The Conflict
The humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda has been compared to the genocide in Darfur in the Sudan. But unlike the genocide in Darfur, which was sparked off by the Janjaweed in February 2003, the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda has gone on for 20-years with increasing intensity.

Since 1996, when the Ugandan government forced the population of northern Uganda into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, over 1.8 million people and over 90% of the Acholi population have resided in overcrowded, makeshift, inhumane conditions.

Death Camps
Each week 1,000 people die in the camps from preventable diseases, poverty, and malnutrition, according to the United Nations.  Oxfam reports that the rate of violent death in Northern Uganda is three times the rate of violent death in Iraq.

The war and displacement has led to an explosion in the HIV/AIDS infections and a systematic destruction of Acholi culture.  Moreover, the population can no longer farm and has become dependent on international relief and assistance; the suicide rate has increased way beyond the national average, especially among mothers; the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.

The Uganda government initially claimed that the IDPs camps were temporary and meant to protect the local population from the rebels and to deny the rebels access to food, supplies, and potential recruits.  These claims are no longer persuasive given that the camps have existed for more than 10 years and the government has failed to provide adequate protection to the IDPs.  In addition, government soldiers have engaged in gross human rights violations such as robbery, rape, sodomy, and murder.  More people die in the camps than from the rebels.

Night commuters
Each night a terrible saga is played out when more than 40,000 children, some as young as five or eight, flee their homes in the rural areas to escape abduction, torture, or murder by the LRA. These are Northern Uganda’s “night commuters” or “Invisible Children”.  For these “forgotten children,” each day life is a constant battle for survival.

An estimated 250,000 people have died from the Ugandan civil war since it began in 1986.  Over 25,000 children have been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to kill their friends and relatives. Therefore, every time the Ugandan army claims to have killed or defeated “rebels” it has killed the very Ugandan children it failed to protect in the first place.

Efforts by local and religious leaders to end the war have consistently failed because neither the rebels nor the government appear to want the war to end.