Invisible Children

In 2003, three college students from California created a documentary on the exploitation of children in Uganda as child soldiers. The war in which these innocent children's hands are forced into has been called, "the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today" (Invisible Children). For the past 21 years, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government have waged a war leaving nearly two million innocent civilians caught in the middle. The Ugandan government is not protecting their citizens from this rebel militia which is murdering mothers and either killing or abducting their children. The children who are kidnapped, generally males, are being brainwashed, corrupted, and trained to work as soldiers in a war in which they do not belong.

The picture of the young boy holding the gun is a representation of what life is like in Uganda. He epitomizes the age of the victims who are kidnapped. The rebel forces try to capture children between the ages of 8-14 because they are big enough to carry a gun but small enough to sneak into schools and steal more children. They are also at the age where they are the most moldable to their environment. These children are brainwashed, and taught an attitude of total disregard for any human life. They are taught to kill anyone who is in opposition to the rebel forces including fathers, mothers, and children. These kids are taken from their homes and schools and immediately desensitized through the indoctrination of other soldiers their age. Any child who opposes these forces is brutally killed in front of their peers to instill fear in them so they do not try to run away from the rebel militia. They would rather stay in the rebel ranks than suffer the fate of those who have opposed the rebels before.

These children's minds are so brainwashed they know nothing other than war and violence. A mother talked about how children who are abducted do not go to school and are force-fed irrational views. If a child is rescued and given the opportunity to express himself on paper, he would draw pictures of war, guns and people in military uniforms killing others. When they play hide-and-go-seek, it is a game of the rebels against the government (Invisible Children). Captured Ugandan children grew up with these two groups fighting so they emulate them when playing games, very similar to the way American children play cowboys vs. Indians. The only difference is Ugandan children are often involved in the real fights.

Often times, these children have been so badly mistreated and maliciously programmed they do not even recognize anyone from before being abducted. This scenario is accurately depicted in the 2006 movie Blood Diamond. In the beginning of the movie, a young boy by the name of Dia is abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. Throughout the rest of the movie his father, Solomon, tries to find him and take him back from the rebel militia. When Solomon finally locates him, Dia doesn't even recognize his own father. He even calls his father an intruder and yells at him to leave him alone. Dia's denial of his father gives the audience a first hand view of how these young men have been changed. They have been drugged up and taught to shoot anything that moves for as long as they can remember.

This war is also affecting the psyche of the children who have not been captured. They live in a constant state of fear and do not know what will happen to them or where they may be the next day. They know nothing other than constant war and suffering. These children are often only receiving one inadequate meal per day. They cannot sleep at their own homes because they are too far from town and they know they will be abducted by the rebels because they are far away from the main group. They usually will walk in small groups many miles every night to sleep under safe verandas where the rebels cannot kidnap them. These night commutes