Maternal and paternal family of child born from captivity laugh and share stories together. Photo by Patrick Odong/JRP
The maternal and paternal family of a child born from captivity have joined hands to brighten their futures together through the child reintegration programme.
In 2016, JRP and WAN supported one mother through the child reintegration project, in which her child who was born in captivity was reunited with their paternal home. After being contacted by the mother to express her gratitude for the team and the project, JRP conducted a follow-up visit with the mother to the paternal family in Palaro parish, Odek sub-county, to see how the families were working together.
The happiness and love shown by the two families for each other was greatly reflected in the stories told. The mother told JRP how the families had combined their efforts and resources to support the child at school and ensure the child has a bright future. The paternal family has not only given the mother a plot of their ancestral land to plough, but has identified a strategic piece of their land in the centre of Odek for the mother to build a business. By generously giving land and helping her to build a business and home in Odek, they ensure that she is close to the child and the family. The paternal family opened their arms to her other children and proclaimed that together they will join hands together to build a strong future for her and her children.
This story sheds light on how families across war-torn communities are supporting each other in life after the LRA conflict. Often those who return from captivity are faced with stigmatisation and rejection from their local communities. By providing a platform for these families to engage in dialogue and discussion over their experiences, hopes and interests for those children born in captivity, JRP hopes to bring light to the lives of many conflict survivors.
How a family reunion has brought closure and healing
“I didn’t know that there is an organisation that resurrects the dead,” said Oweka’s great aunt this past March.
This is a common saying by the families with whom we have been conducting the reintegration of children born of war through family reunions. These children are being looked at as a replacement of their dead relatives or those who have gone missing. During the two decade conflict in northern Uganda thousands of people were killed and abducted and many are still missing up to date. Reuniting the children of the deceased or missing with their relatives is a means by which communities are filling in the void caused by the loss of their loved ones and attaining closure and healing.
A sense of belonging, identity and access to land
Oweka and his mother had been searching for the home for the last five years until they approached the Women’s Advocacy Network for help in late 2016. His mother had returned from captivity with him in the womb and they had been living with his step family from the time he was born. He has been experiencing rejection from his mother’s marital relatives and his step-siblings.
Oweka’s mother had wanted him to reunite with his paternal family so that he could have a sense of belonging, identity as well as access to land. This is because of the patrilineal culture that is embedded in the community where Oweka is from: here, children belong to their father’s lineage and boys are expected to inherit land from their fathers in order to establish their own families.
Reunions as an integral aspect of reintegration
Since January 2016, 19 children have so far been reunited with their relatives by the members of the Women’s Advocacy Network together with the Justice and Reconciliation Project in partnership with the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. Family reunions are an integral aspect of the reintegration of children born of war and their mothers. This is because families are a source of support and welfare, allow for access to land and provide a sense of identity.
In the absence of a formal, state-run transitional justice process local initiatives such as family reunions are ways in which communities are transitioning from the two decades of war in northern Uganda. These initiatives are helping to fill in the vacuum so as to address the legacies of the conflict.
Restoring fractured relationships
Family reunions also ultimately contribute towards reconciliation by allowing maternal and paternal families of the children to come together contributed towards building and restoring relationships that were fractured during the conflict. They also complement other ongoing programs aimed at fostering peace, reconciliation and ensuring proper reintegration of war affected persons in Northern Uganda.
Oweka met his paternal relatives for the first time on the 2nd of March 2017 in the out skirts of Kitgum town. He was welcomed in the home with a thanksgiving prayer amidst celebration and joy. One of the family members said on the day, “We thank God for the grace that has made Oweka return home.” He will now be supported by one of his cousins to join a prestigious boarding school in the area.
During the reunion Oweka said, “They kept on saying I had no clan and a place to belong but now I am at my father’s roots.”
People watch a live screening of Dominic Ongwen’s trial at the ICC in Gulu. Oryem Nyeko/JRP.
The ongoing trial of Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court is an important step in the accountability process for the war in northern Uganda. It is also important to remember that this is not the end of the conversation around justice and reconciliation in Uganda.
The violence has not ended
For many in northern Uganda, the violence did not end with the war. Survivors of war-time rape, defilement, sexual exploitation, as well as early and forced marriage are still a marginalised and vulnerable group. In a 2014 study with women conflict-SGBV survivors in northern Uganda we found that 93% say that they still face the same threats as they did in the past. While many have worked to break the silence about these experiences, redress is still lacking.
Redress here can mean providing economic empowerment through skills training and adult literacy programmes which will enable survivors to be self-reliant and in control of their daily lives. It also means structural and institutional reform allowing for free and accessible medical, psychosocial, social and legal support for survivors. All of this would go a long way in addressing and preventing the stigma, exploitation and revictimisation that comes with the vulnerability of being a war-time SGBV survivor.
