allAfrica.com: Uganda: Lost Girls of Gulu (Page 1 of 2)

AMUGE ROSELYN IS 14 YEARS OLD AND married. But unlike the fairy tale in which she would have lived "happily ever after," her marriage signalled the beginning of a long nightmare.

Originally from Lapainat village in Gulu District, Uganda, Amuge has only known the life of a refugee. After rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army killed her mother in 2001, she fled to a camp for internally displaced people.

The oldest in a family of eight children, she helped her unemployed and alcoholic father to raise her siblings. But now that the war is over, her father has found another use for her - he recently forced her to marry a 40-year-old man in exchange for money to feed the family.

But Amuge's story is not unique to her family. It is all too common in war-scarred northern Uganda where the conflict has left more than a million people displaced and created a generation of child mothers.

Their lives are defined by social decay, insecurity, poverty and lack of public services. According to World Vision, the number of child-mothers in the region is estimated at about 4,000.

Their hopes of living normal lives ended when they went to the IDP camps, where promiscuity was rampant. Girls were frequently raped or forced into prostitution; a family planning survey revealed that almost four out of every 10 girls reported that they were raped by soldiers or rebels, neighbours or camp leaders. The average age of the first sexual experience was 13.4 years for girls and 13.9 years for boys, compared with the national average of 17 years.

Even when they weren't compelled to give their bodies to older men, young people routinely changed sex partners, and the majority failed to practices safe sex; only 43 per cent used condoms, either because they weren't available or because the children did not know how to use them.

Now that the war is over, this pattern of camp life is proving slow to change, even among people who finally are returning home.

For many girls like Amuge, the new reality is much like the old one - forced sex or marriage to soldiers and other older men, often because of pressure from their families who are seeking material benefits.

According to the Uganda Family Planning Association's Gulu branch, four out of 10 teenage girls in Gulu are pregnant while one in 10 teenagers is HIV-positive. Only 12 per cent of teenagers use contraceptives.

AMUGE AND HER SIBLINGS were forced out of their original home in Gulu to TeTugu internally displaced camp in 2003, where they have been ever since. They barely have enough food to survive, often having to one meal a day.

Amuge finds menial jobs in her neighbours' gardens, earning less than half a dollar a day, or sometimes being paid in food. The family still has to rely on food aid donated by humanitarian organisations like United States Agency for International Development (USAid).

That is not enough, and so Amuge and four of her sisters sell their bodies to buy food and other basic necessities for their families.

Peace in the region has brought a glimmer of hope for the IDPs. Previously, Amuge had no hope of ever going back to school, but with support from USAid she can get basic primary education. Or she could have, until her father forced her into marriage with an older man.

However, even girls with more caring parents find it hard to stay in school. Aciro Mary Filder, a teacher at Lapaint Primary School in TeTugu, says the dropout rate is alarmingly high, especially among girls, partly because many get pregnant before they can complete their studies.

In Lapainat, enrolment was especially low between 2003 and 2007 when the war was still at its peak. This year, peace has brought a more promising enrolment rate, but it is being eroded by the high rate of forced marriages among girls aged 13-15, often to older men aged between 20 and 35.

The community has tried to curb this problem through sensitisation, counselling and provision of basic needs to the young girls. "About 210 parents turned up for a recent awareness meeting, which was overwhelming," Ms Filder told The EastAfrican.

"In fact the parents are now working together with the local leaders to find the culprits."

She was dismayed when the school reopened on its original site in 2005 to find many soldiers camping in the area. Soon, the soldiers started running off with young girls, "blindfolding" the girls' parents by paying them half of their salaries to take the girls away.

Since 2006, the situation has improved. Local elected leaders have addressed the problem by getting the area commander of the Uganda People's Defence Forces to rein in his fighters.

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