Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Ambassador and the Single Seed

Monday, June 27, 2005


One month ago, The Monitor of Uganda published an article confirming that U.S. Fund for UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Clay Aiken had arrived in the country for a week-long UNICEF field mission. Though five brief stories were printed in Ugandan newspapers and reprinted on the AllAfrica.comwebsite, little is known about the details of Clay’s activities while there.

Undoubtedly, UNICEF will eventually release detailed information about this field mission; the organization uses famous people as ambassadors for several reasons.
Celebrity ambassadors play an important role across the country and around the world. They stay informed about children's issues, visit UNICEF field projects and represent UNICEF before government officials, the media and the general public. --- UNICEF



For nearly three months, since first learning about his possible Africa trip, I have wondered about what would happen on a field mission to Uganda, and so I went into the research mode that I use when planning a documentary film, using the internet to find articles and official reports about conditions there. Here are the results.

The following is an imagining of Clay Aiken’s time in Uganda. It is dedicated to the children of the world, as we work for peace.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Africa, in many ways, has a silent tsunami many times in a year, a silent tsunami in terms of human suffering, displacement, even loss of life.

But those silent tsunamis in the jungles of Congo or the remote untouched areas of Somalia don't get that attention.

Our challenge is to try and make sure there is more equal attention to these 10 million... who are displaced.

Dennis McNamara, Special Adviser of the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator on Internal Displacement and Director of the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division.



Prologue

There was no need to be concerned for Clay Aiken. I had learned a bit about Uganda from my history professor brother’s 2002 visit there as a Fulbright-Hays scholar, and I knew that the most precarious and dangerous region was the violent, war-torn North. In the north, roads and farms are simply not safe. Early in May 2005, just two weeks before Clay’s visit, soldiers of cult leader Joseph Kony's Lord’s Resistance Army had attacked farmers 25 km southwest of Gulu town, killing them with the tools they had been using to work the land. (Source: BBC News)

Humanitarian workers, including those from the UN, have been set upon, injured and sometimes killed. The day after the farmers in Gulu were killed, a humanitarian convoy was attacked at the same location, with one person injured. (Source: Reuters) In March of last year, the LRA attacked a relief convoy in Kitgum, killing the driver and injuring seven, including two from Catholic Relief Services. (Source: ReliefWeb). And just two week ago, there was a report that two Caritas development workers were recently shot at by rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda as the aid workers made their way to a refugee camp, increasing fears “that projects for refugees and child soldiers may be cut back in the near future due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.”

There are myriad reasons to feel compassion and concern for the people who live in a war zone, but certainly Clay would not be sent there. He could talk to those who had witnessed the monumental tragedies affecting Uganda, including the effects of the civil war, in the far-more-stable southern, eastern and western districts.

And then I saw the headline that drove it all home:

“Clay Aiken to Visit Northern Uganda Children”

In that instant, I was just a little bit afraid… for all of them.

Disclaimer

The following is a speculative account concerning Clay’s possible activities in Uganda as a UNICEF ambassador, based on facts about the region. Each of the locations described is real, and the statistics (such as the numbers of Internally Displaced Persons, the conditions of the camps and the history and impact of the civil war) are taken from information from my research, which came from the sources cited at the end of this piece.

All of the people described here are real. Though the children and adults who are quoted are not the ones Clay met, he would likely have met others whose experiences are strikingly similar --- 20,000 children have been abducted by rebel forces and 80% of IDPs are women and children. The quotes are taken from Human Rights Watch; the IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs special report, "when the sun sets, we start to worry”; the Uganda Debt Network and other sources cited herein.

This story’s focus is on what Clay Aiken likely experienced while visiting the locations described in the news reports of his field mission. People tend to relate better to what is known or familiar, but Clay is certainly not the most important part of this story --- clearly, he is just one player in a cast of millions.

His interest and activism may or may not have a great impact --- but a lifesaving crop can begin with a single seed.


Uganda, May 2005

There is a common saying used by the parents of many American children ---

“There is nothing in the dark that isn’t there when it is light.”

Sitting on the foot of a child’s bed, Mom and Dad chase away their little one’s nightmares with assurances that “creatures” in the dark are powerless, nothing but figments of the imagination. Soon the child returns to sleep, comforted and safe.

