Vol: 21 ...............No:1.............................................................................. February/March 2008 |
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................... Children across Africa are emerging from conflicts in which they have served as soldiers or the ‘wives’ of rebel commanders and find themselves in a new, unfamiliar world. Usually poor and often without family, many resort to coping mechanisms that put them at risk of contracting HIV. “In Uganda, the HIV prevalence in the LRA [rebel Lord’s Resistance Army] is thought to be quite low, but in northern Uganda’s local population it is quite high, so demobilised children need to be prepared to avoid HIV,” he said. According to Decosas, the fact that many former child soldiers were deliberately desensitised to the horrors of killing and violent sexual assaults compounded the HIV risk because they found these attitudes hard to shake off when they returned to normal society. “They are conditioned to be disinhibited in every way - to violent behaviour and sexual behaviour. It’s hard for them to readjust.” “In the Ugandan context, these children are coming out of the bush and after a short stay at the reception centres are being put in the internally displaced camps,” said Daisy Muculezi, programme officer in charge of child protection with the UK-based Save the Children in Uganda. “This has the a lot to do with how they cope; many of them resort to sex work, or brew alcohol to make ends meet - common means of earning a living in the camps - others abuse alcohol.” Muculezi noted that the follow-up of these resettled children had not been as regular as it could have been, and many had returned to the streets within weeks of being placed, unable to cope with life in the camps. “We are now in the recovery phase in northern Uganda, and the government’s peace, development and recovery plan for the region has a social welfare component that we are looking at to fill the gaps in our handling of former abductees.” One of the ways to better serve the children, according to UNICEF’s Ismail, is to let the children have a say in choosing their future. “We do not want to force the children into vocations they do not want, so we let them decide whether they wand to be tailors, bakers, carpenters, or would rather continue with formal schooling.” Plan International has school programmes for former child soldiers in Angola, Mozambique and Sierra Leone that incorporate peace-building training and counselling for girls who had children as a result of rape during the conflict, as well as lessons in HIV prevention.
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