Unicef Highlights 'Forgotten' Tragedy of Child Soldiers in Uganda
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UN News Service (New York)
July 19, 2004
Posted to the web July 19, 2004
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is shining the spotlight on the plight of
thousands of children abducted as soldiers and sex slaves by rebels in northern
Uganda, taking the world to task for forgetting a tragedy that "has obliterated the
idea of childhood as a protected time of healthy growth."
In April these child soldiers topped the list of "Ten Stories the World Should Know
More About" compiled by the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), and UNICEF
today called on the Government of Uganda and the international community to do much
more to stop this war on children.
"The world may be awakening to the emergency in Sudan but it has all but forgotten the
tragedy of neighbouring Uganda, where in the past two years some 12,000 boys and girls
have been abducted by the LRA (the Lord's Resistance Army)," Executive Director Carol
Bellamy said.
Although more than 1.2 million people have been displaced in fighting and Arab militia
attacks in western Sudan, "unlike any other, it (the LRA conflict) is a war on
children," Ms. Bellamy added in an article published Friday in The International
Herald-Tribune and reproduced in a UNICEF news release today.
She wrote of the frantic efforts of parents to protect their children from the nightly
LRA raids. "I have seen many disturbing things during my time with UNICEF. But few are
as shocking as the sight of the 'night commuters' in northern Uganda," she said. "They
are the 44,000 rural children who, fearing abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army,
leave their villages every day to seek refuge in town before nightfall."
The attacks invariably involve appalling human rights abuses. "Children are often
forced to kill their parents or other children. Those who are taken, some as young as
six, are used as sex slaves in the rebel force, made to work as slaves, or forced to
become soldiers. The LRA believes fighting age begins at seven," she added.
Ms. Bellamy praised the Ugandan Government for bringing peace to most of the country,
spreading universal primary education and tackling the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but she said
it is failing its people by not ensuring the protection of its citizens - "and the
global community is doing almost nothing to help."
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The world's governments have pledged just 20 per cent of this year's UN appeal for
$127 million in humanitarian aid. "The night commuters offer a vivid image of what
happens when parts of a society are left completely unprotected," Ms. Bellamy declared.
"We are calling on the government of Uganda and the international community to bring
the kind of potent political will to the problem that has been brought to bear
elsewhere," she added.
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