Return to Kitgum: Closing down the night shelters

Return to Kitgum: Closing down the night shelters

15^th December 2006
I visited some of the night shelters in Kitgum on my first trip to the area. The night shelters are designed to keep the kids safe from the LRA (Lords Resistance army. The LRA are a rebel group in the area who kidnap children and forcibly make them join their army.

Sporty Spice and Hippy Chick were keen to check out the night shelters, so we traipsed off to find the ones that I had visited.

It was a no go though. They had all closed down.

On the 1^st of December, the Powers That Be decided that the night shelters were no longer necessary. The LRA, albeit in a petty greedy way, seemed committed to the peace talk and had not kidnapped a child for months. Therefore there was no need for the night shelters.

Since the communication is so poor in Kitgum, the children had no way of knowing this ahead of time. They arrived to their normal shelter only to find it guarded by some government soldiers. Those who had walked a long way decided to sleep outside for the night in places like shop verandahs and alleyways.

Now, on the surface this all seems like a good idea. The closing down of night shelters is a necessary step if the north is ever to become "normal" again.

But, for the love of all things holy, why not wait until the peace talks are done and dusted? All the signs are good that they will be signed in the near future.

I asked Amos what he thought of the night shelters closing down and he said most people still fear for the safety of the children for two reasons:

Abuse from Relatives and "Friends"
The kids can obviously no longer sleep in the shelters and the streets are plainly unsafe, but they still have to sleep somewhere. Their parents' huts have become overcrowded in the many years the kids have been sleeping at the night shelters and their is no room for them to sleep. So they are either shipped off to a not-so-crowded relative's hut, or with some friends of the family.

This opens them up to all sorts of sexual abuse. They are fair game for any under-sexed distant relative or family "friend".

None of this abuse, of course, ever gets reported.
Abuse from government soldiers
Most of the abuse in Northern Uganda stems from the LRA, but the government soldiers also cause many problems. Amos told me that he always stays very (very) far away from drunk soldiers. They can demand money from you, or lock you up for any one of a number of trumped up charges.

Many of the soldiers return to Kitgum after many months in Southern Sudan. They return bored and under-sexed.

Who better to take your sexual frustrations out on than a no-longer-protected-by-the-night-shelter child?

So the night shelters, not only protected the children from the LRA, but also from abuse stemming from family members, "friends" and government soldiers.

Kitgum is truly a fucked up place.

On a side note, the government has said that all IDP camps need to be closed down before December 31^st. They want people to move to several IDP camps closer to their villages. I have this horrible vision of bulldozers plowing down the IDP camps on January the 1^st.

Will be interesting to see what has happened when I return mid January.

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