The Daily Monitor reports that the Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, Ms Christine Amongin Aporu, on Tuesday said 50% of the people living in the internally displaced people’s camps are children below 15 years. She was presenting a report on the situation in the IDP camps to the Parliamentary Committee on Presidential and Foreign Affairs.

The Minister said a significant number of young men between 20-29 years are missing from the camps because they have either been abducted or killed by the rebels. She said the government must come up with development programmes to help children and widows in the region. Aporu said psychosocial counselling services are needed in the area to stop the psychological torture children are going through.

Reuters reports on the GuluWalk: Kampala event, where an estimated 1000 people gathered to hear testimonies from formerly abducted children and to walk in solidarity with war-affected people in northern Uganda.

One child, Patrick, had been abducted and narrated his story to the crowd. Immediately following his abduction he was ordered back to his home village by rebel leaders, where he was forced to kill his own parents. Halfway through the narration, Patrick burst into hysteric crying, and quickly finished his story by saying, "Please pray for the children of northern Uganda, pray for peace to return to my homeland." The crowd cried with him.

Editorials in today's San Francisco Chronicle and Monsters and Critics tell of the predicament of child soldiers in northern Uganda. They detail the horrors of forced soldiering and sexual slavery after abduction, the dangers of escape, the difficulty of rehabilitation and psychological healing after escape, and the bleak prospects for reintegration and self-sufficiency in society whose cultural and economic foundation have been torn apart. Also, read more at Monsters and Critics about Lost Children, an upcoming documentary focusing on child soldiers in northern Uganda.