Brussels, 27/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 27 March, the European Commission announced that the EU would provide close to €2 million to support the fight to eliminate the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a militant armed movement in Central African, which continues to destabilise the region. This funding is provided through the African Peace Facility (APF) which was created in 2004 as the main source of funding to support peace and security in Africa.
The new contribution will support the Regional Cooperation Initiative for the elimination of the Lord's Resistance Army (RCI-LRA), led by the African Union, in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, for a period of 17 months. It will cover, among other things, staff allowances, communication equipment and operational costs of this initiative.
Andris Piebalgs, EU Commissioner for Development, explained that this regional cooperation initiative set up in 2011 and supported by the EU “has degraded the LRA and increased pressure on its combatants to defect. It is essential to sustain the initiative's operations to eliminate the threat of LRA once and for all”.
The LRA has been responsible for killings, rapes and abductions and remains a destabilising factor in the Central African region, particularly in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. This has dire security and humanitarian consequences and it is estimated that 353,000 people are still displaced in LRA-affected areas.
In order to defeat the LRA, the regional cooperation initiative comprises a Joint Coordination Mechanism (JCM), which coordinates the initiative at political and strategic level, involving the African Union commissioner for peace and security and the ministers of defence of the countries mentioned above. It also operates a Regional Task Force (RTF) composed currently of 3,085 military troops from the affected countries. Since 2004 the EU has provided over €1.2 billion through the APF, the main source of funding for peace and security in Africa. (AN)