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The figure of the abducted Acholi girl: nation-building, gender, and children born into the LRA in Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2021

Beth W. Stewart
Beth W. Stewart*
Affiliation:
Canada and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 12666 72 Avenue, SurreyBCV3W2M8, Canada
*
Email: bethwstew@gmail.com
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Abstract

Based on analysis of newspapers and secondary sources, this article examines the gendered construction of the national imagery of the war between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in an effort to expand current conceptual understanding of the exclusion experienced by children born of forced marriage inside the LRA. Uganda developed as a militarised and masculine post-colony and yet nation-building for President Museveni involved crafting a national imagery that drew upon development discourses of gender and children to position himself as the benevolent father of the nation. Invoking Veena Das’ ‘figure of the abducted woman’, I argue that the Ugandan government mobilised the figure of the abducted Acholi girl to legitimise both its governance and the war. The article concludes that the resulting narrative provided no legitimate social or political space in the national imagery for the children of the abducted girls.

Keywords

UgandaLord's Resistance Armymilitarised masculinitynation-buildingwartime sexual violencechild soldiersforced marriageborn of war
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 627 - 647
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This work was supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a doctoral award from the International Development Research Centre, and fieldwork and publication grants from the Liu Institute for Global Issues. Thanks also to the Justice and Reconciliation Project, Aloyo Proscovia, Erin Baines, and Evelyn Amony, among countless others.

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