GULU, 8 March 2011 (IRIN) - Women and girls returning to northern Uganda from forced conscription into the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) struggle to resettle in their home communities because of stigma and a severe shortage of reintegration facilities tailored to their needs, say analysts and returnees.
The LRA, which was formed in northern Uganda in 1986 as an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, is now active in Southern Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. The group is estimated to have between 200 and 400 armed combatants and hundreds of abductees, a third of them under the age of 18. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that more than 25,000 youths have been abducted since 1986.
After leaving the LRA, former female combatants return to their villages with children forcibly fathered by LRA commanders and delivered in the bush. They are often shunned by their families and stigmatized as "bush women" by their communities. Many have had to abandon their homes and head to the outskirts of Gulu, one of the largest cities in northern Uganda, to find alternative means of survival.
A number of female abductees live in Kasubi and Layubi sub-wards of Gulu municipality, 200 to 300 of them in Kasubi alone. Originally gun-carrying combatants, cooks, logisticians, spies, sex partners and porters for the LRA, these women say they are leading desperate lives working as prostitutes or brewing alcohol for a living.
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