3/2/2006
French Foreign Minister visits children rehabilitation projects in Uganda and Burundi

The trip, which is connected with UNICEF, is part of the continuing  initiatives by France in the UN Security Council to mobilize the  international community to protect and reintegrate children affected by  armed conflicts. The lessons from this visit will be presented at the next  meeting, on February 21, of the Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict, which France chairs.

The main part of the visit will take place in Gulu, in northern Uganda, a region where the conflict with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has spawned one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. The minister will meet the actors in the field (NGOs, UN agencies, Ugandan civil society), which are working in the camps for displaced people, especially children.

Mr. Douste-Blazy will also travel to the eastern part of the country and visit the community (Maison Shalom) run by Maggy Barankitse who has taken in child  victims of the civil war since 1993 in exemplary conditions and helps to rehabilitate them.