Child soldiers in Uganda are members of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has been abducting young people since 1987 to fill out their ranks.
Traditional beliefs about cen, a kind of malevolent spiritual force or vengeful ghost, contributes to villagers perceiving former abductees as socially polluting and potentially dangerous.
The Lord's Resistance Army is an armed rebel group based in Uganda that has abducted over 67,000 youth and 30,000 children for use as child soldiers and sex slaves since its inception in 1987.
[2] The Lord's Resistance Army began as an extension of the Holy Spirit Movement, which was a rebellion against President Museveni's oppression of the Northern region of Uganda in addition to being a religious sect.
[7] This tactic raises costs of an outside option, while training and an organization structure based on small groups work together with the LRA belief system to create an intense in-group/out-group identity.
[10] During captivity in the LRA, the former child soldiers in this study were directly exposed to warfare, as all of them reported at least one of the sixteen recorded war-related experiences.
[10] Those that survive integration and are able to "prove themselves" are eventually assigned to a variety of positions within the army, including carrying supplies, participating in armed hostilities, or, for girls, watching over other children, or becoming sexual beings for Kony's favored commanders.
[10] The harsh living conditions include lack of access to food and water, jobs and income, and medical attention and education.
[9] Sixty-two percent of the child soldiers, who were mostly older males, in this study went through military training, where they learned how to use weapons and organize attacks.
[12] Most liberated child soldiers were sent back into society by means of reception centers—largely triggered by the visit to the area by the UN Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs in 2003, the referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court in 2004 and the successful publicity campaign launched by Invisible Children the same year.
[13] They told workers that their neighbors had been calling them names, including references to where a returned child had spent time and received support.
[13] The interviewers also said that some of the children felt oppressed by what they knew their neighbours thought about them because many of those who had killed or witnessed terrible events with the LRA continued to be disturbed by their memories.
[14] According to African legend, cen is possessed by those that have "witnessed or perpetrated violence, or been in physical contact with a dead body, and is perceived and experienced as socially polluting and potentially dangerous".