AT least 66,000 youth are thought to have been forcibly recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army, according to the recently released World Development Report.
This is more than double the usual estimate. Unicef has always put the number of children abducted by the LRA at 25,000.
“The rebels have focused on abducting males between the ages of 13 and 18 but people of all ages and both sexes have been taken”, the report “Development and the next Generation”, released by the World Bank, says. “Two-thirds of them are severely beaten, a fifth are forced to kill and nearly 10 percent are forced to murder a family member or friend to bind them to the group.”
The consequences of abduction and forced soldiering on youth are severe, the report warns.
“Those who had been abducted are more than three times as likely to have a serious physical injury or illness that impedes their ability to work. Abductees are twice as likely to report difficulties in family relations. They have nearly a year less education and they are twice as likely to be illiterate.”
Save the Children in a press statement last week said 10,000 Ugandan children are still unaccounted for, while 1,500 are still believed to be held by the LRA.
The international community has marked February 12 the Day against the Use of Child Soldiers.
A total of 58 countries signed the so-called Paris Commitments last week in which they agreed to protect children from being recruited as soldiers.
They included 10 of the 12 nations where an estimated 250,000 children carry arms: Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Uganda.
The two other countries where child soldiers are reported, Myanmar and the Philippines, did not take part in the conference.
