UN to set up human rights office

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is to establish an office in Uganda in June to monitor abuses related to conflict in the northern and eastern regions of the country, a UN official said. The OHCHR presence in Uganda was intended to "help strengthen the response to the abuses and violations resulting from the conflict afflicting the northern and eastern parts of the country," the spokesperson for the office, José Luis Diaz, told a news briefing in Geneva on Friday. The office would also "undertake human rights monitoring, training, capacity-building of local actors, and work on a protection strategy in cooperation with the National Human Rights Commission as well as the UN Country Team," he added. Northern Uganda has since 1988 been ravaged by warfare pitting the Uganda government against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal insurgency that frequently targets civilians for attacks. The conflict has displaced more than 1.4 million people. The LRA has been widely accused of abducting thousands of young boys and girls for recruitment into its ranks, or to be turned into "wives" for LRA commanders. LRA fighters have often carried out attacks in several eastern districts as well.