Labongo-Layamo camp in Kitgum District
"The people in the camps are very poor. I mean, the life is horrible. The people here are not living, they are existing. They are next to dead."
Charles Uma, the chairman of the Gulu Disaster Preparedness Committee.Over 1.2 million people in northern Uganda live in protected villages and camps. Some went there voluntarily to escape LRA attacks, others at the instructions of the authorities.In Acholi, the area that has borne the brunt of the rebellion in the north over the past 17 years, the camps are home to between 70 and 80 percent of the population.
The number of people in each camp varies greatly. As at September 2003, Pabbo, the largest of the 33 camps in Gulu District, had about 50,000 residents, while Olwal and Olwiyo camps held approximately 25,000 and 2,050 respectively.As the insecurity spreads, more and more camps are built. Labongo-Layamo, just outside the town of Kitgum, was set up in August 2003. It already accommodates over 12,000 people, mainly from the Labongo area in Cwa County, whose residents had long resisted calls by the government for them to relocate.Life in the camps is one of abject poverty.
Food is short, and many infants suffer from malnutrition. Water is scarce since camps often do not have enough boreholes. There is little access to health care. In some camps there are schools, but not enough teachers. Moreover, school life is constantly disrupted by the insecurity.IDPs complain that life in the camps has had a disastrous effect on their society. Signs of social breakdown include high levels of promiscuity, substance abuse, unprotected sex and increased numbers of child mothers, they say. As people stay longer and longer in the camps, what is left of their dignity is gradually eroded.
Disrespected by the traumatised youth, forced to look on, powerless, as their society is turned inside out by violence and fear, some of the older adults become mentally ill, according to camp leaders.While the authorities say the residents of the north have been relocated for their own protection, the camps themselves have become LRA targets. District officials in Gulu said that between April and July 2003, rebels burned four camps in the district alone. Pabbo was attacked 17 times between January and July of this year.
Children at the Kilak Corner IDP camp in Pader
T
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
