China Keitetsi

Keitetsi was abducted in 1984 by the National Resistance Army led by Yoweri Museveni, who later became president of Uganda. She was exploited for 11 years until she escaped at the age of 19.

She will talk about her life experiences – the trauma of abduction, the loss of childhood, the sexual abuse to which she was subjected, and the enduring impact of the atrocities she both witnessed and was forced to commit.

“I would like to share with the audience how sad it is when one feels very old and yet also feels like a child,” she says, “how we struggle every day to learn to live with the loss of our childhood; how we struggle to love our bodies and live with virtually no sense of dignity because of the abuses we endured; and how it feels to never have a proper sense of belonging.”

She says that in many ways women and girls suffer harsher abuse than their male counterparts – experiencing not only the brutality of combat, but also sexual exploitation. At 14, she gave birth to her first child, a baby boy. Just months later, she was forced to return to the army. When she was 19, she rejected the sexual advances of a senior officer. In retaliation, he accused her of having sold weapons to the enemy, an allegation that could have had dire consequences, and she had to flee for her life.

Keitetsi is now an international advocate for children who are kidnapped and forced into war. She has testified before the United Nations Security Council, and has traveled around the world to speak about the plight of child soldiers. Although her personal experiences took place in Uganda, she has taken up the cause of child soldiers all over the world. The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 children may be serving in armies in more than a dozen countries in Africa and Asia.

Her autobiography They Took Away My Mother and Gave Me a Gun is a bestseller in Germany under the title, Sie nahmen mir die Mutter und gaben mir ein Gewehr. Mein Leben als Kindersoldatin. The English-language edition (published in South Africa) is called My Life as a Child Soldier.