uOttawa president Allan Rock supports mob vote!

I recently returned from a week away visiting northern Uganda, where an NGO I chair called The Uganda Fund ("the Fund") is active in helping the region recover from a 20-year conflict that took thousands of lives and displaced millions of people.

The death and destruction arose from a violent insurgency involving a mad militia called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA's signature atrocity was the abduction of tens of thousands of the region's children from their families over the years. The children were then forced by the LRA into service as child soldiers and sex slaves.

Those who returned or escaped face deep trauma, as well as community rejection, and the Fund's focus is to assist war-affected children and youth by helping them reintegrate into their communities, seek education and training, and overcome the trauma caused by the violence.

I visited Gulu and Pader to meet with the young people involved in our programs and to look at other possible projects. The travel was hard (many hours driving over rough roads between the towns!) but the Fund's work is going well and it was uplifting to see the progress.

The first time I visited the region five years ago, the violence was still raging and the camps for the displaced were still full. Those camps became hellish places where brutality, hunger and disease took a thousand lives a month at the height of the conflict.

With the violence over, the camps are emptying and the population returning to the land. While enormous challenges remain, at least the acute phase of this crisis has passed.

Here is a video about the Fund: