A disturbing report from the UN on the wide use of child soldiers during the Ugandan conflict.The 18-year old rebellion of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) against the government has forced over 1.6 million Ugandans - half of them children - to flee to squalid and overcrowded camps in order to escape wanton attacks and killings. The number of internally displaced persons has almost tripled since 2002. Attacks on soft civilian targets continue, carried out by child soldiers much younger than their victims.
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Since the rebellion began in the 1980s, some 30,000 children have been abducted to work as child soldiers and porters, or to serve as “wives” of rebels and bear their children. These numbers have soared, with 10,000 children abducted in the past 18 months alone.
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The most disturbing aspect of this humanitarian crisis is the fact that this is a war fought by children on children
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Even as a peace process makes significant progress in neighbouring Sudan, the peace in Uganda is made tenuous by these developments. The “success story” that Uganda represents in the minds of the world’s economic policy makers presents a jarring contrast with the tragedy of conflict in the north and east that shows no signs of abating.
http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/ ... toryID=100
The question that must now be asked is how many of these former child soldiers are currently serving with the 20,000 strong AMISOM force in Central Somalia? Has the Ugandan regime visited this issue and did they make sure not to send any former child soldiers to Somalia? We believe these are legit questions which must be answered by both Ugandan and Somali regimes.
