UN Security Council Resolution 1653 - Ugandan children being terrorized by protectors [News]

Adopting resolution 1653 (2006) on Friday, 27 January 2006, the Council strongly condemned the activities of such groups as the Forces démocratique de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), Burundi’s Palipehutu-Forces national de liberation (FNL) and Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which continued to attack civilians and United Nations and humanitarian personnel, as well as to commit human rights abuses against local populations. The Council reiterated its demand that all such groups lay down their arms and engage voluntarily and without delay or preconditions in their disarmament, repatriation or resettlement. For complete story: monuc.org

Resolution 1653 rightly addresses the need to maintain territorial integrity between the states in Africa's Great Lakes region as each state takes all necessary measures to enforce disarmament & demobilization of illegally armed groups like the LRA. What it doesn't address, however, is the fact that there are over 1.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (UNICEF estimate) forcibly placed in camps who are not only being terrorized by the LRA in Uganda, but also by the Ugandan army, police force, & the Local Defense Units (set up by the IDP camps in order to protect them from the LRA). These are legitmately armed forces in Uganda, and they're contributing to the utter lack of security in the area. What's worse is that most of these IDPs (80% of whom are women & children, UNICEF 2005) are confined to the camp & will most likely be unable to farm in time to reap returns for the Spring. Which means that the UN World Food Programme will have to provide for the 1.5 million. And though the LRA have denied this, since the ICC arrest warrants were released in Oct 2005, the LRA seems to be targetting humanitarian aid workers/resources.

This just boggles my mind & infuriates me. The Uganda government needs to run a clean operation when it comes to these IDP camps. Without legitimate law enforcement, efforts to disarm/demobilize the LRA are completely done in vain. Am I just not getting something?

My message to the UN Security Council: Yes, the LRA have guns & they should lay them down. Good, we've established that. But how many of those armed = under 18 combatants? How feasible is that they would voluntarily leave the LRA to disarm? What about the murders, rapes, beatings, & robberies that occur in the IDP camps by the army & LDUs? We'd have radically different policy formulation if we understood the situation from a child/woman's perspective. Perhaps, I'm being naive, but I'm just not moved by the Council's lack of effort.

Taylor’s Surrender to Special Court Critical for Justice, Rule of Law in West Africa [news]

News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International
AI Index: AFR 34/003/2006 27 January 2006

(Monrovia, January 27, 2006) – Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, should take prompt action to ensure that former Liberian President Charles Taylor is surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Campaign Against Impunity said today in an open letter to President Johnson-Sirleaf, who was inaugurated on January 16.

The Campaign Against Impunity is a coalition of some three hundred African and international civil society groups that was formed to press for Charles Taylor’s surrender to the Special Court. Liberian partners in the Campaign are holding a press conference today in Monrovia at 2 P.M. (GMT) to further demonstrate their support in the fight against impunity in the sub-region.

“President Johnson-Sirleaf said her presidency will stand for accountability and the rule of law,” said Ezekial Pajibo, executive director of Centre for Democratic Empowerment (CEDE), a Liberian organization that is part of the Campaign. “Now she has a major opportunity to do just that. We hope she will seize this chance by requesting Nigeria to surrender Charles Taylor to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.”

The Special Court was set up in 2002 to try those most responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone’s armed conflict. Charles Taylor has been accused of 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Sierra Leone by the Special Court. The crimes include killings, mutilations, rape and other forms of sexual violence, sexual slavery, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, abduction, and the use of forced labor by Sierra Leonean armed opposition groups.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has thus far refused to surrender Charles Taylor to the Special Court since 2003 when Taylor went to Nigeria. However, President Obasanjo has indicated since then that he would consider surrendering Charles Taylor upon a request from a duly-elected Liberian government.

For the complete release: IS Amnesty International News Releases

my thoughts - this would certainly be essential to the stability of the region. The Special Court for Sierra Leone would be the most appropriate place to try Taylor. admittedly, I'm not sure how much better the Special Court for SL fares compared to the Tribunals in Arusha for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia. but there's no doubt that the failure to bring Taylor to justice would further demonstrate the weakness of democratic institutions in Western Africa, not to mention the rest of the continent. Somehow, we are always banging up against the wall of state soveriegnty -- how can we enforce elements in international law, specificially in regards to war crimes, when we have no effective enforcement agency? but do we really want such an agency?

Children in Conflict - agents of war or agents of peace?

I started this blog out of necessity. Many sleepless nights researching the use of children in conflict inevitably leads to a sense of isolation and despair, even for my hardcore idealism. So perhaps blogging will allow me to find some relief as I go through the next 8 months or so of researching and writing. If somehow my blog reaches anyone involved (or who wants to be) in children's rights, I completely welcome your reactions and comments...

My main concern at the moment is the absence of children in security studies, as well as in international political economics and development studies. Not that they aren't mentioned, because anyone familiar with these disciplines knows that children are usually the most common statistical feature in case studies (demonstrating that they are disproportionately affected by war and poverty - common knowledge). No, what I'm talking about is the lack of perspective or ownership over these disciplines - the effect of children on peace, security, & development. Children have a greater effect on war, peace, and economies than is acknowledged by much mainstream literature. I've got a lot of thinking to do in this area. But it's difficult not to do some soul searching as well. How valuable will my research be in the end when I finally finish? It's the activist in me wanting to get away from my computer and from all this literature and reach real people & lives... leave the policy designing for better brains. And yet, the growth of youth organizations and student-run advocacy groups out there dedicated to specific situations of children in conflict & poverty is a kind of assurance that this work will contribute to a new voice in political and economic discourse. One can dream...

UGANDA: Olara Otunnu says children are real victims of war [news]

[LONDON, 18 January 2006] - The worst place in the world to be a child today is northern Uganda, the former UN representative for children in war said, blaming rebels and government forces for trapping an entire population in a nightmare of terror, disease and death.

Rebels have kidnapped more than 20,000 children for use as soldiers, sex slaves and porters while the government is keeping hundreds of thousands of others in squalid camps where disease and violence are rampant. "When adults wage war children pay the highest price," Olara Otunnu said in a speech in London. "Children are the primary victims of armed conflict."

Almost 2 million people have been "herded like animals" into the camps in northern Uganda where 1,000 people are dying a week due to disease and violence, Otunnu said. He added that rape by government troops, many of them HIV positive, was common.

The government says the camps were set up a decade ago to protect local people from attacks and abductions by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), whose 19-year insurgency has taken a horrific toll on northern Uganda's Acholi population. Otunnu, who comes from northern Uganda, accused President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, of forcing the Acholi people into the camps in a deliberate campaign to wipe them out. The government strongly denied this.

"An entire society is being destroyed in full view of the international community," Otunnu said, calling on Western leaders to demand the Ugandan government dismantle the camps and send in international monitors. Otunnu said there were 200 camps. The government said there were 100.

Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Oryem Henry Okello dismissed Otunnu's claims, saying people had gone to the camps to escape LRA atrocities. "It's absolutely true that the situation in northern Uganda is appalling," said Okello, himself an Acholi and a lawmaker for the northern Kitgum district. "What is not true is that there's (a) genocidal project to destroy the Acholi people."

Otunnu, who was UN Under Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 1997 to 2005, said the situation in northern Uganda was far worse than in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

In Darfur, tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes since 2003. "The UN said recently that the death rate in northern Uganda is twice that of Darfur," he said. "Northern Uganda has the worst infant mortality in the world today".

[Source: Reuters]

To read the article in full, go to: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=7023