UNICEF Gets Shs 6bn for North Uganda Children
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The Monitor (Kampala)
May 30, 2004
Posted to the web June 1, 2004
Henry H. Ssali
Kampala
The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has secured $3.2m (Shs 6bn) as emergency
humanitarian aid for children in war ravaged northern Uganda.
Unicef Executive Director, Ms Carol Bellamy announced the aid, during a press
conference at the end of her visit to Uganda. Bellamy said the UN launched a
consolidated appeal of $7.6m to be used over the next six months - but had so far
secured only $ 3.2m.
"When you think of what is spent in Iraq everyday, Uganda only needs a drop in the
bucket," she said. Bellamy who visited Internally Displaced Peoples' camps in Lira and
Gulu referred to the war in the as "one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world
today."She narrated her ordeal of seeing children flocking into Gulu town at night.
"I have seen many disturbing images during my time with Unicef, but few of them are as
shocking as the sight of the 44,000 'night commuters' I saw two nights ago," she said.
She appealed to the Lord's Resistance Army's rebel leader Joseph Kony to stop
abducting children and using them as soldiers and using girls as sexual slaves.
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She said the LRA's use of children has not only robbed them of their childhood but has
also created a pattern of violence in them.
She described Uganda as a country with 'two Ugandas'. "While one Uganda continues to
succeed as a development model for Africa, the other Uganda is an open wound in the
north that threatens to jeopardise its success," she said.
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