Editorial: Doing more than watching

Monday, April 24, 2006 | 7:20 a.m.

A small but dedicated group of UNLV students says one of the world's greatest tragedies facing children is happening in a country about which most of us know very little.

But that lack of awareness is something they hope to change later this week, as they will march six miles Saturday night and sleep huddled on a playground to mimic the nightly trek thousands of Ugandan children make in order to escape the rebel forces that have destroyed their childhoods.

Sarah Zimmerman, a UNLV sophomore, told the Las Vegas Sun last week that she was inspired by a documentary about children being kidnapped and pressed into serving as soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army rebel military cult in northern Uganda, where a battle to overthrow the government has raged for 20 years. Children as young as 14 are forced to fight and are murdered by rebels if they resist or even cry, Zimmerman told the Sun.

But they do cry, the student said, and she described the wail of one child mourning the loss of his older brother as being "not the kind of cry I've ever heard in my life." At night, thousands of these children walk miles to outlying villages in hopes of escaping the violence long enough to sleep.

Zimmerman and about 100 others will mimic that walk, starting from New York-New York on the Las Vegas Strip and ending up at Hope Baptist Church, where they will sleep outside as Ugandan children do.

At a time when many of us are burdened by domestic issues such as rising gas prices or the ongoing clashes over immigration, it is good to see that some of our young people can look beyond themselves and their borders to raise awareness for a population of children who, though large in number, are very small on the world's radar screen.