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Heart and Soul: Uganda: Return of the Child Soldiers

Uganda: Return of the Child Soldiers

12/05/2012 GMT

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Uganda: Return of the Child Soldiers

How can former child soldiers abducted by the LRA can be helped to overcome their trauma?

Paul Bakibinga asks how former child soldiers abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) can be helped to overcome their trauma.

Northern Uganda, for over 20 years a no-go area because of a brutal insurgency by one of Africa's most-feared rebel militias, the Lord's Resistance Army under Joseph Kony, is back in the news after falling off the radar.  

In 2010, US President Obama announced a plan to disarm the LRA and encourage its remaining fighters to defect.    

But most LRA insurgents were abducted as children and have never known normal life - how can they be rehabilitated?  

And what can Uganda learn from other countries that have had to reintegrate their child soldiers, such as Liberia or Mozambique? 

Paul Bakibinga visits the remote town of Patongo, where one married couple, David and Agnes Lagen, now work with traumatised youngsters who have returned to their communities.  

David himself narrowly escaped the LRA, but saw his classmates brutally butchered; whereas Agnes was abducted and forced to witness and commit atrocities.  

Now they dedicate their lives to giving young child soldiers an education and psychosocial counselling – and training some of them as peer counsellors.  

One of the most difficult aspects of their work is what could be called spiritual abuse: the children were made to believe that slaughter and brutality are God's work, yet many of them still express strong religious beliefs - how can this dilemma be addressed?

(Image: Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Credit: Getty Images)

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