There should be accountability for both past and current violations. The ICC’s prosecutor has included conflict-SGBV charges in her case against Dominic Ongwen, but there still remain thousands of female and male survivors in and outside of northern Uganda who suffered outside the scope of those charges during the war. Many have received neither accountability nor acknowledgment for the crimes that were committed against them.
Children born of war
There are also very many whose rights and experiences, while important, are often unjustifiably ignored and overlooked. These include children born of war – children born in captivity or from war-related rape or defilement – who face stigma in their communities and schools and are unable to access or own land and other resources because of the complex and gendered nature of property inheritance in the region. We have worked with war-affected women and cultural leaders to support their reintegration in northern Uganda through family reunions, but this is an area that needs the support of actors across all sectors to make a contribution.
Dealing with the past and the future
3 February 2017 will mark nine years since the signing of the Juba peace talk’s Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation, the agreement that gave birth to what would develop into a draft national policy on transitional justice for Uganda. For some time, there seemed to be progress on this. Unfortunately, however, the momentum for this process has stalled. Several years later, however, the last and final draft of the TJ policy is still reportedly lagging in cabinet.
This policy was meant to provide guidance to the government to “address justice, accountability and reconciliation needs of post conflict Uganda” and to both deal with the country’s past and prevent conflict in the future. However, because of its ambiguous status, the possibility of a national truth-telling process or a reparations programme for victims of war remain distant despite how important many Ugandans have said how important these processes are.
Accountability for state-led crimes
We have documented the experiences of survivors of crimes committed by state forces during the war in northern Uganda and have found a running theme among survivors: a call for acknowledgment of these crimes by the Ugandan government and for measures, such as reparations, to be put in place. Some of these crimes have in the past been acknowledged by the government, most notably by President Museveni in 2014. Unfortunately, there has been little public accountability for what took place. Reports suggest that government perpetrators, soldiers, have been subjected to punishment for crimes committed during Uganda’s wars in northern Uganda, but concrete details about these are not readily available to the public. This leaves survivors, their families and their communities with the feeling that their experiences have gone unnoticed.
The war in northern Uganda is an example of the complexity of conflict, where the lines of perpetrator are blurred between state, rebel and civilian, the abductors and the abductees. It is this complexity which tells us that it is not one process that will provide solutions to the years of conflict. If Uganda is ever going to move past its history of conflict, we need to address the many concerns of survivors in northern Uganda and the rest of the country that still remain.
Oryem Nyeko is the Communications and Advocacy Team Leader at the Justice and Reconciliation Project.
Acen*, a child born into LRA captivity, is received home by her paternal family with prayer in September 2016. Benard Okot/Justice and Reconciliation Project.
Acen* is a fifteen year old girl who was born into LRA captivity. She has been living with her mother in Gulu since 2005 when her mother escaped with her as a young baby. Acen had asked her mother, Janet Aloyo*, several times about her father. Her mother told her that he had died in the bush, which meant that they could not locate his home. Acen is in secondary school and her mother finds it difficult to pay her school fees. Being a single mother, Aloyo also singlehandedly takes care of four other children she had after returning from captivity.
This year, the Women’s Advocacy Network, an association of women who have been affected by the LRA war, has partnered with JRP and Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice to help situations like these by facilitating family reunions and dialogues. Aloyo is one of several women who have now used the network successfully to trace the paternal homes of their children. Initially, she had started looking three months after she returned from captivity. A decade later, however, she had seen very little success. She told me there was only person whom she knew as a relative to the family of the father of her child was a woman, an aunt she used to talk to about taking her daughter home. But her efforts were frustrated when the Aunt died and she lost her only connection to the family.
“When she died I thought that was the end of everything,” Aloyo said.
She found it difficult to approach the family of her child because she was afraid that they may not listen to her or believe her. She also feared the family may be hostile to her since she knew many of the family members were killed by rebels during the war. She was worried that going to them to talk about their past would add more pain to them.
According to Aloyo, the network of women together with JRP made her see light at the end of tunnel by facilitating dialogues between her, her family and Acen’s father’s family.
This past September, at Acen’s father’s home, it all culminated on a sunny day when over thirty people were eagerly waiting to receive Acen, Aloyo and Aloyo’s family members. A team of theology students led by their pastor, who happened to be Acen’s uncle, was also present to grace the home for the coming of their daughter. Acen was welcomed with a prayer and smeared with anointing oil on her forehead as a symbol of her becoming a part of the family.
Aloyo was overwhelmed with the way she and her daughter were received. “Today, it is like I am giving birth to this girl again. My child has an identity and a place to belong,” she said proudly.
