UGANDA: Uganda should do more to stop child soldier recruitment - UNICEF

Photo: irin

KAMPALA, 13 November 2003 (IRIN) - Uganda is not actively recruiting child soldiers into the army, but neither is it trying hard enough to stop them being recruited, a senior officer with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday. "There isn’t in Uganda a deliberate policy to recruit children. No one is questioning the sincerity of the Ugandan government. But there are big problems in the implementation [of safeguards]," Mads Oyen, UNICEF child protection officer for Uganda, told IRIN. Oyen was speaking after the release of a UN Secretary-General's report on children and armed conflict, which named Uganda as one of the countries violating the Geneva convention by recruiting child soldiers. The UN report, internally distributed on 30 October, accused both the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and allied Local Defence Units (LDUs) of "recruiting and using children". "UPDF has also re-recruited children who have escaped or been rescued from the LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group]," the report said. "The scale of the problem is hard to assess but it certainly warrants immediate attention," Oyen told IRIN. "What we found is that UPDF procedures, if followed, would prevent child recruitment. But these are not always followed. Children do find their way into the UPDF". A rough idea of the scale of the problem is implied in the results of a UNICEF survey done at the Lugore training camp, in which 120 recruits out of a sample of 1200 were found to be "probably" under the age of 18. UNICEF officials say this violates the May 2000 optional protocol of the Geneva convention on the rights of the child, signed by Uganda, according to which any kind of recruitment whatsoever of anyone under 18 into a country’s armed forces is forbidden. The report’s release prompted an angry response from the Ugandan army. Speaking to the state-owned daily newspaper, the New Vision, army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza said: "We do not recruit soldiers below 18 years. If people sneak into recruitment due to lack of proof and we find out they are below 18, we pull them out". But Oyen said the response does not excuse Uganda from the point of view of the convention. "According to the convention, the burden of proof is quite clearly on the recruiter. So when UPDF is in doubt, they should abstain from recruiting".