Uganda Child Right NGO Network {UCRNN} has called upon the government to bring to book the perpetrators who killed 42 students from Lhubiriha Secondary School in Nyabugando Town Council, Kesese District last Friday.
Further, they have urged the government to ensure that the 6 abducted children are immediately released and resettled with their families and that justice is served for the lives of the 42 children who perished during this violent attack.
The victims were killed in a suspected rebel attack by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), Ugandan militants with Islamic State group ties, where they were burned, shot, or hacked to death in Lhubiriha Secondary School near the border with Congo.
The network said this attack which was carried out on June 16, the Day of African Child, is contrary to everything that this day stands for, and a grave violation of major children’s rights under the international, regional, and national laws under the United Nations, the African Union and in Uganda.
Every child, the network says, has a right to an education, life, protection, a right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and a right to commemorate the Day of the African Child in a peaceful manner.
They said these rights are enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its attendant Protocols. This law also informs both the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) and the Children’s Act of Uganda which seeks to protect children from all forms of violence.
Thus, they urged all parties to adhere to the International Humanitarian Laws under the Geneva Conventions that emphasize the protection of civilian institutions such as Schools and hospitals which provide shelter and. tend to the needs of children. This they say, any deliberate targeting of such institutions is recognized as a grave breach of these Conventions.
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