Notorious for a campaign of kidnapping civilians in Central Africa, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is still present in the border region between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, where it is financed through poaching, extortion and illegal mining and benefits from impunity linked to the lack of rule of law. Known for disfiguring its victims and kidnapping tens of thousands of children for use as child soldiers and sex slaves, the L.R.A is weakened today but continues to be active in attacking remote villages.
The long years of war in the bush, waged by this rebel group and its messianic leader Joseph Kony, against the Ugandan government, which sought to establish a theocracy based on the Ten Commandments, killed thousands of people and forced about 1.2 million people to be displaced in Uganda. In 2005, the LRA moved to the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo with a first group, which will be followed by a larger number of soldiers and by the leader himself. After an attack by the Ugandan army on the base camp of Kony in 2008, the LRA launched a series of attacks against the population of Haut Uele.
On the eve of the elections in the D.R.C, a ceremony to recognise the victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army was held in Faradje in Haut Uele. Meeting with victims who managed to escape.
PAX NGO is working on peace for over 75 years, both in the Netherlands and around the world. PAX do so independently of political interests, with the support of concerned citizens and the civil society PAX work with a network of expertise, from headquarters in Utrecht, Brussels and New York together with local partners in conflict areas.