Here in Northern Uganda, there is a different attitude toward monsters who roam both by day and by night. Here, mothers teach their children that their lives might depend on staying close to the UPDF government soldiers as the family works the fields, and fathers warn young boys and girls that the night conceals unspeakable horrors. And in a tragic turn on the truths that we know, children leave their families to flee what should be the peace and quiet of a country night for the noisy, crowded, late night city streets.

In the city, there is at least a measure of safety in numbers, and the numbers are staggering. There are 40,000 child night commuters in Northern Uganda. Their eyes bright with fear or dull with exhaustion, children as young as four years old walk for miles until they arrive in the towns, some clutching their bedding, others with nothing but their thin, worn clothes to sleep in.

In Kitgum and in Gulu towns, the children wander the city streets like ghosts in the night, and those who cannot find a place in churches, hospitals and other safe houses cluster together in bus shelters, in storefronts and on the sidewalk. Soon a man will arrive from the west to listen to their stories.

Perhaps he will talk to a young girl at the Noah’s Ark Children’s Mission in Gulu. On any given night, children numbering from two to six thousand or more pass through the tall razor wire fence surrounding the complex. They are given a blanket, and they make their beds on the concrete floors of a warehouse-style building or in the large canvas tents supplied by UNICEF.














One of the girls here tonight is named Prossy. She is 14 years old. This is the story she would have told Clay:

My father was killed by the rebels in 1996. My mother died in 1998 after a long illness. I walk every evening to the Noah's Ark centre in Gulu town. I go to school each morning with nothing to eat.

During the fruit season, you can get something to eat during the day, but now there are no fruits, so the only time I eat is in the evening when I go home from school. I have to eat very quickly so as to leave home before dark. Sometimes when the situation gets worse, I have to hurry so as to reach the centre before dark. At times I do not wait to eat at home.

I do not want to end up like my sister, who was abducted in 1994. I don't think she is alive. We have not heard anything about her from other children who have come back.

We are tired of walking without eating. This war should stop, so we can return to our normal lives.



Looking out of the window of the plane, the difference could not have been more striking.

Three months ago, Clay Aiken went to hell. There he saw a world in ruins, but a people strangely at peace. They had come together to help one another when the forces of nature combined to shatter the coastline, ravage the land and reduce many dwellings to dust. The earthquake and the resulting tsunami killed, injured or left homeless hundreds of thousands of people. In the aftermath of that disaster, some long-standing conflicts and divisions fell away --- at least for a time.*

(*The onslaught of nature has forced a temporary peace in Northern Indonesia. Many Westerners do not remember or perhaps never knew that Aceh province has endured nearly thirty years of civil war --- a decade longer than in Uganda --- with casualties of over 10,000 among the insurgents alone.)

Now Clay arrives in Uganda. From the window of the plane, he can see the country that Winston Churchill called “the Pearl of Africa” --- the verdant land that is the source of the Nile, a place of breathtaking beauty, from the lush and fertile rain forests of Kibale, to the mist-covered Rwenzori, the “Mountains of the Moon,” to the wide blue-grey expanse of Lake Victoria at the southern border, and even to neighboring Tanzania, where snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro looms. From the air, it is difficult to accept that what he will see at ground level stands in such stark contrast to the vision seen from above of a paradise on earth. Here he will witness a self-made hell and meet a people scarred by horrors, atrocities and tragedies caused by fellow human beings.

This is a part of the physical and psychological landscape of Uganda --- but this is far from all Uganda is.

Once, the North was “the breadbasket of Uganda.” Farmers there raised the crops that fed the country. People were proud, self-sufficient, hospitable.

What caused the hell that Ugandans endure?

After the oppression of colonial forces, the brutality of the dictator Idi Amin and the retaliatory violence under Milton Obote, Uganda entered a period of growing freedom and prosperity when the Museveni government came into power. Forward thinking and progressive, cordial to the West, enlightened about HIV/AIDS and committed to places for women and girls in every area, from government to education, Uganda began to thrive. For twenty years, there has been a marked increase in international business and in ecotourism, and the official government position to promote universal primary school education could increase the chances for a more prosperous future.

At the same time, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has continued to decimate the country, and the civil war that has caused untold suffering, particularly in the north, has gone on for nearly twenty years.

The Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, operates in northern Uganda, from bases in southern Sudan. In 1988, it began its campaign to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni, and replace it with one based on Kony’s personal interpretation of the biblical Ten Commandments. Government troops known as the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) have battled the rebels in an ongoing campaign known as Operation Iron Fist.

