Kony

In Northern Uganda in 1986, prophet Alice Lakwena founded a quasi-religious army called the LRA (the Lord’s Resistance Army), with the purpose of overthrowing the government. In recent years, LRA leadership has been taken over by one of her ritual assistants, Joseph Kony, and the LRA is no longer moving in any real direction. It exists as a type of human shield for its leaders, ICC (International-Criminal-Court) named criminals, who until August 2006 had no way out but to keep fighting or face almost certain life in jail.

"But as long as the LRA continued to exist, it continued to commit a multitude of horrific crimes. Since the situation was so pointlessly violent that the LRA could no longer find willing recruits, it resorted to abducting children, who could easily be scared into fighting. WAIT, WHAT? Between 20,000 and 50,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to fight as soldiers. Countless of them have been raped, tortured, or killed to scare the others into submission. All of them have been trained to use guns and forced to kill. But even those children who are "lucky" enough not to have been forced into the LRA must suffer.

Child Soldier

Night Commuters

Tens of thousands of children commute to a nearby village every night. WHY? Because by sleeping with thousands of other children, packed like animals on the floors of large buildings, they are safer from abduction by the LRA than they would if they were to sleep in their own beds at home. WHAT IF THIS WAS YOUR LIFE? Think about this in terms of their daily life. Imagine if you had to commute 5 miles to a nearby town every night of your life, so that once you got there you could sleep literally on top of other humans. Next day, school. Could you do that? And what about your parents, and the un-imaginable stress and pain they must face every day? The situation is unacceptable. Since the violence first started, an estimated 1.7 million Northen Ugandans have been forcibly displaced.

WHAT'S THE SITUATION NOW?On Monday, August 28th, 2006, LRA leaders finally signed a peace deal with the Ugandan government, where both sides agreed to simultaneously end hostilities, particularly stressing the safety of the civilian population of Northern Uganda. Although, obviously, no miraculous change in the country’s climate was seen overnight, both sides seem to be honoring the treaty, and slow but steady improvement does seem to be taking place. So now Uganda is is the reconstruction period. There have been so many times throughout history when a crucial decision was taken to "end" a conflict, but then the next step, the reconstruction phase was simply overlooked. So really, we would like to stress that this is an extremely important time period right now.

President Musevini

UFU has a responsibility to take part in the reconstruction process of Northern Uganda, to the extent that we are able, and of course always keeping in mind that the ultimate goal is for the Ugandan people to be provided with opportunities to build up their own community themselves. In these very difficult times of intense recovery, however, we can and should give anyone we are able a helping hand. As a result, raising money will now be a very real goal for UFU, but where it’s all going will be even more important.