New report reveals northern Uganda is three times worse
A report published today by the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda reveals that the violent death rate in northern Uganda is 146 per week, or 0.17 per 10,000 people per day. In Iraq the figure is 0.052 deaths per 10,000 people per day.
The 20-year brutal insurrection by the so-called Lord's Resistance Army has cost 100,000 lives, while 25,000 children have been kidnapped, the boys to be pressed into military service, the girls to be used as sex slaves. It has cost Uganda an estimated $1.7 billion, equivalent to the whole of US aid to the country from 1994 to 2002.
The report is issued as Jan Egeland, the UN's humanitarian chief, is due to arrive in Uganda. He has been pressing the Security Council to take action, but with a predictable lack of success. Kevin Fitzcharles, Director of Care International, describes the failure of the Security Council to act as "undermining its credibility". He wants them to pass a resolution urging the government of Uganda to protect its own people - though it is hard to imagine why the Ugandan government should need any such urging.
Click here to read the Independent's coverage of the story, or here for Reuters' background to what's going on, or here to read the CSOPNU report.
Trouble is it is the oil that really motivates the powers that be.
Posted by: neil hobbs | March 30, 2006 at 04:43 PM