Despite this, soldiers are often sent on multiple long-term deployments. Although military deployments within and across national borders are often conceived as short-term missions aimed at improving the security situation in weeks, in the recent past, most missions have been protracted, resulted in high casualty rates and have often taken years to complete. The Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) deployment to the DRC is one prime example. The mission, though only planned for a few weeks, ended up lasting three years from 2000 – 2003.

In most of the conflicts that soldiers are deployed to, Uganda has no specific interests – these are conflicts outside of Uganda’s borders that are being fought for neoliberal incentives where war and money are intertwined. This also extends to the soldiers’ motives who volunteer for deployment – which might be based on financial reward and not because they believe in restoring peace and normalcy.

Many male soldiers form consensual social relationships with women on deployment. They see these relationships as temporary and therefore often do not make plans to deal with the long-term outcomes, including when they have children with the cross-border ‘war-women’. In response, some women feel compelled to leave their country and move to Uganda to join their spouses when the soldiers return to Uganda.

Starting in 2000, all military were repatriated back to Uganda with the families they formed during deployment. The UPDF has repatriated about 400 women and children from the DRC alone. The state allows the families entry, and they are settled in various refugee camps, but they do not qualify for further state support. While many of the children know their fathers are afande (a soldier), and know their title and rank within the military, this is still not deemed sufficient evidence for them to receive support as an additional family member.

Many war-women with older children relocate from the gazetted villages to urban and peri-urban centres to access jobs. Some war-women prefer to live in the barracks. However, because soldiers are deployed frequently, spouses of deployed soldiers are sent out of the barracks. Such women and children then become homeless. These changes can cause tensions within local labour markets and conflicts with other civilians in those communities.

War-women and their children are frequently undocumented, ‘unclaimed’ and framed as posing short-term and long-term challenges to other local civilians, the Ugandan state and soldiers alike. Many soldiers discuss their attempts to introduce their new families to their relatives. However, this rarely succeeds due to a shortage of land or co-wives who do not accept the new family members. Furthermore, sometimes soldiers are unwilling to support children born in this context.

Although the state originally subsidised the living costs of thousands of cross-border war-women and their children, Uganda is no longer able to support and to sustain the ever-increasing war-related populations. This is due to budget cuts for the defence ministry and broader national economic struggles.

• Restructure military deployments and financial incentives for soldiers to shift to redistributive ways of peacebuilding. Uganda has predominantly relied on a militaristic approach of resolving internal and external wars, which is supplemented and supported by the UN structures and international approaches to security. This approach is no longer sustainable, and more emphasis should be placed on peaceful means of conflict resolution with fewer missions, limiting military expenditure on the purchasing of arms, and greater emphasis on mediation.

• Frequent and multiple soldier deployments must be minimised to mitigate the complex social and economic emergencies that come from soldiers starting ‘temporary’ families whilst on deployment. For soldiers, minimising the frequency and length of missions will discourage them from forming multiple social relations. Further, shorter military deployments will positively impact soldiers’ overall physical and mental well-being.

• Provide citizenship for cross-border war-women and their children. Cross-border war-women and children need to be treated with dignity and as citizens, whether it means acquiring citizenship through their links with the military or as people enmeshed in wars created and perpetuated by the state.

• Improving access to contraception and family planning services. Cross-border war women living in complex emergencies do not have knowledge of and access to family planning services. These resources and support need to be made more accessible to this specific population.