Rebel UNRF recruiting child soldiers

Rebels of the United National Rescue Front (UNRF) have been recruiting child soldiers from 12-13 years of age in Yumbe and Arua districts of northwestern Uganda over the past year, the semi-official ‘New Vision’ newspaper reported on Thursday. The paper cited a captive of the rebel group detained by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) in Arua as saying that he was aware of two recruitment centres in Yumbe and one in Arua. The captive said the recruitment had begun in March 2000, and that recruits were taken first to Izodri detachment in Arua before being moved on to a UNRF base in Rojo (4.53 N; 30.5E), Western Equatoria, South Sudan.

The Uganda National Rescue Front II (UNRF-II) renewed activity in March 1998, according to Human Rights Watch. It and other armed opposition groups in northwest Uganda - like the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) - regrouped after defeats in early 1997 and continued to operated from rear bases in South Sudan, it stated. The inter-agency Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers is due to launch the first ever global report on the issue in Johannesburg, South Africa, and at UN headquarters in New York, USA, on Tuesday, 12 June.

Meanwhile, local government officials and Ugandan army officers had held “a historic face-to-face meeting” with commanders of the LRA in Awiny, 15 km north of Gulu, to explain the nature and purpose of the government’s amnesty law, Radio Uganda reported on Tuesday. Rebel commander Lt-Col Onen Komjulu said that LRA leader Joseph Kony was anticipating the outcome of this dialogue, that the LRA now wanted a peaceful resolution of the insurgency and that it would release any newly-abducted civilians, the report added.