Some 10,000 children are still missing in Uganda with as many as 1500 held captive by rebels engaged in stalled peace talks to end a two-decade war in the country’s shattered north, an aid agency said.
Children’s charity Save the Children UK has urged donors to pressure the Ugandan government and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels not to allow peace talks in south Sudan to collapse.
“The future of Uganda’s children is under severe threat,” the aid agency said in a statement late yesterday. “Any hope of reconciliation is fading fast and needs international support.”
Stop-start negotiations since July have produced a truce that has been mostly respected, despite frequent walk-outs by the LRA and accusations of violations on both sides.
But talks stalled this month when the rebels said they could not go back to south Sudan because they feared for their security after Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir vowed to “get rid of the LRA from Sudan”.