Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC)
PRESS RELEASE
July 12, 2006
Posted to the web July 12, 2006

While Sudan's Darfur region has drawn the world's attention, an equally catastrophic genocide just across the border in northern Uganda has gone ignored, writes a former senior United Nations official in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy.

In his essay, "The Secret Genocide" former U.N. undersecretary-general for children and armed conflict, Olara A. Otunnu reveals how the Ugandan government has used its 20-year war against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as cover for the persecution of its own people in a network of concentration camps that kill 1,500 children a week.

"To the extent Uganda receives any attention, it is generally in the context of the bizarre and brutal LRA," he says. "That is where the awareness ends, however, and that's just how the Ugandan government wants it."

On Wednesday, the Ugandan government is scheduled to meet with representatives of the LRA to begin peace talks aimed at ending the decades-long conflict. But Uganda's people have more to fear from their own government then the mysterious guerrilla force, Otunnu argues.

For more than a decade, government forces have held nearly 2 million people in some 200 camps across the country where disease, starvation, and deprivation have resulted in death rates that are three times that of Darfur.

"The situation in northern Uganda rivals Darfur in terms of its duration, magnitude, and consequence," says Otunnu. "Imagine 4,000 people sharing a latrine, women waiting in line for 12 hours to fill a jerrycan at a well, and up to 10 people packing themselves sardine-like into huts."

The international community must redeem itself, deploy observers to the region, and demand that all the camps be dismantled, Otunnu argues.

"International concern must extend beyond the crisis du jour," he says.

"The Secret Genocide" appears in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy magazine.


Link