Geoffrey Oyat examines the use of child soldiers and abductions in Uganda, discusses education as a form of child protection, and considers the measures that need to be taken in the future.

Geoffrey Oyat works with Save the Children in Uganda as the Head of Child Protection. Save the Children in Uganda is a consolidation of programmes of SC UK, Denmark and Norway, with extensive programming for children affected by armed conflict in northern and western Uganda. In other volunteer capacity, Geoffrey is the National Co-ordinator for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in Uganda. He is also a Research Associate with the Liu Institute for Global Studies - University of British Colombia.

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Child Protection in Uganda	3 min 02 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime
No Safe Haven	3 min 02 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime
Beyond legislation	3 min 33 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime

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Child Protection in Uganda

My name is Geoffrey Oyat, I am working with Save the Children in Uganda as the head of child protection, and I am also the national coordinator for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in Uganda.

Both Save the Children and the Coalition are standing for a straight 18 [years old] position in terms of recruitment and use of children by any armed group or government, and therefore we are working on the issue of removal of children from the LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] groups. Here it is mainly work on protection of children in northern Uganda from abduction, so that they may not fall in with the armed groups. As a humanitarian agency, we do not have any other access to these groups. Therefore, our main work in the north is to protect those who are not abducted. And for those who are lucky enough to come out, we provide services for rehabilitation and eventual community reintegration.

But if you have followed the annual reports of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict, you will also realize that there are two other parties named as recruiting and using children: the Ugandan army, which is the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces, the UPDF, and the Local Defence Units, the LDUs. So with these groups, which are government and government-affiliated, we are working and advocating for government to put tighter measures in place in terms of who they recruit. As well, if there is a discovery that somebody underage has infiltrated the army or the Local Defence Unit, we advocate for removal, immediate removal. What we are doing right now is that we have stepped up that work a little further to make sure that the UPDF Act, which is the law governing the army, criminalizes the act, so that any government officer who does not take the necessary precautions against recruiting a child either in the army, which is the UPDF, or in any of the local militias, is brought to book.

No Safe Haven

In terms of prevention, in northern Uganda we are dealing with two scenarios, abduction and recruitment. As far as abduction is concerned, the prevention measure is better protection—better protection of the communities where the children are living, better protection of the camps. In that instance, you deal with it. And of course, we know of the International Criminal Court processes, where the leadership of the LRA are now indicted. We are happy that one of the charges against this group is recruitment. We think that it will send the right message, that there is no safe haven for those who recruit and use children.

Now, regarding the recruitment with the government and associated groups, after 20 years of conflict the economy is shattered, livelihoods are shattered. We do realize that there are a number of push-and-pull factors where underage children look at a career, or some form of work in the army, as the only option. This, therefore, goes to those of us who are actors and those of us who are funders in this situation. How do we improve the livelihood situation of children living under these situations of dire poverty, so that they do not look at the army as an avenue of recruitment? We of course also argue for birth and death registration. The first part of the recruitment issue for the Government of Uganda is that we do not have an efficient system of birth registration, and that makes it possible for an underage child to slip into the army—because there is no verifiable evidence of age. And therefore collusions with the local leaders in terms of falsifying age is possible. UNICEF has been working on this for as long as I know, and it’s not yet full scale, so we are wondering what the problem is. The UN should take a lead on that. The Government of Uganda must ensure that, beginning with areas of high risk, all children have proper birth registration certificates.

Beyond legislation

Since the end of the Second World War, most of the conflicts are internal conflicts, and most of them are protracted conflicts. So we are dealing with chronic humanitarian crises, which are decades—20 years in the case of Uganda, over 30 years in southern Sudan—before getting a glimmer of hope. So you get a shattered livelihood. We therefore need to look beyond legislation, saying ”you can’t recruit a child.” We have to look at how do we promote alternative means of earning a living for these children. As a person working on stopping the use of child soldiers, I feel defeated when I talk to some of the children who are in the army, and we are in the process of removing them, and they look at you as if you are doing a disservice to them.

We therefore need to look critically at promoting ways and means in which these communities, even after 10 or so years of conflict, still have possibilities for young people to go to school, for example—because we know that education can be a protection issue. The longer a child stays in school, the less the chances that they will think about going into the army. In Uganda, a child is 12, 13 or 14 years old in primary school, and then they don't have an opportunity to go to secondary school because they don't have the money. What are we doing about universal access to secondary school? If you keep this adolescent in school, that would be another six years. Now, if you add 14 plus 6, you’re at 20—you don't have a child soldier problem, because they will be coming out of secondary school at the age of 20, or 18 for those who start early. So funding such measures, for a country like Canada—to make sure that the child stays longer in school, to make sure that, in the case of the LRA, there are better protection measures in the internally displaced person camps—would go a long way to help.

Canada has been a champion of the Responsibility to Protect, and from being just an issue among the human security councils, we got a breakthrough in the UN. How are we taking that forward? I think if you picked on physical protection and better prevention in places for civilians in conflict situations, and you picked on promotion of education as a protection measure, you would go a long way toward helping to solve this problem of child soldiering. And, of course, there are issues like the promotion of death and birth registration. If the problem is funding, it could also be an area you could look at.