UNICEF alarm over safety of LRA abductees

In the face of a major military offensive by Uganda and Sudan against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) inside south Sudan, the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed alarm at the fate of thousands of child abductees being held by the Ugandan insurgents. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, said the agency's concern was that many children could be killed or injured in the Ugandan-Sudanese joint offensive, including children who may have been forced to fight by their LRA captors. The agency was becoming increasingly concerned because, despite heavy fighting between Ugandan troops and LRA fighters inside Sudan, there were no signs of children abducted by LRA emerging, even as prisoners of war, a staff member told IRIN on Tuesday. Some of the abducted children may have been killed in the recent fighting, or else broadly scattered over difficult areas where they could be undergoing untold suffering, the official said. "We are getting very concerned, because there have been several days of heavy fighting, and no children have emerged," the source added. Led by Joseph Kony (and previously supported by Sudan, in retaliation for Ugandan support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), the LRA has fought Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, from bases in southern Sudan. LRA operations have included the killing and abduction of civilians, the looting of people's goods and destruction of their homes, to the extent that humanitarian officials have described its operations as a war against the civilian population and not the Kampala government. Uganda and Sudan signed a reconciliation accord in Kenya in December 1999, agreeing to foster and maintain security across their common border, and have since reopened diplomatic missions and exchanged envoys. In a joint statement last month publicly confirming their mutual cooperation "to contain the problems caused by the Lord's Resistance Army across the Sudanese-Ugandan borders", the two countries said they would "spare no efforts to safeguard and maintain the safety of innocent civilians", and seek the safe repatriation of abducted children, with the assistance of international humanitarian organisations. The Ugandan army spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN that his force was pleased with its temporary access to southern Sudan in pursuit of the LRA, and hoped that the military operation could directly result in the rescue of between 2,000 and 4,000 Ugandan captive children. Bantariza said Ugandan soldiers targeting LRA camps in the Jabalayn and Nisitu areas of southern Sudan had been ordered to treat all LRA fighters as captives to be rescued. However, the ferocity of the fighting - in which Uganda said it had overrun four LRA camps 90 miles from Nimule, in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, by Friday - has given rise to unconfirmed reports that many children and women have been among the casualties of the offensive, and generated particular concern over the safety and security of the LRA's child abductees. "The combined effort of the Ugandan and Sudanese governments finally to bring an end to the intolerable abuses of the LRA is indeed welcome," Bellamy stated on Friday. "However, reports of the intensity of the military operations raise deep concerns that innocent children and women - the primary victims of Kony's brutality - are themselves being caught in the crossfire." Bellamy repeated her previous appeals to the LRA to "immediately and unconditionally release the children they are holding". For 10 years the activities of the LRA had brought fear and disruption to large areas of northern Uganda, from which they abducted an estimated 10,000 children for use as soldiers, porters and sex slaves, the agency reported on Friday. At the LRA's bases in southern Sudan, many abductees had died of disease, starvation and at the violent hands of their captors, it added. Recognising that military action to deal with the LRA had always been an option of last resort, Bellamy urged Uganda and Sudan "to conduct their offensives in such a manner as to minimise the risks to children and other civilians". UNICEF sources, who put the number of abducted children still under LRA captivity at about 5,000 - in addition to an estimated 2,000 born in captivity - appealed to both sides to "regard the children as children" and appealed for humanitarian access to the region, to save children who may be stranded or wounded. "We acknowledge that this is a complex situation. These children may be highly militarised, but that doesn't mean they should not be regarded as children," an official added. Besides abductions, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Uganda has estimated that approximately 398,806 people still live as internally displaced persons in the northern Ugandan districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader as a result of the LRA insurgency. While a lull in LRA activity in late 2000 and early this year had encouraged displaced people to consider returning to their home areas, another upsurge began in mid-February - which is still continuing - and this appears to have triggered the Ugandan-Sudanese joint response.