ABSTRACT
Upon abduction, girls in northern Uganda joined LRA contexts where forced marriage was a socialising and survival strategy, which was both aligned with and drawn from broader Acoli cultural frameworks regarding gender identity, gender roles and gender relations, which assign a crucial role to the social institution of marriage. The abducted girls found that through forced marriage, the position of a woman was linked more to her reproductive roles, rendering her dependant on a man for survival. Coming from relatively similar home settings, girls did not find the LRA gender and patriarchal frameworks completely new. Accordingly, they involuntarily ‘collaborated’ with the LRA leadership and commanders to reproduce home marriage patterns within the LRA/bush contexts. These forced collaborations placed them in a more vulnerable position, owing to their relationships with their male counterparts. This chapter sheds new light on the LRA forced marriage system, providing new information on how it operated and resembled marriage back home. It explores the continuity of gender and patriarchy frameworks between home and LRA contexts, suggesting that the LRA leadership knowledgeably replicated these frameworks to increase the effectiveness of their military force.
