Each night in northern Uganda, tens of thousands of terrified children leave their villages at dusk and walk to town to avoid being kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army—a brutal rebel force that has abducted more than 30,000 children to serve as soldiers and slaves in its 20-year war against the Ugandan government.
Once in captivity, boys are forced to loot and burn villages and torture and kill neighbors. Abducted girls are routinely raped and become sex slaves or “wives” of rebel commanders. All witness unimaginable atrocities and many do not survive.
The International Rescue Committee and its local partners provide counseling, emotional support, food and medical care for the children who are able to flee, while working to locate their parents and arrange family reunions.
But the war continues to take a horrific toll. “Those who live here are witness to a slow genocide, a holocaust of children,” said one IRC staff member assisting former child soldiers. “And we wonder when the world will start paying attention.”
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1.7 million people—eighty percent of the population—have been forced from their homes.
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