Last week the UN Security Council reaffirmed its commitment to ending abuses by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group. According to a recent UN report, the Ugandan rebels continue to attack civilians across central Africa with a "steady increase" in abductions.
Long driven out of Uganda, small bands of LRA fighters now roam forest regions of the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan and South Sudan, launching over 150 attacks and killing at least 22 people this year.
Conciliation Resources has shot exclusive footage in northeast DRC about this forgotten crisis, where people feel abandoned by their government and the international community.
The film highlights one of the biggest challenges in this vast region - how to ensure vulnerable civilians, including children, are protected from being killed, kidnapped or tortured by the LRA and other armed groups.
“In DRC we have MONUSCO [the UN peacekeeping mission], we have FARDC [the Congolese army], we have American advisers, we have AU-RTF [the African Union’s regional counter-LRA force] but the response is inadequate because most of the time it comes after the attack. They should prevent that attack. It should not happen."
- Father Ernest Sugule, director local a NGO from Dungu, northeast DRC
The film illustrates findings in our recent report, A People Dispossessed: the plight of civilians in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which analyses the factors behind this shortfall in protection and recommends ways local leaders with the support of the international community can rectify it.
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