre for former combatants, where she received counselling and learned she was pregnant. Her family welcomed her home, but her neighbours, whose daughter had been killed by the rebels, were less accepting. "People say we have ghosts attached to us because we have killed," Aol said. Returning girl soldiers have it tougher, according to Susan McKay, a professor of Women's and International Studies at Wyoming University. "Girls are perceived to have more thoroughly violated social norms than boys." Peace agreements in recent years, including those of Sudan, Ivory Coast and Burundi, have included a framework for returning children to society. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN's special representative for children and armed conflict, hopes to see standard paragraphs on child protection in all agreements ending wars where children fought. More than 100 countries have ratified a UN treaty banning the conscription of children, and a working group that reports to the Security Council on situations involving child soldiers has had successes. Later this year, the International Criminal Court in The Hague is to try a former militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thomas Lubanga, in the case focusing on the use of child soldiers. story url
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