ABSTRACT
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have been fighting in northern Uganda for the past two decades in what has become Africa’s longest running conflict. The group, which has little popular support, is notorious for abducting children and targeting civilians. It is led by Joseph Kony, a self-styled prophet, who claims to be fighting to turn the Acholi people back to God. The insecurity is centred in the northern Ugandan districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader,2 sometimes referred to as Acholiland (after the Acholi, who are the predominant ethnic group in the region). However, the rebels have also operated in the north and eastern Ugandan districts of Lira, Apac, Adjumani, Kabaramaido, Katakwi and Soroti, as well as in southern Sudan and, more recently, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The conflict has devastated the region and widened the divide between north and south Uganda. At its height, the conflict caused the displacement of over 1.8 million people, about 90 per cent of the population of Acholi, forcing them to live in squalid, overcrowded camps. Some had been there for a decade. This is against the background of general poverty in a region where 67 per cent of the population live below the poverty line, compared to 38.8 per cent nationwide.3 The conflict, and the consequent humanitarian crisis, is arguably President Yoweri Museveni’s greatest failure since coming to office in 1986. This is the context in which Uganda’s informal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme takes place. Rather than being an organised process, set up to help consolidate peace at the end of a conflict, it has been a necessary response to the steady trickle – and sometimes flood – of former rebel abductees, who escape from the LRA, or surrender, or are captured by the Ugandan military. Many are minors; some are girls and women. The process has evolved over the course of the conflict and now includes amnesty for former fighters as well as opportunities for retraining and absorption into the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), the official military force. The process has also enabled thousands of former fighters to make the transition back into civilian life. However, it has its limits, not least the fact that the former fighters are ‘reintegrated’ into a situation not just of ongoing conflict but – in the words of
the UN Emergency Humanitarian Co-ordinator, Jan Egeland – ‘one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world’.4
