More than 160 people celebrated George Omona as he received the 2000
Anti-Slavery Award for his outstanding work with children affected by armed conflict, particularly those abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

Trevor Phillips OBE, Chair of the London Assembly, presented the Award at a ceremony on 7 December, held at Waterstone's Bookshop in central London.

In a tribute to George Omona's work, Trevor Phillips, a veteran journalist and descendent of slaves, related the fundamental dehumanising nature of slavery which is as common for child soldiers as it was for victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

George Omona described the tragedy of the 14,000 children who have been forced to serve as soldiers in Uganda and brought a message from the those whose lives he he has helped to put together: the only way forward is dialogue.

See below for the full text.

2000 Anti-Slavery Award winner, George Omona, Project Co-ordinator, Gulu Support the Children Organisation:

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you who have put aside your valuable time to come and express your solidarity with the suffering children of northern Uganda. And I bring you greetings from the children who are at our reception centre in Gulu. When I received this message I sat with them and we had brief discussions and requested of me to bring their greetings to you.

A few minutes ago I think all of you witnessed me receiving an award from the oldest human rights organisation in the world and I feel very proud to be associated with them through this award. And your presence, all of you here, gives us a renewed sense of hope that there are still many people in the world who care for children. And through this award, Anti-Slavery International has joined all other international human rights organisations that have been working with us on this issue, in particular Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, with whom we started to work in 1997 when they came independently and carried out an investigation on the situation of our children in northern Uganda. I think at that time, that was the first time when the whole world was shocked to learn that despite all of the images being painted about Uganda, in a little place in northern Uganda thousands of children were suffering and at that time already, more than 10,000 children were already abducted and taken into captivity, and yet the world didn't know what was happening.

So I would like to thank Anti-Slavery International very much for having joined other human rights organisations in giving us this support. Thank you very much for this support.

Having said this, with your permission and due respect, I would like kindly to ask all of you to stand up and observe a moment of silence for the thousands of children who will perish in all theatres of conflict against child soldiers, in particular those from northern Uganda.

I would like therefore, to share with you my experiences of the last four years in working with children who unfortunately have been forced to grow up out of childhood by few individuals who happen, for various reasons, to have resorted to using children to solve their own interests. Now today we are talking about child soldiers, for the first time I saw a child holding a gun was in 1986 in Uganda when the National Resistance Army, which brought the current government in Uganda to power, took over power in Kampala. And at that time they used to refer to those kadogos, and at that time all of us took it very lightly we didn't realise what was in store for us. And since then assessing the legacy of using children in solving our differences and on many occasions when our leaders disagreed on the rules of sharing power they threatened to go to the bush. And what does this basically mean, with regards to children? And some of them ran away to foreign countries and leave our children to perish in the battlefield for their own cause and maybe come and fight over the BBC and foreign radios.

So when we are now talking about child soldiers, this is not a unique problem only for Uganda, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, there are 13 African countries which have been blacklisted: Uganda, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, name it, and the world seems to be helpless. The children cannot be protected by their parents even by the government, even by all the human rights international laws in place cannot protect our children and increasingly, as has just been mentioned, it is not only unique to Africa. Apparently it seems now children are becoming involved at both ends of the gun, even there are some governments known to recruit children, not only non-government entities. And my experience with working with these children gives me the courage to invite all of you, that this is a crime we cannot remain silent witness, to see this crime visited upon our children. This is a betrayal of our children, and I think we have let down our children as we allow them to drop out of childhood.

Look at the Ugandan case, the children whom I work with. Now more than 14,000 children are estimated to have been abducted. Some have managed to have escaped, some have died, but we still have about 5,144 children missing, unaccounted for, we don't know whether they are dead or they are still alive.

So the insurgency started in 1986 was a popular rebellion, by the Acholi community, but I think with time it was hijacked. I am sure the Acholi people rejected the tactics which were being used by the Lords Resistance Army, and so in 1994, after the collapse of the peace initiative by the then …Minister of Pacification in Northern Uganda, we were shocked to see children being brought during public rallies and displayed by the military. Few though, few women burdened by seeing their children coming back as a result they started this local organisation, Gulu Support the Children Organisation, in 1994. And since then save the Children Denmark have been working in partnership with GUSCO in providing support and mobilising resources from DANIDA, the Danish Development Agency, and USAID.

Now, at that time I was working with a UK-based NGO, Accord in Gulu, but we have been working as volunteers, so I only became the Programme Co-ordinator in 1997and I didn't know what I was going for. But in the last four years I have seen in the faces of more than 2,300 children who have passed through us the suffering, the pain, the anguish, that they have been through and sitting down together with them, sometimes I spend the night with them when they first come to our centre, and you hear of the horrifying past you can never get used to their horrifying stories.

A child of 11 is violently separated from the parents and sometimes made to commit atrocities in their own communities. One which comes to my mind, David, who was made to kill both parents in the presence of other family members, and then taken into captivity, he stayed for three years, he rose up in the ranks, and when he tells you his experience, you cannot believe it. And when this child comes back, the community which failed to protect that child turned around and throw him against the rebel, even the government, the soldiers, who failed to protect him, now call him a rebel and that's the dilemma of many children we have. And now, the most worrying thing in particular are the girl children.

