Originally published in Village Life Magazine, October/November 2006
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For 20 years a civil war has been fought in northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF). The LRA have conducted a fear campaign by abducting civilians, including children. It is estimated that over 20,000 children have been abducted since 1986. Boys are taken to bolster the LRA's ranks and girls are used as sex slaves and sometimes given as wives to officers. Those known within the community as opposing the LRA are often found murdered or mutilated. Because of such measures, the government took the drastic step of moving the majority of the Acholi population (made up of the Gulu, Pader and Kitgum districts) into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. More than 1.5 million people, representing eighty percent of the Acholi population, live within the camps. Many children know no other life. The 'Night Commuters', as they are known, walk in from surrounding villages and urban centres to stay at shelters like that established by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the grounds of Lacore Hospital, Gulu, in 2004. They do so purely for their own safety and some will walk for up to 10 kilometres every night. It doesn't take much to see that the shelters have become a lot more than a safe refuge for the children, but somewhere where they can actually be children. 'It's a great paradox,' said MSF's resident psychologist in Gulu, Tine Meyer-Thomsen. 'If you look around Gulu you see all these children, yet there are no children in Gulu. They're not allowed to be children.' The children know of many who have been abducted, killed or simply disappeared and have to live with that constant fear themselves. 'It's insecurity about the present moment and about the future,' Meyer-Thomsen said. 'They are completely lost and feel deflated because they have no future perspective.' An average of 1200 children now sleep at the MSF shelter in Gulu every night. However, that number has risen to over 10,000 during times of regular LRA activity. A survey of all shelters around Gulu in April 2004 found 20,000 children were sleeping in the shelters at that time. |
 Meyer-Thomsen runs individual and group counselling sessions to help the children cope with their constant fear and anxiety. Her concern now is the rumoured closure of the shelters. With a recent cease-fire agreement between the LRA and UPDF, it is believed that the government will push for the closure of the IDP camps and the night shelters along with them. So much of MSF's success is achieved through building trust and relationships with the community. 'It's impossible to work with children without having some kind of connection to their community,' Meyer-Thomsen said. 'We have made this commitment and it's very hard to get out without having any responsible partner who can take over in a good way,' she added, concerned that a hasty decision regarding the closure of the shelters could leave the children of Gulu high and dry. It's still early days since the peace talks and the lasting result is yet to be seen. 'What they will show, we don't know. Things could get worse; things could get better.' Meyer-Thomsen said. 'They have a saying up here: you don't know anything about the day until the sun has gone down.' |
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