Uganda: Unicef Seeks Urgent Funds to Aid Nearly 1 Million Children Displaced By War
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UN News Service (New York)
May 16, 2006
Posted to the web May 16, 2006
Posted to the web May 16, 2006
Facing a funding shortfall of close to 70 per cent for its operations in northern Uganda, the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) today urgently appealed for more than $36,500,000 to aid nearly 1 million youngsters displaced by the savage war waged by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.
"Displacement, poverty and heightened violence due to the 20-year-old, child-centred armed conflict between the Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF) and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) continue to spur a severe humanitarian crisis, with the rights of children and women to access basic healthcare, safe water, primary education, protection and shelter being largely unfulfilled," UNICEF said in its latest donor update.
The conflict has uprooted about 1.7 million people, including some 935,000 children, from their homes into more than 200 camp settlements. The LRA uses boys and girls as fighters and porters, with children often subjected to extreme violence shortly after abduction and many girls allocated to officers in a form of institutional
rape.
Of an estimated 25,000 children (7,500 girls) abducted by the LRA since the start of the conflict, some 1,000 are "child mothers" who conceived while in captivity.
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In mid-March 2006, some 13,000 child "night commuters" in Gulu, Kitgum and Kalongo towns were abandoning their homes for the relative safety offered by urban areas and larger displaced persons' camps each night, in a striking community response to insecurity, particularly to the threat of abduction, as well as other protection factors including lack of caregivers, abuse and dysfunction, UNICEF said.
Overall up to 40,000 such "night commuters" have been fleeing outlying villages and last year UNICEF
Executive Director Ann Veneman visited some of them in Kitgum.
Of the $53,328,696 the Agency has sought for purposes ranging from health and nutrition to education to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, it had received only $16,723,991 as of 30 April.
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