Who Will Help Children Victims Of Warfare?
The rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have terrorized the people of northern Uganda since the early 1990s reaching as far as Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. At least 15,000 people are displaced and more than 5,000 Congolese refugees live in camps in the Central African Republic, while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, abduction of children continues. In the past six months in the eastern province, at least 102 civilians were killed every month by the rebels. In rebel attacks on villages in the area between December and March, at least 302 people, including 125 children, were captured and many civilians were mutilated, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA. The Lord’s Resistance Army is notorious for its brutality and for forcefully enlisting children as soldiers or sex slaves or porters. And this violence continues to feed a growing humanitarian crisis.
