IDP Camps - Kitgum, Uganda

IDP Camps

Kitgum, Uganda

Northern Uganda has been subjected to over 20 years of war and terrorism inflicted by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Also known as “the rebels,” the LRA's method is to wait for nightfall and then attack villages and homes. They raid and steal, murder, torture, rape, and mutilate. They burn homes full of people alive. They force families to watch their mothers being raped. They force parents to watch their children murdered. And then, they replenish their army by abducting any child big enough to carry a gun, and force them to become rebel soldiers. The induction begins immediately, often by forcing the children to kill their own families and friends. Then, the children are told that there is no longer any option but for them to join the army, as they will no longer be welcome in their communities. The little boys are desensitized and turned into killing machines, the little girls are “married” to the older rebels, and forced to live as sex slaves and servants. They have no camp, but sleep in “the bush” (the wilderness), and constantly march around the country raiding and terrorizing. Many cannot survive the physical demands of such a lifestyle, and die along the marches. Some are deemed to be disloyal (especially if they cry) and are tortured and murdered in front of the group to send a message. Death and misery is savored, and drawn out as long as possible. Child soldiers are often forced to eat their murdered peers in order to develop the taste for blood.
When Kony's LRA began regularly raiding and terrorizing the northern Ugandans (mainly the Acholi tribe), the government decided that rather than launching a major operation to stop them, the answer was simply to relocate the Acholi people (the Acholi's have long considered themselves to be discriminated against by the government). They erected thousands and thousands of huts in various Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, and told the villagers that they had 72 hours to pack up their lives and relocate. Nearly 2 million villagers left their land (often ancestral – passed down through countless generations), farms, livestock, homes, personal items, and communities and were forced into the IDP camps. The average homesteads usually consisted of 2-3 huts, and were at least ¼ of a mile from any other homesteads. In the IDP camps, the huts were half as small, housed twice as many people, and were mere feet from the next hut. There was no land available to farm, cultivate, or raise livestock on, so there was no source of food or livelihood. Instead, the proud Acholi were reduced to living in inadequate housing and required to simply wait for food handouts from the government and various NGO's. As you can image, the handouts were limited, and the result was massive malnutrition, hunger, illness, and desperation-based crimes as they turned on one another for their limited resources. They were also deprived of any productive activity, and lost much of of their sense of worth or self-sufficiency.
Though the IDP camps were developed under the guise of protecting the Acholi from the LRA attacks, the reality is that they actually provided very little protection. Instead, the potential victims were just rounded up and concentrated into one area, vulnerable to continued attacks by the LRA. A new favorite tactic adopted for the IDP camps was to lock each family in their huts and set fire to it. Because the huts were so close together, it was inevitable that the fires spread rapidly and mercilessly.
The LRA has moved into the Sudan and Congo, and the last known attack on Ugandan soil was in 2006. Of the 40,000 + children that have been abducted from northern Uganda by the LRA, there are still over 6,000 that are unaccounted for (the rest have either escaped and returned, or are known to be dead). The government has told the people in the IDP camps to simply return to their own land now, and move on with their lives. This is not as simple as it may sound. The people are being told to go back to the very same homes where they have been raped, tortured, and mutilated. The trauma and fear associated with their own homes cannot simply be forgotten. Their lands have been destroyed and they have no source of livelihood. They may have come long distances to the camps, and now have no way to get back. They may be restricted by injury and sickness, and are unable to relocate at this time. And, in many cases, the older tribal members who knew where the lands were located and how they were divided have since been killed, and the surviving relatives simply don't know where home is. So, of the 1.7 million that were forced into the camps, 30-98% remain because they just don't have any options. They are now reliant on the very situations that have been oppressing them.
Despite the large number of people forced to live in the camps, no social services, sanitation, health care, or clean water is regularly provided. Food and clothing donations are sparse. The camps remain vulnerable to attack by not only the LRA, should they return, but also neighboring tribes, and predatory men who know where to easily meet their needs. Since the government has declared the camps no longer mandatory, services have decreased and even ceased completely. The people in the camps have simply been forgotten and abandoned.
We went to visit a camp outside of Kitgum. The first thing that struck me as we arrived, and people began flooding out of their huts to greet us, was that children outnumbered adults at least 7:1. There were also very few adult women. Our guide explained that a majority of the children we were seeing were the product of rape, and that almost all of the women in the camps had been raped at some point. Furthermore, the maternal death rate is approximately 46% - meaning that a woman has nearly a 50/50 chance of dying in childbirth due to lack of health care or even trained midwives. Almost all of the adults we saw had lost at least 1 child to the LRA, and few knew what had become of them. The men had almost all been forced to bear witness to their women being raped and assaulted. I cannot imagine the burden that those people must carry. The trauma they share. What they have seen. As we were graciously led through the camp, the children formed a parade behind us, thrilled by our every move and word. Some of the younger ones were terrified of us – we looked so different. The older ones looked at us as if expecting us to sprout wings and rescue them. I felt inadequate and imposing in either scenario. We were led to a hut where we met a woman who is over 100 years old. She has lived through the colonial times, and everything up until the present. I wished I could remove our language barrier and unfamiliarity, and just spend the whole day hearing her story. I want to know what she knows. I want to see it through her eyes. I want to understand how she is still able to smile. Instead I just awkwardly shook her hand and thanked her...for...welcoming us? For having the will to survive? For not hating me for my privilege? I wasn't sure, but I was grateful. And I was sad to walk away knowing that I would never hear her story.