Grace Akallo

Grace Akallo (born 1981) is a Ugandan woman who was abducted in 1996 to be used as a child soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel military group led by Joseph Kony.

At the time of her abduction, Akallo was 15 years old and attending St. Mary's College, a Catholic boarding school in Aboke, Uganda.

She remained in the LRA for seven months before escaping.

After escaping the army, Akallo returned to St. Mary's College to finish her high school education.

She began her college education at the Uganda Christian University, but finished her undergraduate degree at Gordon College after receiving a scholarship.

Akallo then went on to receive her master's degree from Clark University/ Upon her escape from the LRA, Akallo began working as an advocate for peace and for the rights of African women and children.

She has been using both her experiences as a child soldier and the information she has gained in her higher education to advocate against violence and the use of child soldiers, as well as to help counsel other escaped child soldiers like herself.

Akallo was abducted into the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on 9 October 1996, when she was just 15 years old.

October 9 is Uganda's Independence Day, normally a day of celebration; however, on this day, Akallo and 138 other young girls were abducted from their dorm room at St. Mary's College by a group of LRA rebel soldiers.

On the night of Akallo's abduction, the LRA soldiers broke into the dorm through the windows while the girls and their dormitory supervisor, Alupu Jemma Obace, tried to run and hide.

The LRA soldiers tied the young girls to a rope and forced them to walk for an entire night, threatening to kill them if they did not obey.

The next morning, the LRA soldiers released 109 of the children back to the school's headmistress, Sister Rachelle, after she pleaded with LRA Commander Laguira, but Akallo was one of the 30 girls who was left behind.

Akallo and the other abductees were forced to march to Sudan––a walk that took them two weeks to complete––carrying loads of heavy supplies.

The LRA soldiers also abducted more children along the way, passing through the villages of Gulu and Kitgum, specifically, on their way to Sudan.

When one of the girls tried to escape, Akallo and the others were forced to beat her until one of the rebels killed the girl with an axe.

In the documentary Grace, Milly, Lucy... Child Soldiers, Akallo recounts how Commander Laguira told them: "Forget about Uganda. If you ever escape, that is what is going to happen to you."

The child soldiers were forced to obey or they would be beaten and/or killed.

The LRA soldiers took Akallo and the other abducted children to Sudan, where they were trained to be child soldiers.

They were beaten and tortured and forced to kill other children in the group who had disobeyed orders.

During her time in the LRA, Akallo was trained to march and to clean, dismantle, and assemble an AK-47 rifle, but she had to learn how to use the rifle on her own.

Akallo and her fellow child soldiers were forced to fight against the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), having to rely heavily on their instincts for survival.

She learned to shoot a rifle during the first raid she was a part of in a group of 700 randomly selected child soldiers.

The children were organized into rows and told to raid a village for food and shoot at the villagers.

The female child soldiers experienced violence in another way as well.

Despite their young ages, the girls, including Akallo, were also sexually assaulted by the LRA soldiers, who raped and beat them.

Each girl was given to a leader of the LRA to become one of their "wives".

Akallo says that "to become somebody's wife forcefully, it affects your spirit forever", in Grace, Milly, Lucy... Child Soldiers.

Though Akallo herself did not become pregnant, many of the young girls did, later returning home with children and having been infected by sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

The child mothers were still forced to fight in the war, both while pregnant and while carrying children on their backs.

At one point during the war, exhaustion and dehydration caused Akallo to faint.

The LRA soldiers thought she was dead and had the other child soldiers dig a grave for her body.

She also tried to shoot herself on two different occasions.

In Grace, Milly, Lucy... Child Soldiers, Akallo says: "I escaped death many times."

There was an attack on the LRA by a group in southern Sudan on 9 April 1997.

Akallo took this as her chance to finally escape the army.

She ran away and hid for three days in the bushes, finding a group of other escaped child soldiers on her fourth day in hiding.

They were found by Ugandan soldiers who helped them to return home to their families.

Several biographical texts and documentaries have been written and produced documenting the experiences of Akallo and her fellow child soldiers, most notably being the 2007 autobiography; Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children, co-authored with Faith J. H. McDonnell, the 2015 biography Grace Akallo and the Pursuit of Justice for Child Soldiers written by Kem Knapp Sawyer, and the 2010 documentary Grace, Milly, Lucy... Child Soldiers produced by Raymonde Provencher.

Akallo has since worked for different organizations, such as the Sister Rachelle Rehabilitation Centre and World Vision, as well as worked on several different advocacy projects, including contributing to the passage of amendments to the 2008 Child Soldiers Accountability Act.

and delivering speeches about her experience as a former child soldier Akallo has also started a non-profit organization in America called United Africans for Women and Children's Rights (UAWCR), aiming to protect the rights of African women and children; and cofounded the Network of Young People Affected by War through UNICEF.