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Seminal work on the LRA’s operations in Northern Uganda clarified the LRA’s methods of forced recruitment and psychological control. Originating in northern Uganda in the late 1980s, the group is responsible for the abduction of at least 20,000 children and the displacement of over 1.9 million people in Northern Uganda. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a rebel movement known for its widespread conscription of children and history of perpetrating human rights abuses. Children are considered even more vulnerable than adults to detrimental effects of these experiences, which occur during their formative years and are robbed of many of the standard opportunities for physical, emotional, and intellectual development.
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Once enrolled, these children face prolonged exposure to violence, including but not limited to being forced to kill or harm others, and repeated personal victimization, including sexual violence. Children may be forcibly recruited, abducted or coerced into joining non-state armed groups. Understanding some of the ways in which the LRA controls its recruits and the psychological impact of indoctrination enables reintegration programs to more effectively address these issues and serve the complex needs of formerly abducted children.Īn estimated 300,000 children under the age of 18 actively take part in combat, or serve as support personnel, for armed groups in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. Results support past findings that the LRA is a strategic and well-organized organization in its approach to enlisting child soldiers. This study provides one of the first detailed explorations of social and psychological mechanisms through which this is achieved, and focuses particularly on the gendered differences in the indoctrination process. Indoctrination of newly abducted children into the LRA occurs via a complex system of control.
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These methods promote de-identification with one’s civilian and family life and eventually the assimilation of a new language and identity. Witchcraft and secrecy are used to intimidate recruits and to magnify perception of the group’s power. Informants articulated a range of practices by the LRA to exert high levels of control over new recruits, including strict social isolation from recent abductees control of communication promoting new identity formation and compelling children to act out strictly defined gendered roles. Inductive coding of transcripts was undertaken to identify salient themes. In-depth interviews were conducted with formerly abducted children, their family members, community leaders, and service providers (total n = 34) in four communities in LRA-affected areas of northeastern DRC. In this paper, we describe the processes related to abduction and indoctrination of youth by the LRA in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a rebel movement known for its widespread conscription of children yet little is known about this process once the group moved beyond northern Uganda. Globally, an estimated 300,000 children under the age of 18 participate in combat situations those in armed groups in particular suffer prolonged exposure to psychological and physical abuse.