SPLM/A reported to be recruiting in Ugandan camps

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) is targeting many of the 50,000 Sudanese refugees living in camps in Adjumani District, northwestern Uganda, for recruitment, the Ugandan government-owned ‘New Vision’ newspaper reported on Thursday. It quoted a report from the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University, in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, as saying that “continuing pressure” was being put on individual refugees, many of whom had fled the rebel group, to return to active service. The report, based on research in the refugee settlements in Adjumani, quoted one refugee as saying: “I live in fear. I know they are looking for me. I cannot run because I have children.” The Refugee Law Project called on the Ugandan government to move refugees with past SPLM/A involvement to camps further inside Uganda and away from the border with Sudan, or to third countries.

The ‘New Vision’ quoted the report as saying that communities in Adjumani were being pressured to give up one child per family to go into military service with the SPLA, and that the rebel group had often abducted children from the camps during the night. “The SPLM/A needs to take responsibility for its human rights abuses in Adjumani, and implement change in its recruitment policy. Forced recruitment discredits it in the eyes of the international community and erodes the legitimacy of its struggle,” the report stated.

Sudanese refugees in Adjumani [and neighbouring district] were also under threat from the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), as many of the settlements were located in areas where the LRA was known to be active, according to the Refugee Law Project. The LRA has operated a guerilla-style insurgency in the north of Ugandan since the late 1980s. The report added there was an “urgent need” for increased Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) presence in northern Uganda because LRA rebels were “exploiting the inadequacy of Uganda’s efforts to protect those living within its borders.”