School for rescued LRA kids
2004-07-06 20:16
Kampala - Belgium will fund the construction of a school for children who either escaped or were rescued from Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in northern Gulu district, officials said on Tuesday.
"The boarding school will cater for at least 750 pupils and will be situated at Laroo sub-county in Gulu municipality," Belgian ambassador to Uganda, Koenraad Adam, said.
Adam said some $2.4m have been earmarked for the project, which will offer primary education and counselling to children in northern Uganda, mainly orphans and those once held by the rebels.
The LRA has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, ostensibly to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
The brutal rebel group has gained infamy for its human rights abuses. It tends to swell its ranks by raiding villages in northern Uganda and camps for displaced people, where it kidnaps children, forcing the boys into combat and girls into sexual slavery.
At least 12 000 children have been abducted over the last two years, according to United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) estimates.
A number of them have either escaped captivity or been rescued by the army and are currently in various children's centres in the north.