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CNS Story:
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MARTINO-UGANDA Aug-6-2007 (290 words) xxxi
Vatican official: Ugandan thugs must stop forcing children to fight
By Catholic News Service
GULU, Uganda (CNS) -- Warring thugs must stop forcing children to fight for them, and the international community must make more serious efforts to fund programs to help former child soldiers rejoin civil society, said the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The blood shed in the so-called forgotten wars of Africa "is just as sacred in the eyes of God as that which flows between the Tigris and the Euphrates" rivers in Iraq, said Italian Cardinal Renato Martino during an Aug. 6 visit to Gulu, the scene of more than 20 years of clashes between government troops and rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army.
Cardinal Martino also condemned the rebels' practice of kidnapping children and forcing them to join the rebels in battle. He said an estimated 30,000 children had been kidnapped.
"In 2006 there were 17 major armed conflicts going on in the world, the same number as in 2005," he said.
The cardinal called on the international community to make a greater commitment to supporting negotiated settlements of all the wars and to work to prevent other outbreaks of violence by controlling the sales of weapons, promoting social justice and ensuring that foreign investments do not exacerbate economic inequalities.
Speaking Aug. 4 in Kampala, Uganda's capital, the cardinal also called on the international community to ensure that the peace settlements and postwar aid to African countries include greater funding to assist former child-soldiers.
"When a child picks up a weapon, it is against nature," he said, "but it is as much a tragedy that so many young people, after fighting with the guerrillas, end up on the streets," begging or forced into prostitution.
END
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