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Little Protection in "Protected Villages":
IDPs in Northern Uganda
May 2005
Introduction
With the failure of the recent peace talks, Northern Uganda may have just missed
its best chance for peace in nearly two decades. And while the government and
the military struggle to determine why the talks failed and who is to blame,
roughly 90 percent of Northern Uganda’s civilian population remains displaced.
Most of the displaced are in what the Ugandan government calls "protected
villages:" in reality little more than a gentler way to describe overcrowded,
under-resourced IDP camps, where the majority of the population remain vulnerable
to attacks and exploitation from all sides.
More than a million people
face danger in "protected
villages"
During a brutal wave of attacks by the LRA in 1996, the government
of Uganda began a policy of forcing civilians in the north
out of their family compounds and into what it termed "protected
villages." The goal of the government in creating the
protected villages was twofold: to group civilians in more
easily defensible locations, and to clear the countryside
of civilians so as to avoid having them caught in the crossfire
of the army’s attempts to achieve a quick military
victory by rooting the LRA out of the bush. In theory, the
protected villages strategy made some sense – traditional
Acholi settlements are highly dispersed and quasi-rural,
increasing their vulnerability to stealthy night-time attacks
by the LRA and making them difficult for the army, known
as the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF), to reach
and defend. The protected villages, on the other hand, are
very densely populated – with small thatched huts built
practically on top of each other – and are often constructed
around existing or newly-created UPDF outposts.
| Up to 50,000
children and teenagers, called "night commuters," flee
the camps and nearby settlements to larger urban areas
on a nightly basis to avoid abduction by the LRA. |
Early on, the protected villages policy could have been
considered in keeping with the UN’s Guiding Principles
on Internal Displacement (1998). Principles 6 and 7, for
example, allow for displacement when the security of the
civilians or imperative military reasons so demand. These
same principles, however, also clearly specify that displacement
should last no longer than required, and that authorities
should ensure that the movement of civilian populations is
conducted in satisfactory conditions of safety, with adverse
effects minimized, and with free and informed consent of
those displaced.
Nearly a decade after their establishment, it is difficult
to reconcile the continued existence of the villages with
the requirement that displacement last "no longer than
required." Continued looting and atrocities against
civilians in the villages are a clear indication that they
are not "protected." Nor has a military victory
over the LRA been achieved.
Instead, more than one million men, women and children remain
unable to return to their homes and farms; the productive
capacity of Acholiland is next to zero and almost the entire
population of the region is dependent on international humanitarian
aid. Thousands of children know no life but that of the camps,
where they watch their parents idle away day after day with
no work, insufficient food, water, health care and massively
overcrowded schools. Up to 50,000 children and teenagers,
called "night commuters," flee the camps and
nearby settlements to larger urban areas on a nightly basis
to avoid abduction by the LRA.
Moreover, most accounts suggest that the increased activity
by the UPDF, such as Operation Iron Fist, caused the LRA
to become more mobile and put them in need of even more manpower
and supplies. There is no question that the LRA turn to the
camps as a source of both: reports of attacks on and abductions
of civilians in the camps are rife – including a raid
on Bobi camp in Gulu the evening before this author’s
visit there in November 2004.
The Ugandan government fails to protect its civilians
The story doesn’t stop with the LRA attacks, however.
The government of Uganda also bears significant responsibility
for the precarious situation in which the vast majority of
civilians in Northern Uganda continue to live. This responsibility
is twofold – a responsibility to ensure that civilians
are protected in the camps into which the government itself
forced them; and a responsibility not to contribute to the
insecurity of the civilians. In fact, the government is doing
neither.
As noted above, the stated reason for the forced displacement
of nearly the entire population of Acholiland was to better
protect them. When in became clear that they were not better
protected in the camps, it became the responsibility of the
Ugandan government to either ensure such protection or, at
the very least, not to forcibly keep civilians in clearly
unsafe situations and cut off from any type of self-support
mechanisms.
Children seeking safety continue "night
commuting"
The phenomenon of night commuting – itself a difficult
and perilous act – may be the clearest indication possible
that civilians, especially children, do not feel safe in
the camps. Yet the Ugandan government has done little to
ease the situation for these children. The few shelters for
night commuters found in the city centers are for the most
part run by NGOs, and neither the Ugandan government nor
the UPDF has developed effective procedures for better protecting
vulnerable children. In Bobi camp, for example, many children
are moved at night into the army’s barracks across
the road from the main part of the camp (and closer to the
army watchpost), though this did not stop the actual and
attempted abduction of several children not in the camp’s
barracks in November 2004
Dependence on aid can make attacks more likely
Further, insufficient food, water and other supplies in the
camps make it necessary for camp residents to venture increasingly
far from the camp confines in search of water and firewood
and, in some cases, to tend small gardens that may become
a primary source of food and/or income. Traditional Acholi
cultural practices dictate that it is almost always women
and girls who are responsible for these tasks, and these
women and girls are therefore at increased risk of attack
and abduction by the LRA as they stray further and further
from the camps in an effort to assist their families.
