Northern Uganda and the LRA

The north of Uganda has been in war for about 20 years. The Lord’s resistance army (LRA) has been fighting against the government, but also against its own people, without having a real cause.

One of the tactics of the LRA has been to abduct children and indoctrinate them, forcing them to kill. Abducted girls are given to LRA soldiers as wives, and many of then have born children. They are referred to as child mothers. The abductions gave rise to the night commuter phenomenon, documented so well by “Invisible Children”: children walking several kilometers from the villages to the main town to sleep on verandas, bus parks and any other place they can find to avoid being abducted.

Over the last few months, the LRA and the government of Uganda have been negotiating a peace deal. The negotiations broke down in January and there are efforts to restart them.

And yet, in the last 8 months things have improved significantly in the north. Most aid organizations no longer travel with military escort. The number of attacks has decreased significantly. The night commuters now come in 20s and 30s instead of 2000s or 3000s. The LRA are presumed to be largely in southern Sudan, the DRC and even CAR. But some are still in Uganda.