By Josephine Adams
The Rescue was an event organised by three young American film makers, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, who founded Invisible Children, a non-profit organisation that aims to help put an end to the exploitation of children as soldiers.
The idea of The Rescue was that participants would “abduct themselves” by taking just a few survival items to camp at a designated site.
They were not allowed to leave the site until a celebrity or media mogul came and spoke out about the plight of the Ugandan child soldiers. When this happened, the city was “rescued”.
The activists spent their time “abducted” writing letters to the children concerned and also to influential people they hoped would help free the child soldiers.
This event received a mixed response. Some applauded it for bringing attention to the issue, while others said it didn’t highlight the seriousness of the situation clearly enough.
Juliane Okot Bitek, a Ugandan woman living in Canada, felt that “to ask thousands of young people to pretend that they can “abduct themselves” into creating a new reality for the children in the northern Uganda is more than appalling, it is manipulative and undermines the horror of the last two decades of suffering over there”.
The organisers, however, firmly believe that raising awareness, and more than US$23,000, is what’s most important. It also gained the attention of governments around the world, which have put resources towards helping negotiate peace in Uganda.
The reality facing child soldiers
Uganda is not alone in recruiting children to perform the horrific rites of war. Conflicts in Myanmar, Columbia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and several African nations affect young people in horrific ways. They miss out on education, are used as forced labour, as well as being used as soldiers in wars they may not understand.
Children can be forcibly recruited into armed forces, but also ‘volunteer’ because they see no other option; joining the army may be seen as the only way of surviving. Children may see these armies as a way to avenge murdered family members, earn status and power in their societies, or escape domestic abuse.
Unfortunately they are usually mistaken. We know from children who have escaped such situations that they are often required to prove their loyalty to armies by killing a friend or family member, they have no power over themselves or anyone else, and the violent abuse they are subjected to daily is worse than what they would suffer at home.
Photo by Joram Jojo
Uganda, Joseph Kony and the LRA
Uganda is a landlocked country in the east of Africa. Throughout its history, it has suffered various conflicts. The different ethnicities of Uganda have been pitted against each other, first as a method of control by the British colonisers, and after independence in 1962, by the Ugandan government itself.
This has led to the rise of many rebel groups including the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, is regarded as a holy man by his followers; none of them doubt his apparently ’supernatural’ powers.
The LRA was originally the Holy Spirit Movement, led by Alice Lakwena, whom Kony claims was his cousin. After her death, Kony took over and took the resistance group in a more violent direction, but with the continued aim of making Uganda a state based on the Christian Ten Commandments.
Invisible Children estimate that over 90% of the LRA’s forces were abducted as children.
Children all around northern Uganda live under constant threat of abduction and those who attend school often band together in groups to walk from their schools to safe sleeping areas in large cities.
It is because of these abductions that the current government placed thousands of its people in internal displacement camps (IDCs), originally meant to help protect the people from raids by the LRA. Unfortunately, these camps have just made the rebels’ jobs easier. With so many people packed together, LRA soldiers are able to attack many more people at one time, ruining homes, taking food, raping women and abducting children.
Abducted children can be used as soldiers, porters, sex slaves, or used to lay explosives. All are trained in combat and participate in violence. Many are made to kill friends or family.
A former child soldier, aged 13, describes what happened when he was made to join: “Early on, when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA explained to us that all five brothers couldn’t serve in the LRA because we would not perform well. So they tied up my younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until two of them died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old.”
The reality of The Rescue
The children fortunate enough to escape or be rescued then face another set of obstacles. The psychological, and often physical, scarring left after serving in the LRA means that many children are haunted by the abuse they suffered, the people they have killed and by guilt for what they have done. Funding for specialised rehabilitation centres is very limited.
Many will be stigmatised by their communities for what they were a part of, whether they volunteered or not, and post-traumatic stress is common.
Faced with the reality of the life of a child solider, it is easy to understand Juliane Okot Bitek’s criticism of The Rescue, but I believe both Bitek and The Rescue’s organisers have a point.
The Rescue successfully raised awareness of the issue, as well as more than US$23,000. However, it is unclear just how well the young people involved understood what’s actually happening in Uganda.
The biggest appeal of this kind of event for young people is often just the opportunity to get out and actively feel like we’re helping to make a difference. There is nothing wrong with this; it is, in fact, a very good thing. But does The Rescue undermine the suffering of children in Uganda over the last two decades?
Maybe, maybe not, but these young people are trying to recreate an ‘abduction’; a horror that they cannot possibly comprehend.
TAKE ACTION
- Visit www.invisiblechildren.com and donate money, or find out about new initiatives that Jason, Bobby and Laren are planning.