The family promised Acen support to see her through her education and to provide for her basic needs. Her mother was also promised land to use for farming. On the day, Acen assured her family that she would strive hard to complete her education.
It marked the beginning of relationship between the two families and Acen finally has a place to call home.
“I will take her as my own daughter and we will share the same food,” Acen’s uncle said during the event. “We will eat from the same table. When she is crying I will be also crying. If I am laughing she will laugh. The past has gone already, you are home. Be blessed and we love you so much.”
The two-decade war in northern Uganda was characterised by various forms of sexual violence against women, such as rape, sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Many children were born as a result of these crimes, and this has had a profound effect on women. Now that a relative peace has returned to the region, one of the ongoing reintegration challenges is dealing with the identity of the children who were born in captivity or a result of sexual violence. Many of their patrilineal ties are unknown. But in Acholi culture, like in many areas in Uganda, a child’s identity is linked to his or her father. In addition, many of these children are now constantly asking their mothers and other family members about their identity and the whereabouts of their fathers.
The children find that not knowing their home is a painful aspect of their sense of identity. In Acholi culture, children are born into their paternal family and thus acquire the identity of that clan. Additionally, boys can expect to inherit land from their fathers in order to establish their own families. In Acholi culture, knowing one’s “home” (paternal village) is an integral component of social belonging, according to a Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) field note on children born in captivity (2015). Family members are part of the child’s well-being and therefore play an important role in reintegration. Family connections often provide comfort, key survival resources and a sense of belonging. This has made family reunions an important aspect of reintegration for children born in captivity and their mothers. Family reunions do not only help in reintegrating the children but also contribute to the reconciliation process in communities. Many families acknowledge that, according to cultural and social norms,children should know and have a relationship with their paternal lineage.
Convention on the Rights of the Child
According to research conducted since 2005 by JRP among women who were affected by war, the issue of children’s identity is an important justice issue. When the Women’s Advocacy Network (WAN) was formed in 2011, one of its objectives was to advocate the promotion and respect of the rights of children who were born during the war and/or born as a result of forced marriages involving women who had been abducted. Children’s identity was one of the issues that WAN raised in a petition to the Ugandan parliament in 2014. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in November 1989, states that a child should be cared for by his or her parents and that children should preserve their identity, including family relations.
Reuniting children with their paternal or maternal relatives is a way to rebuild life and relations after conflict for both women and children. Some of the reasons that women give for the importance of reuniting children with their families include pressure from children who have grown up and want to know their relatives, access to land for children born of war, supporting children born in captivity to get to know their relatives and thus avoid incest in future, obtaining family support for children born of war and supporting children born of war have a sense of belonging and identity.
Challenges of the reunion process
The family reunions are not always easy to arrange. One peculiar challenge in the reunion process has been use of pseudonyms by commanders. In addition, people who were abducted often concealed their real identities in order to protect their families from retaliation by the LRA for alleged “mistakes” that they had made. This has made it difficult, in some instances, to locate the homes or relatives of the children.
Since 2011, WAN and JRP have reintegrated numerous children with their paternal and maternal families. From January to July of 2016 alone, nine children were reunited with their paternal families. This has enabled children and their mothers to rebuild their lives. Families have also been able to reconcile for the sake of the children.
Women participate in a radio talkshow in Kumi to talk about the reintegration of children born of war.
On the 17th of July, two members of the Women’s Advocacy Network and two survivors of SGBV from Kumi district participated on a radio talk show at Continental FM. The talk show was organized by the representative of the Iteso Cultural Union and Teso Kumi Women’s Peace Initiative to create awareness of the challenges that children born of war are facing and lobby for support from the community about their reintegration. It was also used as a platform to engage the communities on the challenges that war affected women are facing in the community such as stigma, lack of access to land and the ongoing suffering they face in taking care of the children and break silence around these issues. This was aimed at ensuring communal acceptance of children born of war and their mothers.
Three months earlier, on the 28th of April, during a dialogue that was held in Kakanyero Hotel in Gulu between cultural leaders and war affecting women across the northern Uganda region, cultural leaders pledged to use radio as a tool to sensitize communities about issues affecting children born of war and their mothers. The dialogue provided a platform where war affected women engaged cultural leaders about the reintegration challenges they and the children are facing as a result of the conflict. The talk show was a fulfillment of an obligation by one of the cultural leaders.
The Women’s Advocacy Network continues radio talk shows as platform to engage communities on issues affecting war affected women and their children to support their smooth reintegration in the communities.
In 2014 when members of the Women’s Advocacy Network petitioned the Ugandan Parliament for redress for harms caused by years of conflict in northern Uganda, the identity of children born war was a key issue they raised. The issue is not only important to mothers but to their children as well who find that not knowing their relatives is a painful void in their sense of identity.
