10 May 2010 - Yambio, Western equatoria State, South Sudan - Arrow Boy patrolling with home made gun. Western Equatoria State has suffered years of attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army. Thousands of civilians have been displaced and hundreds killed or abducted in the border area between Southern sudan, DRC and the Central African Republic. In the absence of an effective response by the Sudanese government to the Lord's Resistance Army, many local men and boys have organized self-defense forces known as the Arrow Boys who battle the relatively well-armed LRA with traditional weapons such as bows, arrows, spears and clubs, treated with poisonous. Initially the self defense force was at a small scale, and it grew up in September 2009 when backlash attacks started to kill, loot, burn houses and rape the villagers. Today, the Arrow boys played a brave and crucial role by taking in charge the protection of their villages. Photo credit: Benedicte Desrus