I come from a culture where traditionally, children are seen as both our present and our future so I have always believed it is our responsibility as adults to give children futures worth having. In the two years spent on this report, I have beenshocked and angered to see how shamefully we have failed in this responsibility.

From a Personal Note by Graca Machel, introducing the Report of Graca Machel, Expert of the Secretary-General of the United Nations: Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.

Notwithstanding the considerable gains society has made throughout the world, wars and their aftermath continue to set back the rights of people and communities to live in peace, prosperity and pass along something worthwhile to the next generation.

            War has always been devastating to humanity.  However, how wars are conducted today has worsened their impact on civilians, especially women and children. Today's wars are different from wars of the past when mostly male armies attacked opposing male armies. Looking back to the era of WW I, approximately 90% of the casualties of war then were combatants and 10% were unarmed civilians. Today, that paradigm has dramatically shifted. In today's wars, approximately 85-90% of the casualties are unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. This is no accident.  This paradigm of who dies and who lives occurs in such large numbers because the strategies of today's wars have changed. Today's wars are intended to terrorize and win the "hearts and minds" of civilian populations. This entails committing wholesale atrocities on women and children, such as what happened in Bosnia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique and Angola - to name just a very few examples in recent times - and continues elsewhere today. In today's wars, rape is a weapon of war and mutilating and killing civilians is the modus operandi.

 As the paradigm of how today's wars has shifted, children and adolescents - vulnerable, easily manipulated and disoriented, traumatized, unpaid, physically fit and blindly obedient - are the soldier of choice. Globally, where targeting and terrorizing civilians is the modus operandi of armed conflict, child soldiering has become institutionalized as a component of armed conflict.

Whereas child soldiering takes place throughout the world, including in Burma/Myanmar, Sri Lanka , Bhutan , Colombia and Eastern Europe, child soldiering in Africa has become a pandemic. Child Soldiering in Africa - and the needs of former child soldiers and their communities - has and continues to affect major segments of society in Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sudan, Chad, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Algeria, Central Africa Republic, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Republic of Congo.

I work in Northern Uganda where a twenty year war has devastated the local population and direct an organization called United Movement to End Child Soldiering (UMECS). I was first exposed to child soldiering in the 1980's and 90's while teaching secondary school and conducting rural development projects in Zimbabwe on the Mozambique border. There, a proxy army known as RENAMO was attacking rural villages in Mozambique and Zimbabwe . Between 1986-1991, RENAMO killed over one million civilians in Mozambique and many thousands in Zimbabwe , conducting the most unspeakable atrocities. Many RENAMO "soldiers" were children, forcibly abducted by RENAMO to commit these atrocities. While I was living there, many civilians were brutally murdered, raped, and mutilated in neighboring villages.

 In Northern Uganda , a rebel army called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging war against the Government of Uganda. The victims of this war, however, are the pastoralist Acholi communities of Northern Uganda who have been caught in the crossfire of the LRA and Government forces. 85% of the LRA's army are abducted children, some as young as eight years old. Girls as well as boys are abducted, with the average age of abduction between 12 and 14. In addition to being trained as fighters, girls become sex slaves to LRA commanders.

 More than two million people in Northern Uganda have been displaced from their land and cattle-rich villages to squalid Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps where hunger stalks children, and hundreds of people - mostly children under five -  die each week from preventable and curable diseases. Tens of thousands of women have been raped and mutilated in LRA raids, and over 60,000 children and adolescents have been abducted, many pressed into child soldiering.

 Our work in Northern Uganda is focused on eradicating child soldiering, addressing the root causes of war through peacebuilding, building the capacity of grassroots organizations serving the needs of children, youth and women affected by armed conflict, and directly addressing the needs of children and youth, including former child soldiers, in the war zones.

 What many organizations and programs including our own have discovered is that all children and youth in war zones have been deeply affected by conflict. In addition, children and youth who have been abducted, and/or have been forced into child soldiering have additional rehabilitation needs. That said, the greater discovery is that, contrary to popular belief outside war zones, formerly abducted children and former child soldiers respond well and successfully to programs and services that address their needs, and the most effective strategies combine cultural and community traditions with secular services. This works best because such children and youth are not "walking time bombs" as the popular stereotype has it but were raised within strong traditional families and communities. Although recently escaped former child soldiers remain traumatized for a while and need sufficient time to heal and restore, including initial specialized rehabilitation in safe, professional centers, former child soldiers and formerly abducted children actually excel in education, jobs training programs and community-minded endeavors. The examples throughout the world are numerous - how rehabilitation leads to success, how success nurtures hope and how the power of hope restores humanity.  

