Women's group wants greater protection of war-affected children // CORRECTED//

A global women's advocacy group, Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC), has called on the Ugandan government and the international community to ensure greater protection for children in the war-affected north, who, it says, have endured the brunt of an 18-year old civil war. In a report, entitled, "No Safe Place to Call Home: Child and Adolescent Night Commuters in Northern Uganda", WCRWC said the war in northern Uganda was a war on children and adolescents. It called on the government, the humanitarian community, the UN, donors and civil society to cooperate on resolving the crisis while continuing to provide immediate humanitarian assistance and physical security. "This is a war on children and adolescents. They suffer death, physical and psychological injury, including rape, and a lack of educational and livelihood opportunities. Yet, young people continue to survive, and some continue to hope. They do so with the support of one another and also with the support of caring and compassionate adults," the report states. "In the absence of adequate government protection, displaced people are seeking alternative means of protection." An estimated 50,000 "night commuters", most of them children, adolescents and women, leave their homes in rural northern Uganda each night to escape attacks from the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for the relative safety of town centres, walking as far as six miles each way, said Matthew Emry, the manager of the WCRWC's project on children and adolescents, and a lead researcher and author of the report. The New York-based WCRWC is an advocacy group working to improve the lives and defend the rights of refugee and internally displaced women, children and adolescents and their inclusion and participation in humanitarian assistance and protection programmes. "Improved protection will in part rely on increased opportunities for youth leadership. Young people are more than future leaders, they are today's leaders, and the future of northern Uganda will largely depend upon building their capacity and ensuring their security," Emry added. The group called for investigations into the needs of and abuses against young people, night commuters and the 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs), including protection and assistance strategies which, it said, must be coupled with strong monitoring mechanisms to ensure that IDPs' needs were being addressed and abuses ended. "The government of Uganda bears the principal responsibility to protect and assist its citizens," the report said. "But the international community must continue to pressure the government to fulfil this responsibility. Donor governments need to apply additional pressure on the [Uganda] government to prioritise achieving a peaceful solution to the conflict in northern Uganda. The government and the international community must also reach out to the LRA to release civilians, particularly children and adolescents, as well as to end all abductions," the report recommended. For the past 18 years, war has ravaged northern Uganda, where government forces are battling the LRA, whose political agenda is unclear. The LRA is, however, best known for countless atrocities, including the abduction of tens of thousands of children, who make up the bulk of the rebel army. In March 2002, the Ugandan government launched Operation Iron Fist, a military offensive against the LRA inside Sudan. But the operation has been blamed for the intensification of LRA attacks in northern Uganda, where it has perpetrated mass killings and increasing abductions for forced recruitment. The number of abducted children has jumped from at least 12,000 children in June 2002, to at least 30,000 by May 2004. The report is available at www.womenscommission.org