WOMEN'S COMMISSION FOR REFUGEE WOMEN AND CHILDREN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS PROJECT(CAP) UPDATE

July 2004 - (Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children) The Children and Adolescents Project released its newest report No Safe Place to Call Home: Child and Adolescent Night Commuters in Northern Uganda. The report examines how young people in the region face increased risk of gender-based violence, recruitment into government military forces and other human rights abuses due to the continued lack of security and protection.

No Safe Place to Call Home details how, in the absence of adequate state protection by the government of Uganda, internally displaced
persons (IDPs) have sought alternative means of protection and survival. The report explains that an estimated 50,000 “night commuters” – most of them children, adolescents and women – regularly flee their homes each night for town centers seeking safety from rebel attack. In addition, IDPs increasingly rely on government-supported Local Defense Units – civilian militias – to defend them against the rebels. IDP camp leaders and humanitarian agencies report the active recruitment of children into the Local Defense Units. No Safe Place to Call Home provides adolescent accounts of sexual violence against night commuters en route to and at sleeping centers, which exposes night commuters to the risk of unwanted pregnancies and contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. The report includes recommendations to the international community, donors and community-based organizations on how they can work together to improve coordination, material support and partnership with each other and youth groups to enhance protection of at-risk children and youth.

No Safe Place to Call Home was distributed to a wide array of policy makers, NGOs, government and United Nations offices, the media and
Women’s Commission partners. You can read the report on the Women’s Commission’s website, http://capwiz.com/wc/utr/1/FQZYDSPFEE/LBDDDSPFGK/

On July 21, the Women’s Commission was pleased to announce that Charlotte Atyam had escaped from her captors in northern Uganda.
Charlotte and many of her classmates were abducted from their school eight years ago by the Lord’s Resistance Army. The Women’s Commission has worked with Charlotte’s mother, Angelina Atyam, to try to call attention to the situation of the estimated 30,000 abducted children in northern Uganda. Read the full press release on our website at http://capwiz.com/wc/utr/1/FQZYDSPFEE/IOCTDSPFGL/