Seriously, how many adolescent girls are in Northern Uganda???
Ocii
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Ex-LRA rebels harass ‘wives’
Friday, 19th September, 2008
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Former LRA retunees and their children undergo a cleansing ritual at Kanyago
Parish in Gulu district
By Lydia Namubiru
Girls who were abducted and forcefully given as wives to LRA commanders are
still being pursued by their ‘bush husbands’, a study by two researchers
attached to the Feinstein International Centre in the US has revealed.
Reintegration in society is tough for these girls, the study found. Apart from
economic hardships, they face social stigma and harassment from the commanders,
some of whom continue to force them into the relationship.
They were abducted young and innocent, distributed among rebel commanders and
lived a dangerous bush life. The end of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
insurgence in northern Uganda and their escape from captivity promised a new
life. But, alas for them, the reality outside the bush proves harder than they
had expected.
Apart from having no income or skill to make a living, forcing some to go into
prostitution to feed their children, they face stigmatisation and harassment
from the very men they had been forcefully married to in captivity. Some force
them to stay in the relationship while others go after them when they try to
enter a new relationship.
This and more was revealed by a two-year research by two senior researchers
attached to the Feinstein International Centre, a research unit of Tufts
University in the US.
The researchers, Khristopher Carlson and Dyan Mazurana, interviewed 210 people
in northern Uganda, including 103 formerly abducted girls and discovered that
although normalcy is returning to northern Uganda, life for the former returnee
girls is far from normal.
The Feinstein study established that one in every six adolescent girls in
Acholi land was once abducted and kept captive for sometime by the LRA during
their 20-year insurgency. At least a quarter of them were distributed among the
male rebels as forced wives and half of those taken as wives bore children in
captivity.
Many of these girls have since returned from the bush with their children but
life in civil society is very difficult and complex for them.
“They are facing big problems. They get negative reception from some people,”
says Martin Ojara, the Gulu district speaker.
Some of the girls told the researchers that their former forced husbands are
intimidating them into re-uniting with them. In Lango some girls say that their
former bush husbands threaten to beat them up should they get into
relationships with other men.
“That report is true,” Ojara confirms. “Their bush husbands are former high
ranking LRA rebels, some of whom have been integrated into the UPDF. Some did
not even go through the normal rehabilitation process other returnees went
through. They do not understand how life in a proper government works. It is
very unfortunate that these girls were forced to be their wives in the bush.
That is not how a man and woman should get together in the first place.”
However, Falukas Boroa Enyaga, a social worker with World Vision in Gulu, says
some girls are also ‘willing’ to reunite with them.
“Some women want to return to their bush husbands because they have had
children with them. They do not want to remarry,” he explains.
Not without problems, though. The report talks of two formerly abducted girls
who returned to a captor husband who had resettled in a sub-camp outside of
Gulu town.
Each wife received a sewing machine from Gusco (Gulu Support the Children
Organisation) reception centre. Their captor husband, who had children with
them, stole one of the sewing machines to sell it in Gulu town. Gusco
subsequently intervened and repossessed the sewing machines, leaving the women
with nothing.
Another returnee girl and mother of two children had returned to the industrial
area near Gulu town where her bush husband was living with another wife from
captivity.
The man stole the materials she had received as a resettlement package,
including a mattress, jerry cans and cooking pots. She reported him to local
council officials, who forced the man to give back the items and even provide
support for his children. His other wife was infuriated and attacked her with a
panga.
These girls are caught in a vicious cycle of sexual exploitation. In the bush,
they were used to ‘bolster fighters’ morale’. Now, some find that they can only
survive by continuing to sell their bodies.
Some are forced by economic necessity to enter into relationships with men -
sometimes more than one- most of whom provide little anyway,” says the 70 page
Feinstein study report.
“Others have entered into sexual relationships with Ugandan army troops or with
male relatives as a way of finding protection and support.
Enyaga explains the dilemma. “They cannot afford life and they have all these
children. Many are not prostitutes; they get one man and if he fails to provide
for them, they move to another.”
Ojara regrets that the skills training the returnees get from humanitarian
organisations is not enough to sustain them when they get back home. “Many
returnees got a three months tailoring training at rehabilitation centres. They
were even given sewing machines. But just a few months down the road, they sold
the machines because their short training could not help them compete on the
market,” he said.
He calls for a special and comprehensive programme to rehabilitate and follow
up the returnees. “When someone has lived in the bush for seven years, three
months of rehabilitation is not enough. It should be a process that includes
follow-up and comprehensive psycho-social support,” he asserts.
He says that among other things, the returnees suffer from trauma, guilt as
well as a dependency syndrome, where they expect the Government or civil
society organisations to entirely provide for them.
The district speaker also calls on the Government to change the way it supports
former combatants. He cites the integration of ex-LRA into the UPDF without
mentally rehabilitating them as particularly problematic.
Enyaga adds that the girls not only need psychological and moral support and
economic empowerment, they also need to be accepted by the community.
According to the Gulu deputy speaker, Patrick Oola Lumumba, men shun these
girls. “You hear men say amongst themselves: ‘Do you know how many people used
this one?’”
Enyaga adds that men say these girls are still possessed by evil spirits of the
LRA and fear to associate with them.
Even those who return to their families find it hard. “I once worked with a
woman who had returned from the bush to her home in Pader. She was rejected and
her children were not allowed to play with others because they were rebels’
children,” Enyaga narrates.
The woman had to leave the home and now lives anonymously in Gulu where her
personal story is not as widely known.
The Feinstein researchers found that it is mostly in areas outside Acholi that
families refuse to take the girls back. When they do, some put a condition that
they abandon the children who were born to their bush husbands. They call them
‘rebel’ children.
Ojara believes the stigma can and will be alleviated. “We shall continue
talking to the people. I am sure this will go down. I can say there is less
stigma than there was before the peace talks,” he says.
But the Gulu district RDC denies that the girls are having any trouble
assimilating into the community.
“I have not heard of anything like that. What I know is that when these girls
come back, they go to their parents and are taken back to school. About stigma,
we have warned the people that stigma is strictly prohibited. And if anyone
does it, the law will take its course,” says Walter Ochora, who is a former
combatant himself.
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