Europa Newswire
Photo By: Luiz Rampelotto
November 20, 2009
By Amy Lieberman
Grace Akallo, a former child soldier, admits it can be difficult to publicly discuss her abduction and torture by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a violent guerrilla group based in northern Uganda. But the 29-year-old graduate student at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., says she draws strength and inspiration from the memory her 30 friends who remain in the LRA’s treacherous clutches.
“I was 15 when I was abducted by the LRA, and when I came back, I left so many thousands of children in captivity, including my best friends. I think about them a lot and I think about myself and say, ‘Why did I survive?’” Akallo told Europa Newswire. “I’ve seen children who have been amputated, mutilated, who have had everything done to them. I know I, too, have suffered, but I have also come out so what else can I do but look at the bigger picture and say, ‘No other child should go through what I went through.’ That is why I speak.”
Soft-spoken Akallo stands as a powerful spokesperson for UNICEF, illustrating the importance of fully implementing the “Convention of the Rights of the Child,” the most widely ratified international human rights treaty that calls for the protection of children from abuse, discrimination and exploitation.
Akallo, alongside UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Lucy Liu, honoured the 20th anniversary of the CRC yesterday, addressing achievements, as well as shortcomings, in the advancement of children across the world in the past two decades.
There’s been a 28 percent reduction in the annual rate of deaths of children under the age of 5 since 1990 (falling from 12.5 million then to 8.8 million in 2008), and 1.6 million people have gained access to safe drinking water, according to UNICEF’s special edition of “The State of the World’s Children,” a report released yesterday.
More than 70 nations have also incorporated children’s codes into their national legislation, based off of the Convention’s call for protecting and respecting the rights of children, in the past two decades.
Yet challenges exist in ensuring that the CRC is upheld, Veneman noted. The United States, joined by Somalia, remains the only UN member-nation that has not approved this convention, a fact that Veneman called “embarrassing” at a press conference on 19 November 2009, in the UNICEF New York City headquarters.
Nearly 24,000 children under the age of 5 still die from preventable diseases, like diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia each day, while the rate of maternal mortality – 500,000 deaths each year – has remained stagnant since 1990.
Liu, a Brooklyn-born actress best known, perhaps, for her roles in the films “Charlie’s Angels” and “Kill Bill,” says her experiences in on-the-ground humanitarian work reveal a lack of CRC implementation in certain countries.
“I know it’s true, because I have seen children on the street who are clearly very damaged, not just physically but psychologically, too, who have not received the care and the commitment that their governments have signed on to give,” Liu said.
Veneman spoke of UNICEF’s efforts to allocate the necessary resources – both financial and otherwise – to improve children’s access to education, health care and protection from forced labour, corporal punishment or trafficking. She, like Akallo, also noted that it is equally vital to train healthcare workers and teachers, for example, on how to enforce methods of child protection.
Akallo explained to Europa Newswire that while high government officials might be familiar with the CRC, “the people lower down, they don’t understand what the convention is.”
“When governments sign and ratify this convention they don’t really go down and educate people about it, so they still go back and abuse the children of that country, because they have not educated these people on how not to do so, and the importance of that,” the soft-spoken Akallo said. “People have to know their rights, so they can point to the convention itself and say, ‘We have the right to speak.’”
Since her escape from the LRA several years ago, Akallo, co-author of “Girl Soldier, A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children,” has devoted herself to serving as a voice for those who can’t – a role she also called on the media to consider gravely.
“The media often turns its attention to different things, but children are the future. The environment is very important, but if you don’t protect them, who is going to protect the environment in the future?” she questioned.
While studying international development and social change, Akallo is also working to establish an international social network for ex-children soldiers, and children affected by armed conflict.
“I am a grown-up so I cannot stand here and say I am a child, I speak for these people,” Akallo said. “Children are still suffering and I want them to come out and get their own voices.”
