In the past week, a 30-minute video about Joseph Kony and his rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has received more than 90 million internet hits. Viewers of the video now know, if they didn’t before, that he is a wanted man with much blood on his hands. For years Human Rights Watch has investigated the LRA’s horrors, from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. We have visited remote massacre sites and listened to hundreds of victims and survivors who want their stories heard.
We’ve spent years investigating the horrors perpetrated by the LRA in central Africa — Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic (CAR), and South Sudan. We gathered evidence at massacre sites — wooden clubs covered in dried blood, rubber strips from bicycle tires used to tie up the victims, and freshly dug graves – and spoke to hundreds of boys and girls forced to fight for his army or held captive as sex slaves. And we’re elated that #stopKony is a trending topic on Twitter – if anyone deserves global notoriety it’s Kony.
The experience of the last decade, shows that the governments and groups still using child soldiers are increasingly considered pariahs, and that strategic pressure and the new consensus of international law can protect children from war. The challenge now is to build on the momentum that exists, and to make better use of the existing tools — including sanctions, prosecutions, and UN negotiations — to persuade the remaining outliers that children have no place in war.
Until recently, the United States might have been considered a world leader in combating the use of child soldiers. But after events last month, children victimized in war may need to look elsewhere for help.
The Military Commissions Act of 2009, though an improvement over the Bush-era law governing military commission proceedings at Guantanamo, has a number of problematic provisions. While in principle it bars the prosecution from relying on statements obtained via torture or other abuse, developments in the Omar Khadr trial suggest that this protection is not entirely effective.
As I left the isolated military base Monday afternoon after the sentencing of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was only 15 when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan, it was hard not to see decay everywhere I turned.
As I sat watching the sentencing hearing at Guantanamo Bay of Omar Khadr, a former child soldier, I wondered how his being detained here for eight years without trial could actually be used against him. But that was the thrust of the testimony on Tuesday before the military commission of the prosecution’s expert witness on Khadr’s future dangerousness.
In recent weeks hundreds of young men and boys from the Dadaab refugee camps have been secretly recruited for the force, lured with false promises of lavish pay and claims of backing from the United Nations and the United States.
The former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano will give his final briefing to the United Nations Security Council on July 15 in his role as the secretary-general's special envoy for the areas of east and central Africa affected by the Lord's Resistance Army and their two-decade campaign of violence. Although Chissano's mandate was suspended as of June 30, abuses by the LRA - ruthless rebels whose actions have had a devastating effect on civilians in four countries - continue.
In the past week, a 30-minute video about Joseph Kony and his rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has received more than 90 million internet hits. Viewers of the video now know, if they didn’t before, that he is a wanted man with much blood on his hands. For years Human Rights Watch has investigated the LRA’s horrors, from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. We have visited remote massacre sites and listened to hundreds of victims and survivors who want their stories heard.