Despite these limited opportunities for tending gardens
and collecting water and firewood, camp residents are fully
dependent on humanitarian aid for their day-to-day survival.
For the most parts, this aid comes from UN agencies and international
NGOs, who arrive by road in convoys when the security situation
allows. (When the security situation becomes especially bad,
as it does from time to time, the relief convoys may not
arrive at all.) While the aid is desperately needed in the
camps, it also comes with unintended consequences: the LRA
is more likely to attack a camp just after a delivery, as
there are more goods to loot at that time. Thus civilians
are caught in an impossible dilemma – to accept the
aid they need for their survival, knowing they are then more
likely to be attacked, or refuse it in an attempt to stave
off the LRA, putting themselves at greater risk or starvation
or disease as a result.
The UPDF could, and has a responsibility to, solve this
dilemma. As soon as it became clear that the LRA was aware
of the aid deliveries and coordinated its attacks accordingly,
the army could have systematically increased its presence
in and around the camps during and immediately following
the deliveries. According to a variety of NGOs operating
in Northern Uganda, however, this simple act of protection
on the part of the UPDF does not occur with regularity.
The Ugandan army is accused of torture and other human rights
violations
Apart from not fully living up to its obligation to protect
civilians from LRA attack, the Ugandan army has in fact been
implicated in a multitude of human rights violations and
violence against the very civilians it is charged with protecting.
For example, the UPDF has been accused of torturing suspected
rebel collaborators. While there are undoubtedly some collaborators
among the camp residents, and investigations should indeed
be launched to find and arrest such individuals, under both
international and Ugandan law, torture is never an appropriate
means of dealing with any suspect, enemy collaborator or
not. The practice is of even more concern, however, since
it takes very little for the UPDF to accuse someone of being
a collaborator. According to Gulu-based human rights organizations,
accusations of "collaboration" may come about
as a result of doing nothing more than leaving the camp to
look for water or firewood or returning to nearby property
to assess one’s own farmland. Any movement outside
the camp confines is suspicious in the eyes of the army.
The UPDF has also been accused by the same human rights
organizations based in the North of subjecting displaced
civilians in Northern Uganda to forced labor, including digging
sewage ditches along roadsides and being forced to build
their own huts in the camps – huts into which they
are forced to live against their will, abandoning their own
homes in the process. Many whole camps in Acholiland have
allegedly been built in this manner, sometimes on land confiscated
from residents who then have little choice but to join the
displaced people in the camps
The Ugandan army has also been implicated in countless instances
of sexual violence and exploitation of displaced women and
girls, including rape by soldiers outside of the immediate
camp confines (when women and girls are collecting water
or firewood, for example – a time in which, as discussed
earlier, they are also at risk of attack and abduction by
the LRA) and being forced to trade sex for food or other
necessities.
Victims of assault by soldiers have little, if any, recourse.
Rape is not always viewed as a judicially punishable offence
in Ugandan society in general, and victims are generally
reluctant to come forward. This reluctance is increased exponentially
when the alleged perpetrators are members of the army and
therefore in a position of power, with victims in a position
of dependence. According to Gulu-based human rights organizations,
only after an individual soldier has been implicated in many
sexually-based offenses will he be punished in any manner
by his commanders. The most severe punishment for a soldier
who has raped or otherwise sexually assaulted or exploited
camp residents would be transfer to a different camp.
Conclusion
According to the UN’s Guiding Principles, displacement
of civilians may only come as a last resort, and then only
when it is an absolute imperative for ultimate security and
military victory. Once a government has, in such a situation,
compelled civilians to leave their homes and livelihoods
for camps and a state of total dependence, it has an obligation
to ensure that such civilians are protected and are able
to return home as soon as possible.
The Ugandan government has a lot on its plate – hosting
tens of thousands of refugees from wars in three neighboring
states and fighting a decades-long battle with a brutal and
constantly evolving insurgency. The violent tactics of the
LRA, however, do not give the Ugandan government or its army
the right to act with similar impunity. Rather, the tactics
of the LRA make the need for a true protector of civilians
in Northern Uganda that much more apparent.
Previous Columns
Mass
influx in South Africa?
April 2005
Peace
in the Midst of War? How the Naivasha Protocols affect
Darfur
February 2005
"Unlike Any Other, It Is A War
on Children": Victims of the Conflict in Northern Uganda
August 17, 2004
The World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis Continues:
Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Displacement in Darfur
July 8, 2004
Forced
Return to Chechnya
June 1, 2004
"The
World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis":
Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Displacement in Darfur
May 5, 2004
Gender-Related Persecution and International Protection
Migration Information Source - April 1, 2004
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