UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)on Wednesday to stop recruiting children immediately and release those already in its camps.
In a written report to the UN Security Council, Ban said that despite the fact that there have been no recent cases of recruitment of Ugandan children by the LRA, there are reports alleging that the group has been recruiting children from southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR).
He added that children and women who had been abducted by the LRA are still in the LRA ranks.
"These allegations are being reported while the peace talks between LRA and the government of Uganda are stalled, notably because of the refusal by the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, to sign the final peace agreement," Ban said.
The rebel group, who has been fighting with the Ugandan government forces since the mid-1980s, has maintained it had released all children and women abducted or forcibly conscripted some time ago and that those who remained in the bush were women and children related to LRA members.
The UN chief urged the LRA to provide a complete list of names and ages of the women and children remaining in its ranks for verification of this statement and to carry out their immediate release.
In addition, he said the UN Task Forces on Monitoring and Reporting in Uganda, the CAR, the DRC and the Sudan, in cooperation with the UN missions in the DRC and Sudan, should develop a strategy to increase monitoring and reporting on cross-border recruitment and use of children by the LRA.
Source:Xinhua
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