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The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) called on Friday for more European peace initiatives for north Uganda and the Congo. „Europe must at last do something to end the nightmare of the child soldiers in north Uganda and the Congo” demanded the GfbV Africa expert, Ulrich Delius, on Friday on the occasion of the International Day against Child Soldiers this Sunday. The pressure on the government of Uganda must be clearly increased, so that it at last takes serious action for achieving peace in north Uganda. It seems clear that it is only pressure from abroad which will move the conflict parties to honest peace talks.
„The German government can no longer accept that countries like Ruanda and Uganda, which are the main recipients of German development aid, systematically fuel armed conflict and the use of child soldiers in the neighbouring Congo and deliberately destabilise it with the object of exploiting raw materials”, said Delius. This goes against international law. Ruanda and Uganda must be threatened with the stopping of development aid if they do not give up this strategy. Leading Ugandan and Ruandan officers and politicians are tied up in the illegal trade with tropical wood and coltan.
„It is unrealistic to reject an operation of the German army in the Congo for fear of confronting child soldiers”, said Delius. „For child soliders are fighting above all in the east and south of the Sudan, while an operation of the German army is only under consideration in the area around the capital Kinshasa, which is several thousand kilometres further to the west”.
Half of all 100,000 child soldiers in Africa are fighting in the Congo and in Uganda. In north Uganda it is not only the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has snatched some 20,000 children and forced them to take up arms, but also the regular Ugandan army and allied militia which use child soldiers. In the east and south of the Congo about 30,000 child soldiers are fighting with various militia forces. Many of these armed groups receive their weapons and other support from the neighbouring countries of Ruanda and Uganda.
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