Late October, the UN finally came open and admitted that the human situation in northern Uganda is the “worst human tragedy,” even “worse than Darfur.” Briefing reporters after addressing the UN Security Council, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs who also doubles as the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, admitted the fact that the situation in northen Uganda has been the most neglected and yet it is worse than the Darfur crisis in Sudan. (15-NOV-04)

By Peter Okema Otika. This article was originally published in the independent Ugandan daily the Monitor on 27 October, 2004, and has been only slightly amended for its release at this website.

Since 1986 when Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni took power, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have never enjoyed peace. Numerous rebel groups have emerged and “disappeared”
leaving room for new ones to emerge just to continue fighting to overthrow the government of Museveni which they believe is oppressive and undemocratic. Along the way since 1986, hundreds of thousands of the Acholi people have been killed, maimed or disappeared.

The plight of the Acholis
In fact, human rights organizations put the deaths at as high as 300,000 lives and United Nations Children´s Cultural Fund, UNICEF estimates that over 25,000 children forcefully abducted by the rebels of the Lord´s Resistance Army, LRA have either been killed or disappeared. All these have been happening in the open but the UN, Western media and the world at large preferred to look
the other way. While the Acholi people continued to suffer under the brutalities of both LRA rebels and Ugandan government forces, the UN joined the rank of the ´group thinkers´ who conspired to ignore the plight of the people and instead, believed the consummate lies that President Museveni has been telling them about the situation in northern Uganda. Museveni has befriended Western nations and especially Britain and the US whom he has always told lies about the real human, political and economic situations in Uganda. He has always told the world, everything is fine in Uganda and even the international media took his words without questioning.

-Where else?
“Where else in the world have there been 20,000 kidnaped children? Where else in the world have 90 per cent of the population in large districts been displaced? Where else in the world do children make up 80 per cent of the terrorist insurgency movement?” the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mr Jan Egeland rhetorically asked reporters at the UN Security Council. Egeland who believes there is no military solution to the war also told reporters that the world should make “bigger international investment in money, in political engagement, in diplomacy and in order to help bring the war and suffering of the people to an end”. Although the UN has all along been aware of the human situations in northern Uganda, the UN has for the last two decades chose a policy of “ignore and neglect” when it came to northern Uganda.

-All is well, says President Museveni
In fact, it has been hard for the Acholi people of northern Uganda to believe whether the UN was separate or whether it was part of Museveni’s government that has as well chosen to perpetuate a policy that intentionally ignores the need to bring to an end, the suffering of the Acholi people. Because of this neglect, Museveni has grown to think that the world condones his policy to neglect the war and suffering of the people as long as he remained in power. This is why, Museveni´s government immediately reacted angrily at Egeland´s remark saying the situation in northern Uganda is normal and nothing closer to that in Darfur.

Reporting unwanted
This is the kind of attitude that Museveni has always held when he realizes that information is coming out about the real situation in the north of Uganda.  It is the same attitude that motivated him to ban media reporting on the war in the late 1980s and persecute news reporters who try to report to the world, the grave human tragedy in northern Uganda.  Both local and international reporters have been forced to flee the region of northern Uganda after being assaulted or threatened with jail or death should they continue to report about the war and worsening human conditions in the region. Although the UN admission of the grave human situation has come long awaited and late, it should be applauded and used as a signal for action.

Let us avoid another Rwanda
The international community and Western nations that have been the backbones of Museveni´s support should use the UN declaration as evidence on which they can put Museveni to task to either bring an end to the human suffering or be held accountable. It should be remembered that, hypocrisy and neglect by the UN and the West helped morale boost the perpetuation of the genocide in Rwanda as well as the massacres of over three million innocent civilians by Ugandan and Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Acholi have suffered for the last two decades while the world looked the other way. If the UN and the international community continue to ignore the plight of the Acholi people, it will not be a surprise. But the UN, the West and the international community should remember that, their practice of neglect and selective justice is unfair, genocidal and criminal to mankind.

Peter Okema Otika is the president of the African Trans-Atlantic Alliance, a Pittsburgh based
organization that works to fight for the rights of African refugees and immigrants in the USA. Otika may be contacted online at http://www.africantransatlantic.org Or via email at peterotika@hotmail.com