(The Washington Post) – Kidnapped when he was just 16 to fight for the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army, Stephen Okot found his way to freedom and back to his family years later through a rare friendship made in the bush. Trained to kill and always fearing informers and punishment by his own comrades, Okot had […]
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(Norwegian Refugee Council) – A new Ebola outbreak in the conflict zone North Kivu, that already suffers from mass displacement, is a toxic cocktail that will exacerbate the virus and have fatal consequences. “This week’s declaration of a new Ebola outbreak in North Kivu couldn’t have hit at a worse time or place,” warned Dr. […]
(The Sun) – VALERIE was just 14 when she says she was raped by a French peacekeeper working for the United Nations. “He’d pass when I was selling bananas,” she says. “He told me he loved me and took me to a hotel. The first time he gave me $2. The second time it was $5. […]
(IRIN) – At the camp for displaced people in Rukoro, nobody can remember the last time they saw an aid worker. There are no tents and tarpaulins for the roughly 300 people that live here – just a collection of tiny, tunnel-shaped huts tucked out of sight down a dirt track in this remote corner of […]
(Reuters) – Rebels and government troops in Congo have committed atrocities including mass rape, cannibalism and the dismemberment of civilians, according to testimony published on Tuesday by a team of U.N. human rights experts who said the world must pay heed. The team investigating a conflict in the Kasai region of Democratic Republic of Congo told […]
(Human Rights Watch) – I held my breath yesterday, waiting for the US State Department to issue its latest annual list of governments implicated in the use of child soldiers. Last year’s list was a disaster: then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson overruled his own staff and left blatant violators – Afghanistan, Burma, and Iraq – off the list. […]
(UN ECOSOC) – Prompt and effective action was key to addressing the sweeping impact of armed conflict on children as well as the myriad effects of climate change on the most vulnerable sectors of society, speakers said today as the Economic and Social Council continued its humanitarian affairs segment. Held under the theme “Restoring Humanity, Respecting […]
(UN News) – The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) new Crop Prospects and Food Situation reveals that since its last report in March, the number of countries requiring external food assistance has jumped by two, namely Cabo Verde and Senegal, to 39. According to the report, civil war and insecurity in Africa and the Middle East have displaced […]
(War Child) – When children who’ve joined armed groups, or ‘child soldiers’, are discussed, it’s assumed they’re recruited by force. While that does happen, the action of joining voluntarily is overlooked. War Child UK’s new report, ‘Tug of War: Children in Armed Groups in DRC’, shows that in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the clear majority of them are joining ‘voluntarily’. Link
(UNHCR) – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is alarmed at new displacement in the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 7,000 Central African Republic refugees have arrived in under a week into a situation of little help and desperate need. The refugees, most of them women and children, are concentrated in the remote village of […]
