Ceasefire begins in Uganda

Some hopeful news from Uganda where the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government agreed to a truce which came into effect yesterday on August 29. The Ugandan military or UPDF is creating a set of land corridors for the LRA to safely retreat into designated points in Southern Sudan as part of the truce.
UPDF troops are standing down as are LRA troops and some sort of calm is returning to most parts of northern Uganda. This article details what is happening at the moment with the Internally Displaced Persons or IDPs who have been living and languishing in refugee/IDP camps for years suffering from immense poverty, lack of resources and infrastructure and diseases. Of course lack of infrastructure and lack of food are also impediments to many of these people from returning to their homes.
With the truce in effect now and a safer environment, hopefully the government will devote more money, resources and effort to improving conditions in the North for these people.

This civil war has been going on for about 20 years since the early eighties when Joseph Kony too action against the Ugandan military with his LRA, which he is still heads. He claims to represent the interests of Northerners, specifically the Acholi, who had feared discrimination by the Ugandan government. After experiencing waning support by the Acholi, he turned his wrath onto them, attacking villages, killing and looting, making thousands of people internal refugees/IDPs and abducting children to serve as female slaves and child soldiers.

This is not to say that Uganda's government has been like a bunch of angels because they've been accused of discrimination and oppressiveness especially against the people in the North. Furthermore Prime Minister Museveni's actions such as taking Uganda into the War in Congo in the late-nineties, his crackdowns against opposition and critical media, as well as changing the consititution to allow a Prime Minister to serve more than 2 terms, thus benefitting Museveni, have caused him to be viewed as dictatorial and repressive.

Still whatever the faults of the Ugandan government and Museveni, the LRA cannot be seen as legitimate guerilla resistance in any manner because of their terrible actions against civilians and widespread lack of support from the public. Instead of fighting oppression, they have become the oppressors, forcing a great deal of suffering, fear and misery onto the civilians of Northern Uganda. They have achieved some notable attention due to their frequent abductions and near-slavery of Northern Ugandan children and the 'Night Walks', the nightly marches that thousands of children make from their villages to towns in order to sleep securely and avoid being abducted by the LRA in their homes. Two Canadians even created a campaign called Guluwalk to highlight these walks by recreating them in Toronto with volunteers.
For further insight into the plight of the children in Northern Uganda, check out this documentary here.