Non-Governmental Organizations and the Re-Integration of Former Child Soldiers Case Study: Caritas Gulu in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Since 1986, Northern Uganda was the centre of the war between the government and the rebels until the Juba peace talks in 2006 when peace began to come back in this community. The civil war claimed more than 250,000 lives; displaced 1.8 million people and more than 25,000 children were abducted. When the peace talks were held, reintegration of former child soldiers started in the war affected communities and this was supported by a number of non-government organizations including Caritas. It remains a question to whether the NGO work fully reintegrated former child soldiers, therefore this study intended to assess the NGOs and the reintegration of former child soldiers; a case study of Caritas Gulu. The specific objectives to this study were to examine how Caritas reintegrates former child soldiers, to ascertain how the HIV/AIDS pandemic among the former child soldiers was mitigated, to explore how gender issues among the former child soldiers are mainstreamed in the re-integration processes and to study how mental health issues among former child soldiers are mitigated by Caritas. The study took a qualitative case study design as an approach for data collection and analysis. The qualitative data was obtained from key informant interviews, focus group discussions and observation. Documents related to the reintegration of the FCS were reviewed. The study findings indicate that, Caritas intervened in the reintegration of FCS through provision of basic human needs, psycho social support, and health care package on HIV, education, sensitization through radio talk shows, interactive learning, dialogues and spiritual development. All these programs created an impact on the cognitive, behavioral and emotional wellbeing of the former child soldiers as observed during the interviews. Because of Caritas programs, former child soldiers could freely talk about their traumatic experiences without fear and without emotional breakdown. Another observation was in terms of handmade materials from the female former child soldiers as part of the outputs of the livelihood programme which was employed by Caritas. However Caritas lacked a community focused approach in the first phase of reintegration process that failed the sustainability of most activities which were implemented. Also much of the HIV/AIDS intervention was targeting the female child soldiers than the male child soldiers and this left a gap in social economic development among the male former child soldiers. The social economic programmes only benefited the FFCS yet the rest of the society was vulnerable. The researcher recommends that, other organizations implementing similar projects should concentrate on family involvement, full participation of beneficiaries in all levels of reintegration, collaboration of organizations so as to avoid duplication of services, investing in the livelihood programmes so as to promote economic functioning and also investing in programmes that reduce guilt and shame.