Grasp the peace initiative for Uganda’s child soldiers!

Dear Ms Merkel,

The film report in the TV news programme "Tagesthemen” has once again brought home the sad fate of the child soldiers in the north of Uganda. This year alone 19,000 children have died there through war, abduction and murder or they have died from exhaustion in the 200 refugee camps. 13,000 children have been abducted and turned into child soldiers with the utmost brutality. Week by week one thousand people die and 40,000 children and young people have to walk up to ten kilometres to hide in the towns and escape from the nightly raids. 1.6 million people, 90% of the population, are in camps, living in permanent fear of both warring sides.

Today we are receiving constant telephone calls from all over Germany from people who want to support a peace initiative for Uganda. It is not only the rebel army, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, which is responsible for the crimes in the north of the country, but also the army of the Museveni government, which is allowed to murder, plunder and rape. Although 50% 0f the Ugandan budget is financed from outside, there has so far been no peace initiative from the side of the UN Security Council, the European Union or the United States of America.

We appeal to you urgently to launch, together with the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ursula Plassnik, whose country takes over the chair at the European Union from 1st January 2006, a peace initiative for the people in Uganda and so bring the Security Council to take action.

Yours Sincerely,

Tilman Zülch, General Secretary

P.S. That a peace initiative can be successful we have already seen in the south of the Sudan. There the USA suggested an autonomy regulation and managed to achieve this. In the south of the Sudan peace has by and large been established. In 40 years of war and genocide three million people have been killed. Now peace must at last be achieved in the south of the Sudan in Darfur.