Over the years, though, the LRA rebels have gained notoriety for brutality, and the group has regularly used torture, rape, mutilation and abduction as weapons of war. Many observers believe that the LRA has deliberately targeted children in a strategy meant to destabilize families and communities.

There is no shortage of mass brutality in recent human experience, from Hitler’s death camps, to the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, to the “disappeared” of Argentina, to the mass unmarked graves of Bosnia Herzegovina, to the almost unimaginable horrors of Rwanda. From Europe to Asia to Africa to Australia to the Americas, unspeakable tragedies occur when people, while claiming to cherish their own families, reduce their fellow human beings to the status of “the other” --- other races, other ethnic groups, other religions, other nations, other belief systems, other colors.

Each of us, regardless of differences, shares the same basic needs. Life cannot be sustained without food, so this afternoon Clay helps to prepare a meal. He is in the north visiting Gulu and Kitgum, two of the districts which, along with Pader, have borne the brunt of LRA atrocities.












His hands, pale as clouds touched by the first rays of sunset, are in motion against a sky blue cloth, sorting red beans for the dinner. Two pairs of hands, the color of the earth after the spring rains, work next to his, sorting out the pebbles and twigs and any beans that have been spoiled. They talk a little bit while they work, quite formally at first, but then the women begin to share their stories with the man from UNICEF. He listens intently --- there is sometimes no need for a translator in this country where the official language is his own, but he concentrates a bit to make sure he understands everything they share with him in their lilting, accented English.

Here he might have spoken with a young woman like Cecilia, who was kidnapped when she was fifteen years old and spent five years in LRA captivity. She was forced to become the fourth of eight “wives” (sex slaves) for a senior LRA commander. This is what she would have told him.

When you are given a commander to be your husband, you are expected to produce food. You are also given a gun and expected to fight. Several times, I was picked to go out on patrols.

I became pregnant in early 2002, when Kony predicted an attack from the UPDF on our bases in Sudan. By June, our whole group sneaked back into Uganda and hid in the Imatong Mountains. This was the most difficult time for captives. My husband was part of the attack on Anaka [a village in Gulu District]. He was shot in the chest by the UPDF. He died a few days later. I gave birth to a baby boy, but he died after a month.

I was released after the death of my husband. I only returned from the bush a few days ago. I am still haunted by frightful dreams. I dream often that I am still in the bush. I hear children crying. I dream that we are being attacked, or fighting, walking for days in the hot desert without food or water. I am happy to be back, but I have no hope of returning to school. I heard that my entire family has been displaced. They are now scattered in camps in the district.


Cecilia is one of 1.6 million Internally Displaced Persons in Northern Uganda, and 80% of them are women and children. In Gulu alone, half a million people struggle for survival in 52 camps.

The conditions faced by these displaced people can best be described as horrendous.

Despite dedicated efforts by humanitarian workers from Uganda and the world, the camps often lack the basic elements for health and safety. With crowds and congestion, there is an inadequate supply of clean water. Medical assistance and access to education are sporadic. With farmers among the IDPs no longer having access to their land, life-sustaining crops are not being grown in the area once known as the breadbasket of Uganda. Sanitation is woefully inadequate. Safety, as always, is an issue, with human rights violations, reports of harassment from some UPDF soldiers and fear of abduction by the LRA as continuing concerns. This is not a way that any human being should be forced to live. What does it say that, for some, it is considered preferable to returning to the dangers they have fled in their own farms and villages?

The man from UNICEF is seeing all of these things, and meeting children and young adults who have experienced an almost indescribable existence. Earlier in the week in Kitgum, he visited the district branch of Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), a center for war-affected children. Perhaps he talked to a boy like Martin, who was abducted and forced to fight as a child soldier when he was 12 years old. Like the other abducted children, he was brutalized and brainwashed. He has nightmares and an overwhelming burden of guilt and shame. This is what Martin would have told Clay about his abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army:

That night, the LRA came abducting people in our village, and some neighbors lead them to our house. They abducted all five of us boys at the same time. We were told by the LRA not to think about home, about our mother or father. If we did, they would kill us.

Early on when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA explained to us that all five brothers couldn’t serve in the LRA because we would not perform well. So they tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until the two of them died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old.


Perhaps Martin and the other child soldiers like him will return to school or learn a trade. First, though, his rehabilitation will include the simple act of learning to trust, learning to forgive, learning to believe in the possibility of a future.

The man and the boy sit under a mango tree and continue their quiet conversation, while the sun filters through a canopy of leaves. It is difficult to imagine the future. Perhaps a mother, a father, a sibling will be found, and he will be reunited with family. There is a small victory here: the boy has found the courage to tell his story, a critical element of healing. He has a long road to travel before he can become part of the fabric of society again --- particularly since it is not known if the home he was stolen from is now safe. Tonight, at least, he will sleep in safety.

On Wednesday Clay visits the Pabbo IDP camp in Gulu. Access to the camps can be difficult and dangerous. Supply convoys are often accompanied by 100 troops and escorted by machine-gun mounted vehicles. UNICEF first opened offices in this region in January 2004, and a few months later started an armed vehicle service in Gulu District to facilitate field trips for humanitarian agencies. The armed vehicles are meant to reduce the need for individual armed escorts, but the UPDF resources are still required to be able to access the camps.

Pabbo, with more than 60,000 residents, is the country’s largest camp. Residents must deal with overcrowded housing, inadequate food supplies, lack of sanitation, fear of sexual assault, harassment by a few unscrupulous government soldiers and limited medical support. In some camps, there is just one doctor or nurse for tens of thousands of residents. A simple thatch-roofed hut can be home to a dozen people and, packed tightly together, a fire in one of them can spread and destroy 4000 others. Sixty percent of the women and girls in this camp have endured sexual or physical assault while there.

In October 2004 and again in April 2005, there was a cholera outbreak at Pabbo. The World Health Organization determined that all of the domestic water pots had fecal contamination. In the latest outbreak, five people have died, over two dozen have been admitted for treatment and nearly two hundred fifty cases have been registered. And as temperatures rise with the beginning of the equatorial summer, imagine the feeling of not having a single drop of safe water to drink. Imagine the flash of gratitude to the people who bring the water sanitation kits, the nutritional biscuits, the bags of beans for a thick and hearty stew. Imagine the despair of never knowing if you will ever be able to go back home. Imagine the anger of those who wonder why their country, why the world will not listen.

These are the conditions the man from UNICEF witnesses. He learns that, though this is no way to live, it is preferable to the constant fear of death under which these refugees lived in their own homes. And for the Acholi people in the camps, with a history of dignity and self-sufficiency and for whom the ultimate act of desperation is extremely rare, suicides are now numbering three every week.

There is more to see, and more stories to be told.

Clay travels to the east and, on Thursday, visits Katakwi in northeast Uganda. This is a grassland district, lightly populated. It is an agricultural region, inhabited by poor, hardworking farmers.

It is here that the Karamajong, a group of pastoralists, conduct raids on farms, stealing cattle and supplies across the savannah and sometimes killing or abducting those they encounter. Two years ago, the LRA also began raids in this district. The other farming families have grown afraid, and have fled their hardscrabble lives for the dismal life of the displaced. Thirty percent of the population in this district now lives in IDP camps.

In Katakwi, Clay might have spoken to a head teacher like Richard Egadu of the Oditel Primary School in Aitek IDP camp. Less than half of the registered pupils show up on any given day. Between fear of raids and the dire poverty of farmers who have been forced to flee their land, there is no money to purchase the required school uniforms. At schools where meals are provided, some children receive their only meal of the day. In Katakwi, some girls are forced into early marriages so that their families can get money to replace the work animals which help them to survive.

In many IDP camp schools, there is just one teacher per 200 students. Half of the children are malnourished and have difficulty studying.

Under good conditions, school is held in UNICEF-supplied tents equipped with complete “School in a Box” supplies for students and teachers. Sometimes, though, a classroom is a simple chalkboard under a tree.

Aitek IDP Camp does not have the UNICEF supplies. This is what Richard would have told his fellow teacher from America about life at Oditel School:

Registered pupils on roll is four hundred sixty four but they never all turn up for studies because of the insurgency which forces people to run away. When some peace is restored some people never return and those who return cannot even afford buying a uniform for the children. Poverty is the factor which makes enrollment draw back. Parents want an easy source of income to buy oxen for ploughing land so they marry off their daughters at an early age.

Even with the new classroom block some pupils still have to have their classes under a huge mango tree because the building is too small. Classes primary one to three study from under trees or falling structures. The rain disrupts our lessons very much because when it rains classes cannot go on. The children are sent home before the rain pours down.


