The LRA and the "Night Commuters"

                                                                                                                                                     

During the course of the 20-year conflict in Northern Uganda, over 30,000 children have been brutally tortured and forced into years of servitude as child soldiers and sexual slaves.  The rebel  Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) abducts children from their villages and controls them by forcing them to watch and participate in the killing of family members and other children, usually those who've attempted escape.  They  must kill or be killed themselves.  In an attempt to elude capture by the LRA, every night thousands of children walk miles to crude shelters established in larger towns.  These night commuters are protected by volunteers overnight -- then at daybreak return to their home villages. "When the Sun Sets, We Start to Worry," a Web Special publication by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, gives a voice to the young victims of this horrific abuse, as does this Human Rights Watch report and photo essay.

UNICEF is sponsoring night shelters in the towns of Gulu and Lira, and WorldVision has established the "Gulu Children of War Center" to nurture and rehabilitate children severely traumatized by their experiences.  Follow the links to support these efforts, and add your voice to the declaration that "Children Should Never Be
Soldiers."

Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper