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Fact Sheets
Olara Otunnu, advocate for children's rights
Olara Otunnu, United Nations (UN) Under Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, is the recipient of the 2005 Sydney Peace Prize which is awarded each year by the Sydney Peace Foundation
for significant contributions to 'peace with justice'. In his role at the UN, Mr. Otunnu works tirelessly for the protection, rights and well-being of war-affected children.
Olara Otunnu was born in Mucwini (Chua) in northern Uganda in September 1950. He received his early education at Gulu High School and King's College, Budo. At the time Uganda was suffering under the dictatorship of Idi Amin and when he was still a very young man Olara Otunnu decided that he would do whatever he could to make things better. He went on to Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda's capital, and as president of the students' union, he argued against the racist regime of Idi Amin. He became Secretary-General of the Uganda Freedom Union and played a leading role in the resistance and overthrow of the regime.
Olara Otunnu was an outstanding student and he received scholarships to both Oxford University and Harvard Law School. He worked as a lawyer in New York and then became a university Assistant Professor of Law.
He returned to Uganda to serve in the post- Idi Amin government and was sent to New York as Uganda's representative to the United Nations. He then served as Uganda's foreign minister. He left politics and in 1990 became President of the International Peace Academy, an independent international institution dedicated to the prevention and settlement of armed conflict between and within countries.
In 1996 he was appointed the Special Representative of the Secretary -General for Children and Armed Conflict. The United Nations describes his job as:
- Serving as a moral voice and advocate for war-affected children
- Promoting measures for their protection in times of war
- Promoting healing and social reintegration in the aftermath of conflict.
There are thought to be around 300,000 children who have been recruited as soldiers fighting in forty-one different countries and Mr Otunnu sees the widespread use of children in armed conflict as
"one of the most most horrendous trends in wars today, seen from Colombia to Sierra Leone, from Sri Lanka to Sudan and Uganda, from Burma to Angola. Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults."
Mr Otunnu will come to Australia in November 2005 to receive his award from the Sydney Peace Foundation for his "lifetime commitment to human rights, his ceaseless efforts to protect children in time of war and his promotion of measures for the healing and social reintegration of children in the aftermath of conflict."
Previous recipients have included Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank for the Poor; Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa; President Xanana Gusmao of East Timor; former Governor General of Australia, Sir William Deane; former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson; the Palestinian academic and human rights campaigner, Hanan Ashrawi and, last year the Indian writer, Arundhati Roy.
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