Although the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) does not seem to be recruiting children in Uganda, women and children are still present in its ranks, and the rebel group is allegedly enlisting young people from neighbouring countries, according to a United Nations report released today. The LRA, which has fought a civil war with the Ugandan Government since the mid-1980s, became notorious during the conflict for abducting as many as 25,000 children and using them as fighters and porters. The children were often subject to extreme violence shortly after abduction, with many girls allocated to officers in a form of institutional rape. 'Owing to the apparent absence of LRA from Ugandan territory, there have been no recent cases of recruitment and use of Ugandan children, or other grave violations against children attributable to LRA,' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in a new report to the Security Council. 'However, children and women are still present in the LRA ranks, and there has been no movement on their release,' he adds. In addition, he notes there are reports alleging that the group has been recruiting children from southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR).The detailed UN Report can be read here.
At a glance, I'm wondering: what does Ban Ki-moon think the presence of women in the LRA ranks has to do with the problem of child recruitment? While recruiting children is a war crime, enlisting adult women is not.
Posts
