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civil war in sierra leone
civil war in sierra leone
civil war in sierra leone
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“Between 1987 and 2006, at least 20,000 Ugandan children were abducted [and] more than 1.9 million people were displaced from their homes”(Q&A on Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army). The Ugandan civil war began in 1987, when an army of people led by Joseph Kony attempted to overthrow the Ugandan government. Although Kony’s purpose was to turn Uganda into an all Christian country, his methods in doing so are not based on the ten commandments as which he intended. The Civil war in Uganda has been going on for 27 years now and although the violence rates have gone down due to the capturing of one of Kony’s top three commanders, the war continues destroying many lives. “Possibly as many as 500,000 people have been killed in the course of the conflict”(Tasneem Jamal 1). The attempted and continual rebellion of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda against the federal government has led to much destruction in the past, including the death of thousands of innocent people, still affects hundreds of thousands currently, who are living in perpetual fear of death and kidnapping, and will affect millions in the future.
As the civil war in Uganda is ongoing it continues to affect the Ugandan economy and government. Joseph Kony began the war and created the Lord’s Resistance Army. The objective of the Lords Resistance army was to help Kony overthrow the government and President Yoweri Museveni in addition to turning the country Christian. Although all the acts of the Lord’s Resistance Army involved some sort of violence, whether it was kidnapping, rape, and or death. [“The Lord’s Resistance Army] at its height numbered in the thousands” (Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army). The Lord’s Resistance Army hardly h...
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...Jamal, Tasneem. "Uganda." Project Ploughshares. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
"Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army | Human Rights Watch." Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army | Human Rights Watch. N.p., 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
Pham, Phuong N., Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover. "The Lord's Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda." The Lord's Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda 30.2 (2008): 409. JSTOR. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
"Uganda: Child Soldiers at Centre of Mounting Humanitarian Crisis." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
"Uganda." Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business, Trade, FDI, Corruption. The Heritage Foundation, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Falkenburg, Luke. "Youth Lost: Ugandan Child Soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army." Small Wars Journal. N.p., 15 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
In 1996 the war in Sierra Leone was becoming a horrific catastrophe. Children were recruited to be soldiers, families were murdered, death came easily, and staying alive was a privilege. Torture became the favorite pastime of the Revolutionary United Front rebel movement, which was against the citizens who supported Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. I was in the grips of genocide and there was nothing I could do. Operation No Living Thing was put into full effect (Savage 33).
“Child Soldiers Global Report 2001- Sierra Leone.” refworld. Child Soldiers International, 2001. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.
Raffaele, Paul. "Uganda: The Horror." Smithsonian (Vol. 35, No. 11). Feb. 2005: 90-99. SIRS Issues
Klasen, F. O. (2010). Multiple Trauma and Mental Health in Former Ugandan Child Soldiers. Journal of Traumatic Stress , 23 (5), 573-581.
"Facts About Child Soldiers." Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch, 03 Dec 2008. Web. 18 Nov 2013. .
"U.S. Relations With Uganda." U.S. Department of State, 08 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 May 2014. .
Some government leaders are finding the idea of agreeing to Kony’s terms may be the only way to settle this growing problem reasonably. They believe that giving him what he wants is the solution. People
Uganda is located in East Africa and is separated into three main parts- a dessert region, a plateau, and swampy lowlands. This country is bordered by Rwanda and Tanzania from the south, on the east by Kenya, on the west by Congo, and on the north by Sudan. Ugandans military systems are run mostly by the savage Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA is located in the northern part of Uganda and consists of a total estimate of 45,000 soldiers of which 15,000 of them soldiers are children aged five to sixteen. Uganda military personnel take control of children aged between five and up, and mold them into a creation of destruction to protect the people of Uganda. Many children between the ages of five and twelve have witnessed traumatic occasions that no child of that age should even imagine happening in reality.
