Written Statement – Item 13 of the provisional agenda

Rights of the child: Children are the main victims of violence in northern Uganda

The main victims of the war that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has waged against the Government of Uganda for about 20 years now, are children in the Acholi region in northern Uganda. The Ugandan Government army (UPDF) has so far not been successful in bringing the war to an end. The LRA continues to attack villages, burn crops, loot property and abduct, mutilate and kill people. Continued attacks on innocent civilians, refugee camps and humanitarian workers by the (LRA) are hampering aid efforts in northern Uganda, declared the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Uganda, Martin Mogwanja, in December 2005. The killing of five aid workers in October / November 2005 increased insecurity and caused many aid agencies whose mandates do not allow the use of military escorts to restrict their relief operations, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without help and living in fear. Over 50 international aid agencies appealed to the United Nations Security Council in November 2005 for security of humanitarian workers and a more effective protection of the civilian population.

The situation of the children in northern Uganda has been deteriorating for years. „This is one of the longest, largest, and least addressed humanitarian crises in the world”, declared David McNamara, U.N. special adviser on displacement, in November 2005. Many of the victims of the gross abuses are women and children. More than 20.000 children are reported to have been abducted by the LRA. The LRA is said to consist of up to 90 % of child soldiers. The use of children by the LRA is a systematic human rights violation. They are abducted, subjected to sexual slavery, beaten, deprived, forced to kill and often murdered. The social fabric of society in the Acholi region of northern Uganda is destroyed. After the traumatic experience described above, it is almost impossible to meet the task to reconcile and reintegrate the abducted children back into their families and communities if they are lucky enough to escape the LRA, and, in fact the UPDF: members of the government forces have been responsible for forcing children returning from the LRA, voluntarily or as a consequence of military action, to join government armed forces in their fight against the LRA.

Ugandan government must fulfill its responsibility to protect civilians in war-torn north

Recent figures estimate that in northern Uganda about 1.7 million people are internally displaced. Nearly 80% of the IDP are women and children. The people forced to live in 105 overcrowded camps are effectively prevented from cultivating their land and grow their own food. If they are found outside of the camps, they face to be accused by the Ugandan government of treason and of collaboration with the rebel forces. One effect is that by now almost 3 million people depend on food aid. While justifying the displacement on grounds of security, the government has forcibly displaced people without a legal basis under international law and has failed to provide the promised security. The policy of forcefully keeping people in the camps also contradicts Ugandan national legislation, modelled after UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. These principles as well as the national laws ask for freedom of movement and assembly of internally displaced people.

The situation in the camps is alerting. People are lacking adequate housing, sanitation, medical treatment, sufficient food and safe drinking water. The World Food Program (WFP) does not have the means to supply sufficient food to the camps in Gulu district, and for other northern Ugandan districts WFP has to rely on armed protection to reach the camps.

Nearly 30.000 people were killed as a result of diseases and conflict in northern Uganda between January and July 2005, according to an official survey by the Ugandan health ministry, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO). About 1.000 excess deaths per week were registered in northern Uganda. More than 25.000 children were classified as severely malnourished.

The 11th Battalion of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) has been accused of numerous deliberate killings and beatings of civilians in Gulu district in February 2005. Arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of civilians by UPDF have been reported from several districts in northern Uganda in 2005. Rape and other sexual violence were frequent in and around the camps. UNICEF reported in June 2005 that rape was the most common form of violence in the Pabbo IDP camp (Gulu district). The Ugandan government has failed to meaningfully prosecute military personnel responsible for human rights violations. IDP’s regularly criticize that complaints of army abuses result in no action or that soldiers accused of murder are transferred to other units prior to proper investigation. In December 2005 six civilians were killed and sixteen injured in the Lalogi camp (Gulu district) then the UPDF fired on civilians who protested against the killing of an eighteen-year old youth by a soldier.

Several times the Ugandan authorities announced in 2005 to disband the camps, but the announcements were not accompanied by any significant preparations to facilitate the return of the IDPs to their homes. The authorities failed to ensure that the return is adequately planned and funded to prevent land ownership conflicts and to guarantee that returnees are able to secure a livelihood.

People who remain in the villages are hiding in the bush every night, to escape LRA attacks. Children from villages close to urban centres are commuting every night to the city, to seek shelter in churches and hospitals or to simply sleep at shop verandas or on the streets. Often their parents sent them there because they cannot protect their children in case of LRA attacks. On their sometimes very long walks to or from the city or when sleeping in the open, in particular young girls and women run the risk of being attacked and raped. In August 2004, UNICEF counted 59.000 of such „commuting children”.

Northern Uganda is still waiting for peace and justice

All hopes for a permanent cease-fire and a meaningful peace process faded in 2004/2005. Despite the peace process in neighbouring southern Sudan LRA has undertaken a series of attacks aimed at showing its viability as a fighting movement. A significant number of its fighters invaded Congo (DRC) highlighting the regional impact of war in Northern Uganda. The Ugandan Government has failed to develop any meaningful peace initiative since negotiations of a formal cease-fire agreement failed in December 2004 despite numerous calls for peace of the civil society in northern Uganda.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for five leading LRA commanders, but the ICC has no power of its own to execute the warrants. Justice in northern Uganda requires a thorough examination of the massive LRA and UPDF abuses. The Ugandan justice system is weak, but many of the human rights violations committed by UPDF are falling within the ICC’s jurisdiction.

The Commission for Human Rights was established to promote and protect all human rights. This is a crucial point in time, where the CHR should deal with the extremely serious human rights violations and atrocities committed by the LRA and by government forces in Uganda and to urge both parties to start a meaningful peace process. The population of northern Uganda has suffered long enough. They have a right to peace and to the protection and fulfilment of their human rights, civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural ones.

Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Commission to:

• urge the Government of Uganda to ensure an effective protection of the civilian population and to take all feasible measures to prevent that persons who have not attained the age of 18 years are recruited or used in hostilities according to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict ratified by the Ugandan government,

• demand the Government of Uganda to immediately disband the IDP camps and to guarantee that the return of the civilian population is adequately planned and funded,

• urge ICC to examine massive abuses by LRA and UPDF,

• ask all conflict parties to restart meaningful peace negotiations and to refrain from any abuses of the civilian population,

• urge the U.N. Security Council to consider the human rights and humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda as an agenda item and to name an U.N. envoy to enhance the peace process,

• to urge the U.N. Security Council to come to a further resolution on the issue of Children in Armed Conflict regarding actions of any sort against child recruiters.