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The Child is Innocent
Notes for an Address David Kilgour
Most children at one time or another have experienced a fear of being alone in the dark, or a fear that there are monsters lurking under their bed or in their closet. As children grow older they usually abandon these fears. However, in Uganda these fears are all too real. There really is reason to fear the coming of darkness and there really are monsters lurking in the shadows. Each and every night long columns of children totaling as many as 42 000 leave their homes in the rural areas of northern Uganda and commute to city centers such as Gulu where they spend the night sleeping in the open on porches, verandas, and in courtyards with nothing but straw mats to lay on and plastic bags to cover them.
The phenomenon of these children leaving their homes in the evenings to spend the night out in the open where they are exposed and vulnerable is only the latest development in a long and tragic saga. Since 1987 Joseph Kony has waged a campaign of terror against the people of northern Uganda. As this tragedy has unfolded the world has largely ignored the severity of the situation. Year after year children have continued to be abducted and subjected to all manner of physical and psychological abuse. Over the course of Joseph Kony’s insurrection no less than 20 000 children have been abducted and forced to live torturous existences. 1.6 million people are now homeless and 80% of the northern region’s population resides in cramped and squalid accommodations in displacement camps.
Failure to act in Darfur is also intimately related to the situation in northern Uganda. The continuing catastrophe and chaos there has made it a refuge for the Lord’s Resistance Army and enabled the rebel movement to regroup and mount fresh campaigns of terror against civilians not only in northern Uganda but in southern Sudan as well. As long as Darfur remains unstable and the genocide there continues unabated, it will be impossible to ever completely resolve the conflict in Uganda. Any attempt to bring peace and security into the lives of Ugandans residing in the north will require action in Darfur. This is one reason I am continuing to urge the Canadian government to take a leadership role to intervene in Darfur - not only for the sake of the Sudanese living in the south, but also for the sake of Ugandans in the north.
Northern Uganda is one of the world’s most neglected humanitarian disasters and it has wreaked havoc on the lives of families and most especially those of children. Young children have been forced by circumstance to engage in atrocious acts which they never could have imagined themselves taking part in. Children are forced to kill their parents and inflict violence upon others and young girls are raped and forced into lives of bondage as sex slaves. There is undoubtedly no other place on earth where children have suffered as much as they have in northern Uganda.
The situation is made all the more complicated by the fact that those who are inducted into the Lord’s Resistance Army and are thus perpetrators of violence are victims themselves. These children have been forced to join the rebellion against their will under threat of death and in may cases have been isolated by being forced to kill their own parents. The war being waged on behalf of Kony cannot even make the pretence of any justification. It is a war on children.
As Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-coordinator, Jan Egeland said, “The Lord's Resistance Army is the world's most brutal insurgency group and it is very difficult to handle that kind of systematic abduction of children.” I can think of nothing more evil than to abduct children for the purpose of turning them into killing machines and unleashing them upon their own people.
This catastrophe must be approached in the spirit of rehabilitation and reconciliation and I commend your organization, for the child is indeed innocent. You are an important part of the healing process that will inevitably be a part of any solution to the problems in northern Uganda. One child at a time, your actions today are helping to begin the healing process that will help to restore the future to its rightful owners, the children.
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