Diaspora Diaries

At eleven years old Alfred Orono didn't play with toy guns, or pretend to be a soldier fighting fantasy battles like most boys. He carried real rifles and was already a member of an army, fighting the reign of terror of Uganda's dictator Idi Amin. During Amin's rule from 1971-1979, death squads murdered Orono's father, a politician, and several of his family members adding them to the list of more than 300,000 Ugandans killed during the Amin regime.

As a child soldier, there were no funny cartoons to laugh at; instead, images of abductions, torture, rape and killings. At 16, Orono barely escaped death at the hands of his captors. Apprehended while trying to escape the clutches of the Sudanese army where he was in training, the already undernourished teenager was thrown into a hole and left for three months. As he fought off wild animals that fell inside and slept in a swampy mud bed, Orono came close to dying. These experiences could have destroyed him, but instead fuelled a passion for championing human rights and in particular protecting the rights of children.

"In the refugee camps, I observed violence of all forms and I saw victims of rape of all ages," says Orono. "But I always thought and believed that the warlords acting with impunity could be humbled by the application of the rule of law," he adds. Before the Amin coup, Orono had spent time accompanying his grandfather to court, a chief exercised juridical authority during colonial times.

His conviction to follow his grandfather's lead by using the law to secure justice against perpetrators and prevent a repeat of the atrocities he witnessed, fuelled his determination to stay alive. In 1993, Orono finally escaped his military captors, walking and running over 77 kilometres to the Sudan Kenyan Border where he reported to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. After spending two years in various refugee camps, Orono received the news he was being sponsored by the World University Service of Canada to study at the University of Alberta.

Arriving in Canada in August 1995, then 26, Orono focused intently on his academic work, completing his first year and moving on to pursue a BA in Criminology. The adjustment at first was difficult.

"I spent several years out of school. I was coming from a hole where there was nothing. Then I came to Canada and am confronted by so much," says Orono.

Canadian culture was a hurdle he had to overcome and he needed Canadian employment experience.

"You know how difficult it is to get employment. I took everything. I took menial jobs. I was a security guard at one point. I fought forest fires by helicopter. I have worked drilling oil in the cold," says Orono who describes obstacles he confronted in Canada as miniscule in comparison to what he faced as a child soldier and refugee in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and the Sudan.

Those scenes of his childhood continued to haunt him, however, particularly those of child rape by soldiers. Volunteering at a sexual assault center in Edmonton, Orono later designed and set up a course for Edmonton police investigators of child abuse and sexual assault. That year he also took an internship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at his former refugee camp in Kenya, conducting research on the incidence of sexual violence and ways of preventing it. Orono produced two reports published by UNHCR also giving presentations to members of the NGO community based on his personal experience as a former refugee and researcher.

He completed his BA with distinction, moving on to law school. In his second year, Orono interned with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) headquartered in Tanzania. Working with the team prosecuting top military officers, Orono was steadily moving in the direction of building opportunities to practice international human rights law.

After graduating from law school and working with the Canadian Department of Justice, Federal Prosecutions Service and the International Assistance Group, Orono has returned to the ICTR. He is now an Assistant Appeals Counsel in the Appeals and Legal Advisory Division of the Office of the Prosecutor, where he is helping to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide that took the lives of more than 800,000 Rwandans.

As Orono does his work, he takes with him lessons from his grandfather. "I have struggled all my life and have a great understanding of suffering. Accordingly, I view obstacles that come my way as part and parcel of life," says Orono. "The principles I use are my grandfather's. He once told me there are three kinds of people on earth: the foolish, the clever and the wise. When a fool meets an obstacle, he falls into it and is crushed. When the clever person meets one, he walks around it. However, when the wise person meets one, he gets into it, finds a solution and makes sure it is no longer an obstacle."

This philosophy, Orono says, informs his views on global citizenship.

"To be a global citizen you must have a very high sense of responsibility. You are not only concerned about what is happening around you, you are concerned about what is happening in the Congo, Somalia, Latvia, Japan, Australia etc. and you feel an obligation to give back." It embraces the biblical view, says Orono, that we are our brother's keepers.

Orono sees himself as a Canadian and a global citizen, fighting for international justice and giving back to the country and continent where he was born. In the years to come, he plans to spend increasingly more time helping to address the injustices children face in our world. Married with a young daughter of his own, he has adopted two orphaned teenaged children of his late sister and brother-in-law and is also taking care of two other siblings of the children.

"I wouldn't want anyone to deprive my child of a childhood or hurt my kid or endanger her life. When I drive around and I see small children, I feel an attachment, a connection to them and their parents. "As a kid I was a child soldier. I really didn't live a child's life. I feel I have an obligation to see that children are protected around the world."