New information

It's hard to organize the information I'm coming across. As I am still researching this subject, I come across information that is important but was already touched on previous postings. I find some of this information to be very important I will just touch back on some previously answered questions.

Recruitment:
Children are largely abducted from the northern part of Uganda. These children are often forced to kill friends or family, the Lords of Resistance Army (LRA) uses this act to create a sense that the child will not be accepted back into the community and are therefore forced to rely on the LRA. The newly captive children are bound to their captors by ropes tied around the child's waist while their hands are bound behind their backs. The group then moves towards the boarder Sudan and Uganda. Stopping in other villages along the way for more "recruits". Many of the newly abducted will die along the way, they are not fed or given water. Many will try to escape, but will not be so fortunate. I read an account from a child who was in a rehabilitation center. He saw many people die on this journey. Some from exhaustion, dehydration, but mostly from the brutality of the militants. This child witnessed the forced killings of people by the hands of the children. The children were ofter forced to mutilate the body of the deceased, by means of removing the intestines and wrapping them around their own necks, smearing themselves with blood, and even being forced to drink their blood. This is done so the child will absorb the person strength. Once the group makes it to Sudan the children are taken to training centers to be broken into submission and then sent back into Uganda to complete the never ending cycle of brutality.

Rehabilitation:

I recently watched a couple documentarys that gave a lot of information on how centers deal with the rehabilitation of war affected children. These centers focusses on finding the child's parents as well as the rehabilitation of the child. When talking to the children in the center they have the child draw what they experienced, or in other words they use art therapy. Teaching the children how to manage their anger was found to be a necessary step, since they found a lot of children harbor a strong sense of revenge towards not only their captors but also to other children. The caretakers also preach Forgiveness, reconciliation and love among the children. Forgiveness isn't just meant just for one child to forgive another but for the child to forgive themselves. In this documentary they talked about a child who met the killer of his parents who was also a child in the center. After they shared their experiences they ended up becoming friends. This action also proves one of the centers forms of healing, healing through sharing the burden of suffering, as they referred to it as.

Ex child soldiers visiting a rehabilitation center

The center aims to keep the children active and occupied throughout the day so they can't dwell on the atrocities they were forced too commit. They accomplish this by having dances and showing movies. They also bring children from the outside to interact with the children in the center, commonly in the form of playing soccer. Over the corse of thirteen months the center received 1031 children, eight hundred of which were reunited with their families. Some children's parents are not so understanding of the situation. It is not uncommon for a child to be rejected by their parents after finding out about the acts that were committed. These parents are unable to understand that the child was forced into these horrible situations.

Now to cover new ground. What happens when a child comes back home?
Some times when a child returns home they can be met with hostility by the neighborhood. This is usually the case when the child, upon abduction, is forced to kill a member of the neighborhood and while the child was gone these people, who are unable to see the impossible choice these children had to make, gossip amongst themselves, but announce to others, " so and so killed my brother". These actions when added together further erode the society they live in.
Other times a child is welcomed back with open arms. In these cases when a child has been gone for over a year a ceremony is performed. During this ritual water is sprinkled on the child so all the their misfortune is washed away. Sometimes when the child returns home injured and traditional form of physical healing are not working they will resort to animal sacrifice, such as cutting heads off chickens, and holy water.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/youth-lost-ugandan-child-soldiers-in-the-lord’s-resistance-army
Falkenburg, Luke. "Youth Lost: Ugandan Child Soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army." Small Wars Journal. N.p., 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 July 2013.

This is an article that touches on all aspects of child soldiers, from abduction, rehabilitation, and reintegration.