| GOAL is demanding that the international community
immediately commit an international peace force to the war-ravaged
regions of northern Uganda and Sudan, so that aid workers can get
aid to the vulnerable. The call comes hours after another aid worker
was shot dead in an ambush in southern Sudan seemingly perpetrated
by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This brings
to five the number of aid workers killed in separate ambushes in
the region in the last two weeks alone.
The latest attack is part of a spate of vicious attacks on unarmed
humanitarian workers, believed to be in response to an October 14
statement by the International Criminal Court that it had issued
its first arrest warrants for the LRA leadership.
After the previous killings, relief groups said they would limit
their operations to secure towns and refugee camps for those internally
displaced by civil war in the region.
Last week GOAL was forced to suspend operations in parts of Northern
Uganda after 22 years of work, due to the rapidly deteriorating
security situation in the region.
In a statement, GOAL CEO John O’Shea said:
“The situation was too precarious for GOALies to operate in.
This effectively means GOAL will no longer be able to support the
184,000 vulnerable displaced in the six camps in the war-ravaged
region where GOAL operates.
“The worst thing is that it will inevitably be the most vulnerable
and most needy that will suffer the most if and when more aid workers
pull out.”
Nineteen years of war have devastated the north and uprooted more
than 1.6 million people causing, what the UN has dubbed “one
of the world’s worst and most neglected humanitarian crisis”.
More than 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the rebels over
the last five years, who are believed to make up 80% of the terrorist
insurgency movement.
“It is a moral outrage that the world is doing so little
for the victims of the war,” O’Shea said.
For more information please contact John O’Shea, CEO of GOAL
:
(01) 280 9779 / 086 852 7427.
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