NGOs alarmed by high rates of child sex abuse

A Ugandan child advocacy group has expressed alarm at the results of a recent survey indicating that over 50 percent of children in Uganda below the age of 10 years have experienced various forms of sexual abuse. The New Vision government-owned newspaper reported on Monday that most cases of child sexual abuse involved direct involvement in sexual acts, exposure to pornographic material or witnessing adults having sex in slum areas, where parents often sleep in the same room as their children. "Cases of child abuse have become rampant. People like aunties, uncles, brothers and sisters abuse the children," the paper quoted Basil Kandyomunda, chairman of the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network (UCRNN), as saying. According to Rebecca Jiga, UCRNN's advocacy and information officer, a recent survey by the Uganda Society for Disabled Children showed that several interrelated factors are responsible for the sexual abuse of children. The major factors stemmed from poverty, which pushed children into unsuitable work, into streets, to live away from their parents, or into other vulnerable situations, Jiga told IRIN on Monday. "The survey found out that 50 percent of children have been abused one way or the other," she said. "Children are exposed to all kinds of situations, and some of them to these abuses." The UCRNN survey was prepared as part of preparations for the Day of the African Child, an annual event marked on 16 June to draw attention to the plight of children on the continent. Activities for this year's Uganda celebration of the Day of the African Child will centre on Gulu District, northern Uganda, one of the areas most affected by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) continuing insurgency. Children were experiencing more sexual abuse in Acholi areas of northern Uganda comprising Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, where the LRA has been most active, than in any other region of the country, according to Jiga. The LRA has fought the Uganda government since the late 1980s, from bases in southern Sudan. The low-intensity war has resulted in severe humanitarian consequences in northern Uganda, where the LRA has abducted about 12,000 children and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, according to humanitarian sources. The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN on Monday that child abductions and subsequent sexual abuse by rebels in northern Uganda were part of LRA leader Joseph Kony's ideology of "producing a new Acholi" generation that would obey him better than the current generation. "Kony said he had been betrayed by the old generation Acholi. He wants to produce a new generation of Acholi who will not betray him," Bantariza said. "He wants to produce as many children as he can. With this kind of strategy, you can imagine the levels of sexual abuse." A research study on adolescents in northern Uganda between May and July 2001 found that most young people in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader lived in constant terror of sudden attacks and abduction or re-abduction by the LRA, and the accompanying forced labour, killing and sexual slavery. According to the study, Against All Odds: Surviving the War on Adolescents (a publication of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children), most of the girls abducted were repeatedly raped and many bore children in the harsh conditions of the bush, besides acting as domestic slaves of commanders and other fighters. Children and adolescents have also been prime targets of rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation in and around most of the "protected camps" for displaced people, refugee settlements and other non-camp settings, according to the report. In nearly every interview, adolescent girls described personal knowledge of rape and defilement, either against themselves or their peers, the report added. The Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development has also warned against an excessive focus on abducted children, saying that children in general in northern Uganda live in extreme fear and "experience a daily catalogue of major forms of abuse", including violence, sexual abuse, prostitution, abduction and under-age marriage to UPDF soldiers. Street children and HIV/AIDS orphans are also at particular risk in Uganda, with many forced into situations such as prostitution, according to the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans, a Kampala-based indigenous NGO. http://www.uweso.com/index.htm "Children need guardians when they grow up," according to Geoffrey Kalebbo of World Vision (Uganda). "Our challenge is to struggle and fill the gap, and give them guidance, and help them grow with self-dignity. That is the call."