Army says 6,000 children rescued from LRA

The Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) on Tuesday claimed to have rescued more than 6,000 children to date from enforced fighting and slavery with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The army’s 4th Division spokesman, Captain Khelil Magara, was quoted by the independent ‘Monitor’ newspaper as saying that the children had been rescued while fighting against the UPDF, and that a child protection unit had been formed in the 4th division to help those rescued.

Magara claimed that the UPDF had always attempted to rehabilitate rescued children by sending them to school. “That is why to date no child who has been caught in action fighting UPDF soldiers have been sent to court,” he added. Magara said the children had been abducted and forced to fight against their will. Many had also been used as sex slaves, he said.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, an umbrella group of NGOs campaigning on the issue, reported last month that an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 children had been recruited by various armed groups in Uganda since 1986. It said the LRA was estimated to have abducted 700 children last year alone. The report also claimed that the UPDF had provided direct assistance to opposition groups in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by training and equipping thousands of young recruits, many of them children.