The girl children are taken into captivity, they are distributed to rebel commanders as rewards for their bravery. And some rebel commanders have as many as 48 or 50 of these girls. Suffering much from rapes and these so called forced marriages children are being born into captivity, and we are now about to begin dealing with a second generation of child soldiers who are born in captivity and given the guns. And the only thing they know is the gun and that is why, I think, in northern Uganda we now need peace.

So when I was coming I sat down with a group of these children, I said 'what message do you want me to take?' And one of them told me clearly, that 'I have been in this thing, I have fought so many battles with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, I have fought with the Ugandan Government, neither the Government of Uganda nor the Lord's Resistance Army can solve this problem militarily. So the only message is dialogue.' And so, they have asked that the Lord's Resistance Army should open the doors for dialogue. The Government of Uganda and the Government of Sudan should get committed to genuine dialogue and resolve this conflict.

Two, we should disconnect the issue of the abducted children as a child rights issue from any political concerns between the Government of Uganda and the Government of Sudan. Let us get children out of this conflict while, maybe if the other political solution, let it come the day after. And this is the message.

Finally, we have been very active in Uganda trying to put pressure on our government, trying to put pressure on the Lord's Resistance Army and we have been very consistent that it is only through dialogue that we can attain peace in northern Uganda, although our Government has been insisting on a military option.

Every time we hear that the Government forces have clashed with the Lord's Resistance Army we read in the papers that a hundred rebels have been killed. What do you find on the battlefield? It is littered with the bodies of these innocent children. About 90 per cent of the LRA is composed of children, so the Government of Uganda is literally fighting children and therefore, through our action and also through the call of the Acholi community, we have asked for an amnesty, for a long time.

Though with a lot of reluctance, on the 8th of December, our Parliament passed the Amnesty Act and we are happy that at least the Government has listened to the voices of the Acholi people. But, what is worrying is that this amnesty law may become a source of shame to us because up to now the LRA has rejected the amnesty. Up to now, no one has responded to the amnesty. And yet, the ordinary person has been appealing for this. And so we are appealing to all people of goodwill, through your own way, to put pressure on the two governments to become committed to the direct peace talks and again for those who still maintain contact with the LRA to grab this opportunity and translate it in sending this clear message, that we need them home.

The thousands -- and even some senior commanders -- who have come home who have been captured, we have managed to rehabilitate them through World Vision International and return them to the community. None of them is being persecuted. And this is the clear message that we want to send, because I understand from the children that there are some, who are sisters and brothers in the diaspora who visit Kony in his camp in Sudan. And certainly they may be misleading the world, so if some of them come across any of you, it is better to tell them clearly 'please take up your responsibility seriously the only to resolve the conflict is through dialogue'. And I think this is the message the children have asked me to bring to all of you who have sacrificed your time to come here.

And also to my brothers and sisters who are in the diaspora, I think there is no fear, I don't think if you went home now, the Government is going to do anything. Because I think there is a lot of pressure now from within and the world is watching. So collectively let us come home and build our place.

Thank you very much."

Questions:

· What is GUSCO doing about the 283,000 children living in the protected villages?

· Why is Joseph Kony fighting today, after 14 years?

"The International Labour Organisation has recently adopted a convention whereby forceful recruitment of children for armed conflict is considered as the worst form of child labour, and again the experiences of the girls forced into sexual slavery were the ones I wanted to highlight this evening.

However, we as an organisation, a child-focussed organisation, we are in involved on the ground with the wider problem of war-affected children. So in a broader category we tackle war-affected children, but particularly the formerly abducted children. So, in Gulu we are working also with children who are internally displaced. We know very well that more than half of the population in Gulu are displaced in camps and we have about 20 or so camps and people came to those camps in various ways. In some camps the Government forced people to go to the camps, .... 47,000 people crowded within only two square kilometres. And there are others whereby the Government persuaded leaders to go to the camps. There are others where we ran with our children for safety. So the issue of the internally displaced camps we have been actively addressing it.

At first when we went to the camps we thought we were only going to stay for two weeks, but now we have been in the camp for four years. And the camp has become a major source of problem. So at the moment while in the camp we work with internally displaced children in the camp. However, we are already involved with other stakeholders in negotiating with the government that it is important that a strategy should come to see how, slowly, the camps should be dismantled.

First maybe to split them into smaller camps, whereby people can have space, children can have space to play, people can cultivate and so forth. And while the situation improves, people can move into the villages. It must be a gradual process.

The issue of the internally displaced camps, the so-called protective villages, is very contentious in Uganda.

Turning on to Joseph Kony, I think this is the question we are also asking ourselves. We have been asking Joseph Kony why is he fighting? If it is true that he is fighting for us. Then paradoxically we are caught up between him and the Government. The people whom he claims to be fighting for are the ones at the sharp end of the conflict. And so, as I appeal that we want this door to be kept open, we invite them, if there is the opportunity for dialogue, to bring it on the table as I speak now, I don't think there is anybody who knows why Kony is fighting. There are many allegations, propaganda, which are going about, but we don't believe in the propaganda. So we want to have the opportunity where maybe they can lay it on the table and then try to negotiate it; I think that question is very difficult for me to answer.

Thank you."