The Fund supports the following front-line human rights groups working to defend children affected by armed conflict:
UGANDA
• Concerned Parent Association (CPA)
The Fund provides general support to this organization which seeks the release of child soldiers and promotes peace building efforts to resolve the conflict in northern Uganda. Founded by parents of 139 schoolgirls abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 1996, CPA has helped over 3,000 children and families affected by war through rehabilitation and reintegration, educational, psychosocial and medical assistance and income generation activities.
• Platform for Labor Action (PLA)
The Fund provides project support for this organization to develop a community-based framework for protecting girls engaged in petty trading within Lira District in northern Uganda against sexual assault.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
• Youth Organization for Integrated Development-Kalundu/Uvira (Association des Jeunes pour le Développement Intégré-Kalundu/Uvira (AJEDI-Ka))
The Fund provides general support to this organization which seeks to end the use of child soldiers in South Kivu through human rights documentation, reporting, and education. As part of their work, the group shows videos, developed in collaboration with NGO Global Witness, to rural communities to illustrate the practice’s negative impact on children. These efforts have proven very effective in mobilizing local communities against the use of children as soldiers. In addition, this group documents which armed groups continue to kidnap and use children, and hand this evidence over to international organizations and institutions leading efforts at the international level to prevent and punish the use of child soldiers.
• Volunteer Office in the Service of Children and Health (Bureau pour le Volontariat au Service de l’Enfance et de la Santé (BVES))
The Fund provides general support to this organization which promotes the rights of children affected by armed conflict and also gives project support to facilitate best practices among grassroots organizations in monitoring, documenting, and reporting on children’s rights in eastern Congo. BVES has become the lead advocate for the release of children recruited by armed groups. BVES played a key role in the release of hundreds of children who have been reunited with their families and received vocational training.