The acts of violence that were performed by rebels in Africa were horrific. Adults and children were murdered, mutilated, tortured, and raped. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone performed despicable acts of cutting off a people's body parts with machetes to instill fear in the community. If you were working in the diamond mines and not performing up to the standards of the rebels you would lose a body part as punishment. Rebels would continue to do this from one village to another in order “to take control of the mines in the area” (Hoyt). It is estimated that in Sierra Leone that over 20,000 people suffered mutilation. The acts that the rebels performed to these innocent victims was clearly a violation to their human rights. The RUF collected 125 million a year to fund their war on the government and the people of Sierra Leone.
Child soldier is a worldwide issue, but it became most critical in the Africa. Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by some rebel groups and used as fighters, cooks, messengers, human shields and suicide bombers, some of them even under the aged 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Most of them are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups become their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed by the war. Sometimes they even forced to commit atrocities against their own family (britjob p 4 ). The horrible and tragic fate of many unfortunate children is set on path of war murders and suffering, more nations should help to prevent these tragedies and to help stop the suffering of these poor, unfortunate an innocent children.
From the time Idi Amin came to power in Uganda until the time his regime fell, his brutal rule negatively impacted Uganda in every aspect of its existence. In 1971, Idi Amin along with military support, ousted Prime Minister Milton Obote while he was out of the country in Singapore attending a Commonwealth summit meeting with many other leaders of African and European countries. Over the course of his violent reign, Idi Amin killed between 100,000 and 300,000 of his own people and doomed the economy with the expulsion of those of Asian nationality. Many of his victims were killed for no reason, or for a very insignificant action. Amin was in power from 1971 to 1979 and proved early into his dictatorship that he was very powerful. Only one week after the coup in which Milton Obote was overthrown, Amin declared himself president and took the titles of “Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces”, “Army Chief of Staff” and “Chief of Air Staff”. In 1972, Milton Obote along with roughly 20,000 Ugandans who had fled to Tanzania attempted to regain control of Uganda through a military coup, but it was not organized well and failed. Their failed attempt ultimately led to Amin purging Obote supporters, the majority of them being from the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups. Amin recruited people from South Sudan as well as those from his own ethnic group, the Kakwas. The majority of his victims were tortured before they were killed and were likely to be religious leaders, judges, lawyers, intellectuals, artists, journalists, or from other ethnic groups. The killing squads Amin formed and recruited people for were officially titled the “State Research Bureau” or the “Public Safety Unit”. Obviously these squads were quite the opposite of what their n...
Morse, Jane. “Nongovernment Groups Play Role in Stopping Use of Child Soldiers.” America.gov Press Release 29 Apr. 2008: 1-3. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
These are the words of a 15-year-old girl in Uganda. Like her, there are an estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen who are serving as child soldiers in about thirty-six conflict zones (Shaikh). Life on the front lines often brings children face to face with the horrors of war. Too many children have personally experienced or witnessed physical violence, including executions, death squad killings, disappearances, torture, arrest, sexual abuse, bombings, forced displacement, destruction of home, and massacres. Over the past ten years, more than two million children have been killed, five million disabled, twelve million left homeless, one million orphaned or separated from their parents, and ten million psychologically traumatized (Unicef, “Children in War”). They have been robbed of their childhood and forced to become part of unwanted conflicts. In African countries, such as Chad, this problem is increasingly becoming a global issue that needs to be solved immediately. However, there are other countries, such as Sierra Leone, where the problem has been effectively resolved. Although the use of child soldiers will never completely diminish, it has been proven in Sierra Leone that Unicef's disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program will lessen the amount of child soldiers in Chad and prevent their use in the future.
Joseph Kony is the evil mastermind behind the Lord’s Resistance Army. He is committed to establish a theocratic government in Uganda, which is claimed to be based on the Ten Commandments. The LRA has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000...
Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, stated in a conference, “I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter,” (Brainy Quotes). He grew up during the civil war in 1991, when the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.) attempted to overthrow the government. The R.U.F. took control of eastern and southern Sierra Leone territories that were rich in diamonds. In order to purchase weapons and ammunitions, the R.U.F. would enslave villages and use the citizens to mine diamonds and then sell the diamonds to Guinea and Liberia. The rebels would also force children to become soldiers for them. The war lasted eleven years, with an estimated amount of 50,000 to 300,000 dead.