Carol Bellamy meets war-affected people in the north

The executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, on Thursday ended a two-day visit to northern Uganda, where she visited internally displaced persons (IDPs). She also met children recovering from war trauma, some of them born to mothers who had themselves been children when they were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. Religious leaders in the region told Bellamy of the need for international intervention in the 18-year conflict in which thousands of people have lost their lives. She was briefed by Anglican Bishop Baker Ochola, the vice-chairman of the Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative, on his group's efforts to broker a peaceful settlement of the conflict, which he described as "a disaster". "Our appeal during the meeting with the UNICEF executive director was that this war must end immediately and that we want international intervention in this war, which has produced a whole generation of children without education," Ochola told IRIN by telephone from the northern town of Gulu. According to Anne Lydia Sekandi, a UNICEF information officer in the capital, Kampala, Bellamy visited a reception centre for children formerly abducted by the LRA. The children told her about their experiences in captivity. As part of their reintegration into mainstream society, and before they return to their families and communities, the children - both girls and boys - receive psychosocial counselling and basic health care there. According to UNICEF, the number of IDPs in northern Uganda has tripled over the last 24 months as conflict between the LRA and government troops continues. Eighty percent of the IDPs are women and children, many of whom have been subjected to sexual violence and other forms of exploitation. Up to 12,000 children have been abducted by the LRA since June 2002. Ochola quoted Bellamy as appealing to both sides in the war to regard children as a special case, who should not be used as soldiers by either side. Bellamy also visited children known as "night commuters" who every night take refuge in the northern towns to sleep on shop verandas, at bus terminals and in school and hospital compounds. "She visited two shelter sites out of the 11 sites supported by UNICEF, designed to provide security for the thousands of children who stream into Gulu town from outlying areas with each sunset for fear of abduction by the LRA. One of the sites provides sleeping space to 7,000 children, another for 3,000," Sekandi told IRIN on Friday. The LRA has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1986, conducting a violent campaign of terror, cruelty and child abduction. Many of the young boys whom the LRA abducts are forced to fight in its ranks, while girls are made sex slaves to rebel commanders.