Former child soldiers support Peace One Day

Former child soldiers and girl sex slaves who fell victim to Northern Uganda’s twenty years of conflict are to mark Peace One Day with a special celebration of commitment to a peaceable future.

Cord, the UK’s foremost Christian charity working exclusively with the world’s refugees and people displaced by conflict, is organising the event on September 21 with their partners IYEP, the Youth Empowerment Programme based in the Gulu District.

It is estimated that more than 25,000 children and youths, some as young as seven, were abducted and forcefully recruited into rebel ranks during the Lords Resistance Army’s reign of terror in Northern Uganda. Both girls and boys were given rudimentary military training while the young girls doubled as sex slaves. Many of them became pregnant and are now child mothers.

About 20,000 have been reunited with their communities, but they are living in social isolation with no education, no income, and being branded as ‘former rebels’.

Cord AND IYEP are working together to restore peace and harmony in the Acholi community by running thirty peace clubs, and equipping young people who have known nothing but war and violence all their lives with vocational, life and business skills.

Cord’S Ambassador, Corinne Bailey Rae, is performing at the major Peace One Day concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 21, the United Nations International Day of Peace, further endorsing Cord’s commitment to the worldwide movement.