New York -- A U.S. NGO decried the renewal of violence by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, and called on the LRA, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments, NGOs and the UN to work for peace and to make every effort not to harm children who remain captives of the LRA.

The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children noted in a press release that "several hundred LRA rebels launched an armed attack on an internally displaced persons camp on 23 February." The LRA abducted 100; 80 were later rescued by the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces.

There is a lot of speculation that the UPDF or the Sudanese are approaching LRA areas in southern Sudan to rescue the children, according to Allison Anderson Pillsbury, Project Manger of the Children and Adolescents Project at the Women's Commission.

The Women's Commission released a report last September on the status of adolescents in northern Uganda. The report has been well received by northern Ugandan communities, Pillsbury said.

"The communities really welcomed the findings," she told The Monitor. "More than anything, they said, this is great, we hope you continue to work."

While the Women's Commission's next project on children in areas of armed conflict will take Pillsbury to Sierra Leone, she said she and the rest of the NGO continue to focus on northern Uganda. The Women's Commission is part of a coalition of NGOs called The Friends of the War-Affected Children from Northern Uganda.

Betty Akello Openy of Gulu town, who helped write the Women Commission's report on northern Uganda, recently came to the U.S. to give a presentation about the lack of educational opportunities in northern Uganda to the leadership council on children in armed conflict. The head of the UN Development Program heard the presentation. As part of her visit to the U.S., Openy also met with UN representatives, USAID officials, and people on Capitol Hill.

Pillsbury pointed to other positive developments, such as the World Bank's funding of a $125 million Northern Uganda Reconstruction Project II (covering more than just LRA-affected districts) and a project by the U.S. Embassy and the International Rescue Committee to build several new classrooms for S.S. Harrambee in Achol Pii refugee camp in Pader.

However, she also noted that many projects are targeted only at abducted children, while so many thousands of others in the region are affected. "We're trying to push groups to expand to more affected populations," she said.