During one of visit to a family, one mother, a member of WAN, told us: “My daughter kept on asking about her paternal relatives and I promised her I would get the home and grant her wish.”
Reuniting children born of war with their families, therefore, is in a way a form of redress since it contributes to rebuilding life and relations after the conflict.
In the past few years, the WAN has been approached by several women who were abducted, former commanders of the LRA, relatives of children born in captivity and survivors of sexual violence in camps to support them in mediation and tracing for the maternal or paternal families of the children. This year, its members with the support of JRP and Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice have conducted 10 dialogues and visits with families of children born of war. The objective has been to ensure mutual understanding of the reintegration process by both maternal and paternal families, reconcile families and ensuring acceptance of the children.
In some cases, lack of acceptance of children born of war in new marriages that their mothers are in has made mothers want to bring their children together with their paternal families. During one of the pre visits one of the mothers whose child had been suffering in her new marital home said, “My child is not wanted in my home. She was bewitched and is now paralyzed.”
Children are also being reintegrated so that they can have access to land, have an identity and a sense of belonging as well as have family support. Some of the children have also now grown up and asking for whereabouts of their relatives.
In all the families where dialogues were carried out the idea of reintegrating children was welcomed. The children are also a source of closure in the families from the loss of their sons and daughters. During one of the dialogues a relative of a deceased former commander said, “… his children are his resurrection.”
The idea of children being a ‘resurrection’ of their dead parents was common in all the families that dialogues took place. A clan leader in one of the families said, “We want the child, he will stand on behalf of our lost child.”
Children are also accepted in respect and honor of dead relatives. A family member in one of the homes said, “We accept our own blood and cannot refuse them. Perhaps the spirit of the dead will haunt us if we don’t.”
Tracing of the homes of the children has been difficult due to challenges because in LRA captivity people often used fake names and concealed true information about their families. Sometimes there is also lack of support from relatives who fear that they might lose the bond they have with the children once they get to know their other relatives. This is especially common with maternal relatives and in laws.
Despite these challenges, this is an opportunity for children who want to to fully reintegrate in their communities through family reunions. This year we plan to help 12 children reintegrated in their families.
Members of the Women’s Advocacy Network present during a dialogue between war-affected women and cultural leaders on the reintegration of children born of war in northern Uganda, held in Gulu on 28 April 2016.
JRP and the WAN hold dialogue on reintegration of children born of war
GULU – Children born of war and their mothers still face challenges reintegrating into their communities and families in northern Uganda. This was the key message sent during a dialogue between cultural leaders and war-affected women organized by the Women and Advocacy Network and the Justice and Reconciliation Project on 28 April 2016 in Gulu.
The event, which brought together participants from Acholi, Lango, Teso and West Nile, offered a space for women survivors of conflict to share their experiences with representatives of cultural institutions from the Greater North.
The dialogue was punctuated by a presentation from the WAN members appealing to cultural leaders to help reintegrate children born of war into their communities.
Nighty, a member of the WAN, spoke about how when she returned home from the captivity of the LRA she discovered that a child of hers she had been separated from had been mistakenly placed in the home of another family on his return.
“I would like you, my elders, to help let my child come back home,” she asked the cultural leaders in attendance.
The WAN spoke at length about the difficulties they and their children are undergoing today. Many children are unable to trace their patrilineal lines and are consequently unable to access land and other life necessities that are linked to their fathers.
On their return home, some children have either not been reunited with their actual families or have been taken in by the wrong families. As explained by WAN Chairperson Evelyn Amony, this has partly been so because while in captivity their parents would have used fake names to protect their families back home. On return, this has created a problem for mothers, fathers and children eager to trace families that were separated.
Poverty also was cited as the biggest social problem facing children born of war and their children, with facilitating education and health care provision being very hard if not impossible. The issue of land is yet another problem, with children and their mothers landless due to stigma and poor community acceptance.
In attendance of the event was His Highness Drani Stephen Musali Izakare, the Lopirigo of Madi, who appealed to the cultural leaders present to address the issues that arose during the discussion.
“Culture is not static, [it] is dynamic and cultural change is inevitable and welcome where change is needed,” he said, “In Madi, there’s no right way to have a child because children are all of ours.”
At the close of the event, the WAN members and the cultural leaders in attendance worked together to come up with action points for how cultural institutions could be better involved in the reintegration of children born of war.
Some of the commitments generated during the group discussions included to hold clan meetings to create clan laws that would prohibit stigma within communities, integrating war-affected women and their children into cultural leadership at community level and collectively engaging the Ugandan government to address the issues raised.
