ReliefWeb » Document Preview » Northern Uganda: Children paying with their lives for UN Security Council inaction

ReliefWeb » Document Preview » Northern Uganda: Children paying with their lives for UN Security Council inaction: "The United Nations Security Council must put the crisis in northern Uganda on its agenda and pass a resolution urging an end to the violence, international agency Oxfam demanded ahead of a top level Security Council briefing on the situation today.

'The United Nations Security Council has been silent on the war in northern Uganda for two decades,' said Greg Puley, Oxfam's Policy Advisor in New York. 'In that time over 25,000 children in northern Uganda have been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and many forced into sexual slavery and made to become child soldiers.'

'One thousand people die every week as a direct result of what is now Africa's longest running war. Every single night, up to forty thousand people leave their homes and sleep in town centers in order to escape abduction.'

Despite the horrific statistics, Oxfam's Greg Puley said the Security Council's response up to now to the 19-year conflict had been silence and inaction.

'The Security Council cannot plead ignorance to the tragedy taking place in northern Uganda yet they have not passed one single resolution. The Council must act now,' Puley said."