planned trip to northern uganda

"A longstanding civil war in Northern Uganda has shattered livelihoods, destroyed healthcare and schools and left a legacy of fear. Despite a recent truce, over 90% of the rural population remains crowded into 200 squalid and unhealthy refugee camps." 
 International Rescue Committee [IRC]

Last year IRC officials took Senator John Edwards and his fellow delegates to IRC projects in the district of Kitgum, where nearly all the people now live in government camps. He was also taken outside the town of Lira, where some people displaced by the war have begun returning to their homes. The Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp near the Kitgum district made a huge impression on Senator Edwards, leaving him with memories he says he'll never forget. 

”There is a current humanitarian crisis and unimaginable suffering in the northern part of the country, of which too few American citizens are aware,” Senator Edwards said. "The living conditions were awful — open sewage, little water, malnourished children." He has said many children are living with high HIV/AIDS rates themselves while having to see their parents die of the same deadly disease, leaving them behind as orphans.



The rebel army known as The Lord's Resistance Army [LRA] have abducted some 30,000 Ugandan boys and girls and forced them to serve as soldiers and/or sex slaves. They have robbed thousands more of their parents. During the protracted and vicious civil war in Uganda, they have forced innocent children to commit unspeakable atrocities — sometimes even forcing them to kill their own siblings.

While in Uganda, three of us will make the trip to Northern Uganda with a driver/guide named Jonathan. These arrangements have been made by Rose Mary and Joseph, directors of the orphanage. Jonathan will take Carol, Lynne and me to some of the displaced persons camps, and we will see for ourselves this dire situation. Terrible, recent flooding in this part of the country has caused many of the displaced to be once again displaced, as their camps have been wiped out. They have nowhere to go. I can only imagine what we will witness once there.