Uganda achieved independence from the UK in 1962. The dictatorial regime of Idi Amin (1971-79) was responsible for the deaths of some 300,000 opponents; guerrilla war and human rights abuses under Milton Obote (1980-85) claimed at least another 100,000 lives. During the 1990s, the government promulgated non-party presidential and legislative elections
For the last 17 years the Acholi people of northern Uganda have been the victims of a brutal, unrelenting rebel insurgency.
Innocent civilians have been killed or mutilated; thousands of children have been abducted, forced into combat, and subjected to torture and sexual violence. It is now estimated that about 80 percent of the entire Acholi population are internally displaced, living in camps with little food and poor sanitation.
Since 1986, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of self-styled mystic Joseph Kony has carried out merciless attacks across the north, ostensibly in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni and to have Uganda ruled in accordance with the Biblical Ten Commandments.
Facts:
. The conflict in Northern Uganda has lasted for 20 years so far
. 500,000 people, many of them children, have been killed in Africa's longest-running war
. 1.7 million people have been forcefully driven by the Government of Uganda into "so called Internally Displaced Persons [IDP] camps"
. 1,000 deaths occur every week in these squalid, unsanitary and unplanned camps as a result of this Government action
. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has kidnapped almost 27,000 children in this conflict and has forced them to become sex slaves or frontline soldiers through a process of abject terror
. The United Nations' Security Council has passed no resolutions against the heinous practices contrary to it's direct obligations and responsibilities in relation to the UN's 1948 Convention against genocide. |