In Northern Uganda, three of our inter-related programs foster success and hope with 78 children and youth deeply affected by armed conflict, approximately 60% of whom were formerly abducted children, many of whom are former child soldiers forced to commit repeated atrocities in their own communities. These programs are known as: Northern Uganda Education Program (NUEP); Northern Uganda Internship Program (NUIP) and Peace Fellows Program (PFP).

 Now in Year III, our Northern Uganda Education Program selects our students using criteria of vulnerability, orphaned children, academic readiness, community accountability and gender balance. We follow a community-led process in which our staff and community members, local leaders, IDP camp leaders and primary school staff collaborate in the selection process to ensure transparency and fairness. We do not intentionally select "former child soldiers" as this tends to divide communities in great need. However, by following a community-led selection process, approximately 60% of selectees are formerly abducted children and former child soldiers.

 We then make a commitment to our new students for their entire secondary and higher education journey, with an ongoing regimen of high expectations and standards. We also enroll our students in "partnered secondary boarding schools," i.e. schools we have investigated and built relationship. Hence, we send our students in small teams or cohorts, which creates peer support and peer mentorship, to partnered schools.

 What makes our program successful - 97% of our students since January 2005 have stayed in school and stayed in the program - is our holistic approach. We pay for all school fees, school uniforms, medical exams, scholastic materials, school and sports attire, calculators, math kits, mattresses, trunks, personal hygiene supplies and transport.

 In addition, through an all Northern Uganda education staff, we provide ongoing mentorship, counseling, and guidance, including career counseling. To address the psychosocial needs of our students affected by trauma from their war experiences, we launched a Counseling and Guidance Program in collaboration with Africa University .

 What provides the greatest amount of hope and motivation is our higher education component. Secondary school education is important but by itself, will not provide jobs or sufficient opportunities. Higher education is essential and Northern Uganda needs to restore itself with professionals in healthcare, education, social work, agriculture, environmental programs, engineering, community planning, and entrepreneurship.

 Tied in with these strategies is our Northern Uganda Internship Program, partnered with Africa University 's Institute of Peace , Leadership and Governance (IPLG). Also in Year III, this program brings mature graduate students from around Africa ( Zimbabwe , Liberia , and Kenya ) who are classroom teachers, counselors, peacebuilders, trainers and business managers who serve as additional mentors to our students. In this way, mature, successful, culturally connected role models from Africa serve youth with needs in Northern Uganda .  It has been a highly successful component.

 Finally, we sponsor university graduates from Northern Uganda war zones to the Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance two year graduate program at Africa University as Peace Fellows who return to their communities as peacebuilding practitioners.

 Through our 78 students, we serve many families and communities in addition to our students and schools, but it is a small number compared to the hundreds of thousands of secondary-school age youth in Northern Uganda IDP camps not in school. Other organizations also provide education programs, although with fewer holistic services and shorter term commitments.

 What is needed is a huge boost in education resources for children and youth now, while they are children and youth. We advocate collaboratively for the right of children and youth in Uganda to be educated and there is nothing that substitutes for primary, secondary and higher education. What makes this vision even more exciting is the zeal Ugandan children and youth have for reading and learning.

 The war in Northern Uganda has been winding down. Although formal peace talks between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda have been stalled since they began eight months ago, there have been no war-related incidents of violence in Northern Uganda since they began. Although 1.4 million people remain confined to IDP camps, fearing insecurity if they return home, approximately 300,000 people have returned to their villages, rebuilding their houses, restoring their lands and restocking their livestock. The holiday season in December and January was peaceful for the first time in 20 years.

 In early February, 60 nations, including many in Africa, Asia and Latin America where child soldiering has been rife participated in the "Paris Conference on Child Soldiering."  Although largely symbolic, the conference was a positive step forward to recognize and condemn child soldiering as an intolerable global scourge. This article from the February 6, 2007 Chicago Sun-Times, Nations Pledge Not to Use Child Soldiers, tells more: http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/245761,soldiers020607.article

Two excellent book resources:

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by  Ishmael Beah
Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War, by Jimmie Briggs