UNICEF urges world to keep focus on crisis in the north

The executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, has urged the world to keep focus on the "humanitarian emergency" in northern Uganda, where 18 years of conflict has devastated the region and displaced up to 1.6 people. "The world needs to wake up to the enormity of the crisis in northern Uganda. This is one of the most serious humanitarian emergencies in the world," Bellamy, who arrived in Uganda on Tuesday for a four-day visit, said in a statement. "Many hundreds of thousands of children are living in conditions of fear and violence. They are being denied their basic rights to health, protection and education. We need to renew our efforts to alleviate their suffering," she added. According to UNICEF, the number of displaced people in northern Uganda has tripled over the last 24 months as conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and government troops continues. Eighty percent of the displaced are women and children, many of whom had been subjected to sexual violence and other forms of exploitation. Bellamy is due to visit displaced people's camps in northern Uganda on Wednesday. In Lira, she will meet children and families living in camps for the displaced to whom UNICEF is providing shelter, water and sanitation facilities and helping construct temporary classrooms. She would then proceed to Gulu, where UNICEF is training local volunteers to provide psychosocial counselling, the statement said. According to UNICEF, the LRA has abducted an estimated 12,000 children since June 2002. Bellamy called on the rebel group to release all remaining child soldiers and abductees from captivity and asked the government of Uganda to give better protection to children. Bellamy is also due to meet an estimated 44,000 children who walk to sleep in towns from outlying areas each night, to avert abduction or attack by the LRA. They are locally known as "night Commuters". "The government of Uganda has a responsibility to protect these children, and the rest of the world must play its part. So far, the global community's response has been woefully inadequate," said Bellamy. "Governments to date have pledged just 20 percent of this year's UN appeal for US $127 million in humanitarian aid for the region." The LRA has been fighting the Uganda government since 1986, perpetrating a violent campaign of terror, cruelty and child abductions. Many of the young boys whom the rebels abduct are forced to fight in the rebel group's ranks, while girls are made sex slaves to rebel commanders.