As recently as September 17, almost one hundred children were abducted from various schools in northeastern Congo. According to the Associated Press, UNICEF is demanding from the LRA: the immediate and unconditional release of all of the abducted children, who were taken during simultaneous attacks on the Kiliwa, Duru, and Nambia villages in Orientale Province [...]

…says Dr James Okello, a psychiatrist at Gulu University’s faculty of medicine, who also told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting: The formal health sector alone is not sufficient to meet [their] needs… Mental disorders, for example, developmental disabilities, are risk factors for [poor] learning, underachievement, and school drop-out. Vulnerable children [orphans, former child [...]

Reintegration is an ongoing challenge for all former child soldiers. Whether heading back into society in their country of origin, into a new society as a refugee, former child soldiers face the dangers of stigmatization and reprisal attacks. In Uganda, many child soldiers who have passed through the camps or rehabilitation centers, receiving emergency health [...]

WIDE ANGLE is with the center’s counselors as they help the physically and emotionally scarred children put their lives back together. Jennifer Akelo was abducted by the LRA when she was nine years old, handed a gun and trained to fight. Raped by a rebel soldier, Jennifer now fears that she is HIV positive. Kilama, [...]

…according to a recent statement from L’Action Sociale, an NGO working with children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the organization, more than 3,000 are on the streets, many of them former child soldiers who have either never been reintegration with the aid of an organization, or have been released without long term [...]

It is estimated that more than 25,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to fight in some capacity in the decades-old conflict in Uganda (started in the early 1980s). Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has denied accusations that his army has recruited and kidnapped children. And while UN chief Ban Ki-moon [...]

Yesterday, an article in the New York Times highlighted the new report on child soldiers by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers – in section A of the paper (page 18). A quote: The number of conflicts in which children are used as soldiers has dropped sharply in the past four years, [...]

Invisible Children is an organization that was developed after a small group of filmmakers from southern California traveled to Africa looking for a story to tell. These guys got more than they bargained for. They traveled to Uganda and started hearing stories about the “night commuters” – children who travel miles every night from their [...]