Child agency and resistance to discourses within the Paris Principles in rehabilitation and reintegration processes of former child soldiers in northern Uganda

Abstract

Drawing from a one-year ethnographic study, this Chapter shows how rehabilitation and reintegration processes of former child soldiers in Northern Uganda have been influenced by the Paris Principles. Within this legal framework, returnee children were presented as innocent traumatised victims. This Chapter argues that circumstances in which the Lord’s Resistance Army forcibly recruited and conscripted abducted children in armed rebellion significantly affected their behaviour. Applying the Paris Principles in the rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers proved to be problematic since Acholi people did not readily accept the notions of former child soldiers’ innocence, passivity, implied impunity and traumatisation. This led to the rejection and stigmatisation of returnees which, in turn, imperilled reintegration processes. This Chapter urges that the Paris Principles be rescripted to acknowledge children’s agency and victimhood and also to consider the community’s need for justice after war.