ar at public rallies, to drum up popular support for the fight against the rebels. This practice, too, is sharply criticized by children's advocates: "They display the children, and read out their names, which only increases the likelihood of rebel reprisals against the child or his family," explains Paulinus Nyeko of Gulu Human Rights Focus. "Also, they give details on how the child escaped. The rebels come to hear of it, and that makes it hard for other children to escape. The army is just using the children."In its 1996 report to the U.N.Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Ugandan government affirmed its general commitment "to improve the lives of . . . child soldiers" and its "special concern" for children abducted by rebels. Nonetheless, the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network (UCRNN) has been critical of the government's response to the crisis in the north, noting that while the Museveni government provided "special services" for children who were caught up in civil wars of the early 1980s (when Museveni's guerrilla army fought the Obote and Okello regimes), "children caught up in the armed rebellion in northern Uganda since 1987 have not received adequate support from the government." According to UCRNN, "no government programs or resources have been identified" for children abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. UCRNN has called upon the government to "take concrete measures to address the needs of children caught up in armed conflict" and to "establish adequate responses for the long-term support of these children."Some of the children who escape from the rebels go immediately home to their villages, and some return to their boarding schools, but many ends up staying, for a time, at the trauma centers operated by World Vision or the Gulu Save the Children Organization (GUSCO). Conditions in the centers are poor: too many children in small huts and tents, too few trained counselors, and not enough for the children to do. At o...