EALA Speaker, Rt Hon Margaret Nantongo Zziwa has reiterated the need to address peace and security challenges.
Zziwa said EALA would team up with likeminded organizations such as the Invisible Children and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) to ensure peace prevailed in the region.
Regional legislators are agitating for the rights of children affected by conflict and wars in the EAC region and beyond, in a bid to halt recruitment into armies and ensure their acceptance back to society.
The speaker made the revelations while receiving a delegation of child rights’ activists under the aegis of Invisible Children who called on the Assembly in Arusha, Tanzania early this week.
The Uganda based organization has for the last ten years been engaged in advocacy work for people, especially children affected by war in Northern Uganda.
The four person delegation headed by Ms. Jolly Grace Okot – Andruville, Regional Ambassador for Invisible Children were in Arusha to brief EALA Members and to seek their support in their advocacy work.
The group further presented a petition to EALA calling for their intervention to end the Lord’s Resistance Army Conflict.
Andruville noted that her organization had similarly sought the support of the US Government through the Congress towards the hunt for Joseph Kony and also for support of rehabilitation for the war-ravaged communities in East and Central Africa.
“It is sad that innocent children continue to suffer with the most affected areas bordering the Central Africa Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo hardest hit. The voice of EALA is of absolute importance in the matter. They should spearhead the regional initiative to bring the LRA issue to an end,” she said.
Invisible Children wants EALA to send a fact-finding mission to the LRA affected communities in Northern Uganda, DRC and the CAR to see how the victims are rebuilding their lives and bear witness to the atrocities of the LRA.
It is also calling on the regional Assembly to urge regional governments to send troops to support anti-LRA operations in the region akin to joint operations against militant groups like the Al-Shabab.
‘We ask EALA’s Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution Committee to critically study and examine the LRA conflict, its survival strategies and what needs to be done to permanently end the crisis and to make recommendations to the Assembly,” they petitioned.