The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has been getting quite a lot of attention lately. But what about Uganda?
Northern Uganda, where around 20,000 children have been kidnapped and many forced to serve as combatants, is the world's biggest neglected humanitarian crisis, the head of UN humanitarian affairs said yesterday. Jan Egeland, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said he had rhetorically asked the UN security council where else in the world 80% of the fighters in a rebel movement were children, and where else 90% of the population had been displaced from their homes. "Northern Uganda to me remains the biggest neglected humanitarian emergency in the world," he told journalists after briefing the 15-member council on Uganda and Sudan. "For me, the situation is a moral outrage, but I'm heartened that the security council devoted so much time to northern Uganda." Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, speaking after the meeting, described Uganda as "one of the great crises out there which is not recognised enough". ... ...Since 1986, the Lord's Resistance Army has waged a brutal insurgency in northern Uganda, targeting civilians and abducting children for use as fighters, labourers or sex slaves. The rebels are believed to have bases in southern Sudan, and in recent months have launched attacks on Sudanese civilians, reportedly killing dozens.