UN HUMANITARIAN CHIEF LAUDS RENEWED RESOLVE TO END LRA ATROCITIES

(New York: 26 May 2010): "As the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, I very much welcome President Barack Obama's approval of the bill The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009," said John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

In a mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo last month, Mr. Holmes visited Niangara, near where LRA massacres in December 2009 took place and where more than 280,000 people remain displaced under very difficult conditions. Since December 2007, in DRC alone, almost 1,800 people have been killed and 2,300 abducted, amongst them more than 800 children, under the most brutal circumstances, as a result of LRA activity.

If the LRA's regional activities in Southern Sudan and CAR are included, an additional 98,000 have been displaced, 200 abducted and 250 killed, in the last 16 months. In northern Uganda, as a result of the conflict between the LRA and the Ugandan government, which lasted from 1987 to 2006, thousands of civilians were killed and nearly two million displaced.

"I met one young woman in hospital, a mother of four, whose ear and lips were sliced off a few weeks ago by LRA rebels, for no reason at all," Mr. Holmes said. "I have met many LRA victims in over three years as the UN's humanitarian chief, and I have heard the same stories over and over again in Uganda, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. The list of LRA atrocities is just too long, after more than 20 years-- and it shows no signs of ending," he added.

In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council after returning from DRC, the ERC urged the Security Council and the international community more widely to consider as a matter of urgency new measures that could help to stop the LRA once and for all, and in particular called for Member States to do more to shoulder the responsibility for new, decisive measures to end the LRA's reign of terror.

"I also appreciate the bill's provisions for increasing assistance to war-affected communities in northern Uganda and supporting initiatives to help resolve longstanding divisions between Uganda's north and south," Mr. Holmes added.