At the end of the week, having traveled hundreds of miles under dangerous conditions, Clay returns to the Ugandan capital of Kampala . The western-style skyline and modern conveniences do nothing to erase the memory of the squalor, violence and uncertainty that marks the lives of so many, just a few hundred miles away.

The voices he has heard continue to speak to him.

Sixteen-year old John W., now an orphan, says,

“What disappoints me most is the future. Some seem to have things to do here, and a place to go, but for me, the future is blank. . . . What am I going to do?”



Perhaps in the quiet of his room, thinking back over all he has seen and heard, Clay also asks himself, “What am I going to do?”

And indeed, what can he do? He is 26 years old. He has a bachelor’s degree in special education. He has an incredible rapport with children. He has a magnificent voice. He cannot possibly solve a decades old dilemma alone, but he will do something with the gifts he has to share.

On Friday, Clay sits next to Uganda’s UNICEF chief, Martin Mogwanja, addressing the press. Dressed in a blue and black striped v-neck sweater and rimless glasses, he looks more like a scholar than a pop star. His voice is clear and direct.











“I’m thinking of composing a song about the plight of IDPs in northern Uganda. When I return to the US I will talk to some people. Possibly in the coming months, I’ll have composed it. We should think of creative ways of sensitising the international community about the crisis.

“It’s unfortunate that such a tragic situation is not adequately publicised. I’ll impress it on the US government to help end it.

“I spent two years teaching children and two more visiting children in their homes.

"Everyone deserves the best start in life, which is what UNICEF is working to provide the world’s most vulnerable children with. Education is essential to a child’s development. I hope that as an ambassador, I can encourage people to join UNICEF’s mission to make education a reality for children throughout the world.

“My faith... my belief... God places a person to do things in a certain way. Each person has certain responsibilities, which they can fulfill in a way they choose.”


Though the ambassador has visited the seats of several governments, Clay cannot order the American or the Ugandan governments to solve this ongoing tragedy through negotiations, arms, aid or awareness. He has chosen, though, to embrace his responsibilities, and he has chosen a way to fulfill them. He can plant a seed of concern by telling the stories of the people he met.

The singer will not end a two decades long civil war with a song. He cannot compose a tune that will make the rebels lay down their arms or undo the damage to the lives of millions of war-affected people. He can put his feelings into words, and plant a seed of compassion that will grow in the hearts of some of those who hear him.

He will use the gifts that he has been given, and he will ask that we listen.

He will ask people to face a situation that might seem insurmountable, and do what we can to effect change.

He will ask that we don’t look away.

In the end, will a song change the world?

No, but it might be the seed which causes change to grow in a single heart.

Perhaps he contemplates the book of Matthew, and believes that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains.

Clay might plant the seed of his song in the heart of the doctor who decides to volunteer at Pabbo IDP camp, where her actions might save the life of a child who one day will become the friendly, happy street corner vendor --- or the architect of peace in Uganda.

He might plant the seed that inspires action in thousands. Parents and politicians and students and scientists and laborers and artists and executives and teachers and other musicians will hear his song. They will write letters, demand action, donate time and supplies and effort and caring, or write songs of their own. They will plant another seed, in their own way.

He might plant a seed that will be the catalyst to informing tens of thousands, the force to motivate hundreds of thousands, from the corridors of power to the City of Angels to the government in Kampala.

Starting with his song, the gift he has been given to inspire, inform and motivate, perhaps all the seeds we plant together will grow in the hearts of the former child soldiers, the hearts of the abused, the hearts of the dispossessed, the hearts of the privileged, the hearts of the newly aware, the hearts of the hopeless.

Perhaps Clay believes that the Pearl of Africa is not lost, but can be reclaimed by the work of many hands and recaptured by faith.

Move, mountain!

The song, the seed of hope, is just the beginning.




























