IamSCS works in Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was founded 30 years ago. This armed rebellion – which has been widespread in East Africa – has killed at least 100,000 people, has driven 2.5 million people from their homes, and has forced 100,000 children to fight or act as porters, cooks, messengers, informants, spies or even as ‘wives’ of rebels. These children have emerged as central figures of this war as they constituted 90 per cent of the LRA’s soldiers. Worldwide, 300,000 children are estimated to be active in armed groups. Although we can refer to a “child soldier” as any person below the age of 18 who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, the more accurate term to describe these individuals is Children Associated with Armed Forces And Groups (CAAFAG), since not all of them are used as soldiers. This blog presents their profiles.

In African communities, individuals suffering from mental illness are often thought of as posing a risk of violent behaviour, which indicates that they are victims of discrimination, misconceptions and stereotypes.

As a result, people affected fear to talk about their mental health issues and to seek out proper treatment. More often, members of their communities deny them their right to treatment, as was discussed in our blog “Mental illness as an enormous disease burden in African societies”.

Through our Blog Series, we present the difficult environment in which former child soldiers live. In addition to this challenging setting, the population have had to survive through at least seven civil wars since the early 1980s. The first civil war killed a million people and injured 600,000 others. At the end of the war in 1986, Museveni from the National Resistance Movement (NRM) became the President.

At I am Somebody’s Child Soldier (IamSCS), we make sure that our actions directly benefit those in need. Thanks to our on-going support, the children at Laroo ADRA School and the 30 women of the group ‘Can Rwede Peke’ are coping little by little with their mental illnesses. All the more, they are trying to build a brighter future for themselves.