- Donate to organisations such as Save the Children and War Child, which also strive to protect children living in conflicted areas.
- There are several documentaries about child soldiers, such us those by Invisible Children; and Uganda Rising, by Act for Stolen Children. Plan a screening in your community to raise awareness, and encourage others to try to make a difference.
- Organise your own demonstrations or events to help raise awareness and money.
LEARN MORE
www.invisiblechildren.comwww.child-soldiers.org/home
http://therescue.invisiblechildren.com/en/#/watch/
www.savethechildren.org
www.warchild.org
Photo of The Rescue campaign by luos3r.
This article was originally published in Tearaway Magazine.
OIYP is a three year programme, which aims to build the capacity of the Action Partners (the name given to Youth Partners) by providing us with support and resources, and creating opportunities for dialogue, networking and learning. Our first opportunity came in October this year at Kaleidoscope, a festival where all of the Action Partners come together in Sydney, for nine days of workshops, dances, performances, art, theatre and meeting a zillion new people.
The welcoming ceremony took place on the first night, hosted by the Darug people, the indigenous people of the area. There was Aboriginal song and dance, which was responded to by various groups such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, and First Nations of the Americas. It was an incredible start to the event, and was at times very emotional.
During the week there were six plenary sessions, along with around fifty workshops, some of which were led by Action Partners. Some of the workshops were only two hours long, while others were four hours over two days. Topics ranged from project management, indigenous rights, land rights, to access to health, access to education, gender and equality, gender and sexuality, and using photography and film. They were helpful, although complaints arose due to their brevity and lack of international or easily transferable context. A complaint from the Latin Americans was that there was too great a focus on Western culture and issues, rather than a diverse representation
We had several opportunities to explore Sydney, predominantly in the evenings, although we did have one free afternoon. Many of us went to a salsa club on Friday night and some gay clubs on the Saturday. Art and dance was a significant part of Kaleidoscope, with Oxfam wanting to explore the power of various forms of art as a tool for development. There were large canvases for painting, dance, song, beat-boxing performances, all with opportunities to try it yourself. A particular highlight for me was watching dancers from Brazil, along with Capoeira performers.
The internet has revolutionised the way in which we communicate and share information. At the click of a button we are able to connect with millions of people around the world. Social networking websites like Myspace.com and Bebo.com are especially popular with young people. There are no limits around who you can communicate with — no limits in number (have as many “friends” as you want), no limits due to language (free translation sites are readily available) and no limits in geography (the whole world is figuratively at your fingertips).
The internet provides alternative sources of news and alternative ways of consuming it. It offers the best of the traditional mediums — audio, video and text — while being regularly updated and available to view at any time. There is also the opportunity for young people to become “citizen” journalists. Through things like blogs, discussion boards and personal websites all of us have the chance to share news, information and our own views on the world. While we have the chance to share our voice with the rest of the world, we’re also being exposed to voices from other people and other cultures, creating a generation with more global awareness than those that came before.
Even the social networking sites are being used for more than just socialising. The Darfur Action Network (based in the USA, but with international members) on Myspace aims to create awareness of the situation in Darfur, Sudan, and teaches members how to become active campaigners. No More Excuses on Bebo.com includes a photo petition to the New Zealand government about their international aid commitment. These groups (and hundreds of others) have their own websites, but most of the real networking and awareness work happens through these social networking sites.
Technology is shrinking distances and limitations, allowing the feeling that we are all connected to grow. The internet is helping young people in Aoteaora New Zealand feel like we can be part of something much larger than the small groups we are used to (school, sports teams etc). Young people are becoming increasing aware of the role we can play in creating change at a global level. We are not just citizens of our home town; we are citizens of the world.
The inaugural Pacific Youth Festival was a phenomenal gathering. Held in Tahiti from the 17th to 22 July 2006, it was a veritable showcase of cultural diversity, exchange, and open-minded enquiry. It was a vehicle for celebration, learning and sharing, and as ever with new learning, there was the challenge of stepping out of old comfort zones and seeing the world in a new light.
Tahiti. Sun, sand and… socio-political activism? This may not be the most likely combination, but for over 1000 youth from around the Pacific region, it seemed to do the trick. The inaugural Pacific Youth Festival held on the island of Pape’ete between the 17th and the 22nd of July, was a unique and thought-provoking experience for its participants. Over the five day period, we attended a number of conferences, workshops and seminars centred around the four festival pillars — namely fair globalisation, sustainable development, cultural diversity and conditions of peace. These ranged from the basic (what are human rights ?’) to the complex and challenging (”Recognition, Preservation and Protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property “), and provided a rare forum for youth from different countries and cultures to discuss issues concerning the Pacific Region.
