(The Guardian) – hen Agnes Acayo escaped from the rebel group who had abducted her at the age of nine, she felt overjoyed to be free and back home at last. She had spent 10 years in captivity as a child soldier and later was forced to marry a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. […]
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(AFP) – A brutal rebellion by the Lord’s Resistance Army brought years of suffering to northern Uganda. Tens of thousands of children were abducted, their childhoods lost and communities broken. Now that the fighting is over, a group of former child soldiers is helping some heal through music therapy. Link
(International Justice Monitor) – A witness told the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Dominic Ongwen, who is on trial at the court, made her a “wife” of a commander when she was about 13 years old, and she feared she would be killed if she refused. Witness P-351 told the court on November 14 Ongwen made […]
(SCR) – This is Security Council Report’s (SCR) eighth research report dedicated to tracking the UN Security Council’s involvement with the issue of children and armed conflict. This report covers key developments during 2016 and through mid-October 2017. It pays particular attention to the role of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, with an […]
(PRI) – No one seems to remember what the boy’s real name was. But his cousin, Lily Atong, remembers him well. When she talks about him, she gets a distant, wistful look in her eyes. They grew up together, here in this village in northern Uganda. The boy was chubby, she says with a smile. Link
(The Guardian) – Dominic Ongwen’s trial, which begins in earnest on Monday, is one of the grimmest and most morally complex that the international criminal court has tackled. The body exists to try the worst offences: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It is not the horrifying list of charges, including rape and murder, that […]
(The Washington Post) – In October 2011, President Obama sent 100 U.S. Army Special Forces personnel to central Africa to help the Ugandan military pursue the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its notorious leader, Joseph Kony. Five years later, although the LRA is much weaker, Kony remains at large, orchestrating attacks against civilians. The Ugandan military, […]
(Al Jazeera) – Child soldier-turned-warlord Dominic Ongwen denied 70 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity on Tuesday when he became the first member of Uganda’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army ever to go on trial. Ongwen, 41, is also the first former child soldier to be tried by the International Criminal Court in The Hague […]
(Human Rights Watch) – The opening of the International Criminal Court trial of a Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander is an important new chapter in holding the rebel group accountable for its brutal crimes in northern Uganda, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial of Dominic Ongwen, who was abducted as a child and later became a […]
(Human Rights Watch) – What is the Lord’s Resistance Army? The Lord’s Resistance Army is an armed rebel group led by Joseph Kony. Organized in about 1987, it initially fought the Ugandan government in northern Uganda, with incursions into South Sudan. Ugandan military operations forced the group out of Uganda in 2005 and 2006. After that, […]
