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IRIN Web Special on the crisis in Northern Uganda
Acholi Society - Continued
Some children who have escaped LRA captivity undergo rehabilitation at centres in northern Uganda.
Credit: Sven Torfinn (2002)
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Social destruction
If the number of people living in IDP camps is an indication of the extent of suffering in northern Uganda, then the figure of 800,000 out of the Acholi sub-region's estimated population of 1.05 million people, says it all.
For IDPs, the camps mean a life of abject poverty: scarce food and water, no sanitation, inadequate clothing, no bedding, no healthcare and no schools. Their poor living conditions are made even more unbearable by their inability to walk even a kilometre outside the camp due to fear of rebel attacks.
The camps have played a role in eroding some the Acholi people's cultural traditions, they say.
The Acholi society was structured in such a way that every family lived in its own compound, and everyone gathered by the fireplace each evening for traditional teachings. This is not the case with the IDP camps, where parents are forced to sleep in one small hut with their children.
Signs of social breakdown in the camps include high levels of promiscuity, girls opting for early marriages, and an increase in the number of child mothers. With no schooling and no income-generating activities to occupy them, youths in the camps have become idle, left to self-destructive practices like drinking, unprotected sex, and early marriages.
Their continued stay in the camps is slowly destroying what little is left of their dignity, with many elders now occupying themselves with drinking, while others are suffering from mental illnesses.
"We are now sleeping in the same small huts with our children. There are many children in the camps, but not enough schools and teachers. The young have no respect for the old," says Jackson Orach, the community leader of Labonyo displaced camp in Gulu district.
"Worst of all, we are seeing diseases that we had never seen before. People are fighting for water," he says. "It is difficult to tell you how I feel. The best way I can express it is to cry."
Economic cost of war
Apart from the obvious social cost, the economic cost of the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda is tremendous.
A study commissioned by the NGO coalition, the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU), estimated the cost of the northern Ugandan war to be US $1.33 billion over 16 years, a sum translating to roughly 3 percent of Uganda's national budget expenditure over the same period.
According to the report, the military cost of the war made up 28 percent of this figure. Losses over the years in terms of deaths, agricultural output, tourism and public health problems accounted for the rest.
Other socio-economic indicators for northern Uganda are shocking, especially when placed against the generally encouraging national statistics.
Gulu District is said to have both the highest HIV infection rates and fertility rates in Uganda, estimated at 31 percent and 71 percent respectively. Official figures also show that 82 percent of female spouses and over 50 percent of male spouses in Gulu District are illiterate.
According to Charles Uma, the Gulu DDMC chairman, there are several counties in the district where up to 90 percent of schools have not opened since January due to LRA attacks on schools and teachers. "Most of our people here are not living, but existing. Marriages are also breaking. Men are running away from responsibilities. When life becomes hard, you feel you have nothing to offer your children. You go to another relationship where the responsibilities are lighter," Uma told IRIN.
"The war has a lot of effects," he added. "We have lost a whole generation, which is dangerous for the nation. People are dangerously illiterate. The kind of children growing up today have a very limited idea of how decent people should live."
Some Acholis do not just blame the LRA for their society's predicament, but also criticise the Ugandan government and the international community for failing to tackle the crisis.
"I don't know who is making the Acholi suffer the most. Is it the LRA or is it the government, or is it because the international community doesn't care," one social worker at the Olwal IDP camp in Gulu told IRIN.
Representatives of local and foreign non-governmental organisations operating in northern Uganda hold similar views. "By keeping the people in the camp, the Acholi society is going to disappear," an official with the French charity Action Contre la Faim, told IRIN. "The whole community now waits for WFP food. Social life has deteriorated, girls are being raped, education in the camps has died. It is a societal genocide."
[ENDS]
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