Child tracing: locating the paternal homes of “children born of war”

ABSTRACT

During the war in northern Uganda, thousands of women abducted as girls by the rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, were released and escaped to return home, many with children born as the result of “forced marriage”. Most women and children no longer have contact with their children’s father by choice, because they are dead, or their identity is unknown. However, in some cases, mothers seek to identify and unite their children with their paternal clan. We consider the process of child tracing, present some of the reasons driving it, the diversity of cases involved and the challenges faced.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society
• Conflict and reconstruction
• Gender and diversity – Youth
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all community members in northern Uganda who generously shared their experiences with us in the process of documenting cases and in focus groups. We write with gratitude on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People. Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight and Partnership Grant on Conjugal Slavery in War (CSiW) for funding the research, and to the Women’s Advocacy Network (WAN) and Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) for making it possible. A special thanks to Benard Okot, Joyce Abalo, Evelyn Amony, Grace Acan, Isaac Odiya Okwir and Docus Atenyo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Tinashe B. C. Mutsonziwa is a graduate of the Master’s in Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Ketty Anyeko is a PhD candidate, vanier and public scholar in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Programme at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Erin Baines is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs University of British Columbia, Canada.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.