Photos by Guillaume Bonn for U.S. Fund for UNICEF






Bibliography and Resources:

Stories About Clay Aiken’s UNICEF Field Mission to Uganda

Clay Aiken to Visit Northern Uganda Children
May 23, 2005.
Source: The Monitor
Reprinted at: AllAfrica.com

UNICEF Envoy Visits Kitgum
May 27, 2005
Source: The New Vision – Uganda’s Leading Website
Reprinted at: AllAfrica.com

US artiste to publicise IDP’s plight
May 30, 2005
Source: The New Vision – Uganda’s Leading Website

American artiste with a heart for the vulnerable
June 2, 2005
Source: The New Vision – Uganda’s Leading Website
Sidebar: Aiken’s Achievements
Reprinted at: AllAfrica.com

U.S. star ends northern tour
June 2, 2005
Source: The Weekly Observer


Background Information on the Crisis in Northern Uganda

IDPs a neglected humanitarian issue, UN official says
June 8, 2005
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Reprinted at AllAfrica.com

Northern disaster worse than Tsunami, says WFP
June 1, 2005
Source: Daily Monitor
Reprinted at AllAfrica.com

Uganda: More Children Sleeping On the Streets in the North – Unicef
24 May 2005
AllAfrica.com
Originating Publication: IRINnews
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs


UGANDA: Humanitarian crisis persists in northern region

November 2004
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Children flee their homes to escape abduction
May 2004
Source: UNICEF Website


UGANDA: Special report on the northern crisis

May 2003
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UGANDA: Children suffering gross abuses in northern conflict
March 2005
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs


UGANDA: Mixed fortunes for civilians in northern conflict

December 2004
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UGANDA: Rape rampant in largest northern IDP camp
June 2005
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Wave of fires striking congested IDPs camps
February 2005
Source: Global IDP Database

Situation Report: Northern Uganda
The current humanitarian situation, the humanitarian response and future scenarios
October 2004
Source: Norwegian Refugee Council


Uganda: government fails to protect IDPs in the north, as international presence remains inadequate

2005
Source:
Global IDP Database

Stolen Children: Abduction and Recruitment in Northern Uganda
March 2003
Source: Human Rights Watch

Abduction of Innocents
December 2004
Source: Essence


Emergency Assistance for the IDPs in Katakwi District

October 2001
Source: ACT International (Action by Churches Together)

Cattle raids, drought and food insecurity in the Karamajong dominated North-East
(2000-2003)
Source: Global IDP Database


Katakwi: The Cry of a Dying Buffalo

A Report of Poverty in Katakwi District Carried out by Uganda Debt Network

October 2001
Source: Uganda Debt Network


ACT Appeal Uganda - Emergency Assistance to IDPs in Katakwi District - AFUG-32

October 2003
Source: Action by Churches Together International (ACT) via ReliefWeb

AFRICA: IDPs a neglected humanitarian issue, UN official says
June 2005
Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

IDP Education Poor – Report
June 2005
Source: New Vision, Reprinted in AllAfrica.com

Caritas workers attacked by rebels in Northern Uganda
June 2005
Source: ReliefWeb

Ugandan aid workers for Catholic charity injured in LRA ambush
June 2005
Source: ReliefWeb

IRIN Web Special on Life in northern Uganda
"when the sun sets, we start to worry..."

Source: IRINnews.org - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(Download the 71 page book as a PDF file here)

Uganda's haunted former child rebels
January 2004
Source: BBC News


Helen Mirren in Uganda

March 2005
Source: BBC News

Shining a light on northern Uganda (Dame Helen Mirren)
December 2004
Source: Oxfam

Politics Uganda: The Road to Hell, Paved With Good Intentions?
March 2005
Source: Inter Press Service News Agency

Ongoing Programs in Uganda (diagram)
January 2005
Source: United States Agency for International Development
USAID site

UNICEF Humanitarian action: Uganda donor update
A Situation Report
June 2005
Source: UNICEF via ReliefWeb

How to Offer Help in Uganda
May 2005
This is a list of United Nations and private, nonprofit organizations that are doing work in Uganda, particularly in northern Uganda.
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer


Debt Relief, AIDS Outreach, Trade, Emergency Relief and Self-Sufficiency Training:

The ONE Campaign - The Campaign to Make Poverty History

Partners Ending Poverty and Bringing Attention to the AIDS Pandemic:

(Includes CARE, Oxfam, Save the Children, American Jewish World Service, United Methodist Church, Concern Worldwide, and other NGOs and religious organizations)

American Friends Service Committee Life Over Debt Campaign


General Information:

UNICEF Country Report – Uganda


Information on the political and social situation

Uganda Tourist Board

Information on the land, the natural environment, the people and the culture

The Commission for Africa

The G8 Summit, Gleneagles, Scotland, July 6 – 8, 2005
Focus on the challenges to Africa and on climate change
G8 Africa Report

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