The principal victims. It is no exaggeration to say that the children are the principal victims of this war: 80 per cent of the rebel group led by Joseph Kony is made up of child-soldiers, kidnapped during the raids on the villages and forced to become guerrillas, simple carriers or, in the case of the young girls, sex slaves for the rebel leaders. It is calculated that 30 thousand children have been kidnapped since the beginning of the conflict. Many of these are dead, many others, fortunately, have managed to escape. But for those who are recaptured, death is the inescapable consequence. What is worse is that this death sentence is carried out by their “fellow soldiers”, forced to beat these little deserters to death with clubs or, in the worst cases, to bite them to death. The rebels have survived for twenty years by looting the villages of northern Uganda, which by now are reduced to the utmost misery; so much so that 90 per cent of the population of the area live in the refugee centres set up by the government. Even if the conflict seems to have passed the worst phase (when the rebels could count on a force of three thousand “soldiers” compared to the approximately 500 of today), the war is still far from its conclusion.

 

Night commuters. In order to deal with the emergency, the children have decided to organise themselves: every evening, about 6 thousand of them leave their villages and travel to the better protected cities of Kitgum and Gulu to sleep there and dodge the nocturnal attacks of the rebels, who are concentrated in the countryside. This is a phenomenon which has been going on for some years, and which, in the beginning, saw the children housed in whatever structures they could find: hospitals, bus stations, and abandoned houses. Over time these were replaced by structures set up by local and international humanitarian organisations. PeaceReporter has spoken to Zachariah Otto, coordinator of the Charity for Peace Foundation, founded in 2003 and operating in Gulu together with twenty-two other associations. “The real emergency is over, considering that we now house about 300 children each night. But in the darkest moments we arrived at 6 thousand…”. This is obscure but extremely useful work, without receiving any money from the Ugandan government: “We have no fixed donors; we are helped by various humanitarian associations and agencies, such as UNICEF. The authorities provide us only with soldiers for our safety and that of the children”.

 

Collateral activity. The association’s work is not, however, limited to providing accommodation for their little guests. “We promote recreational activities, such as traditional dances and religious teaching on Sundays, always encouraging the children to return to their homes during the day”, states Zachariah. The risk is, in fact, that the physical separation ends up by breaking down the families and hence society, which is, after all, the aim of the rebels with their kidnappings and the attacks of the child-soldiers on their own villages and relatives. The continuation of the conflict risks turning today’s youth into a lost generation, also because, until the war is over, it will not be possible to start any development programmes in the north of the country. For this reason, the peace negotiations, begun a year ago but which have, by now, run aground, are of fundamental importance. “The people here are still hopeful” concludes Zachariah, “and, apart from the rebels, they seem genuinely anxious to end this war”. In the hopes that one day in the not too distant future the doors of the Foundation will close for ever. For the lack of guests.