Uganda Worse Off Then Iraq Report Says

By Katy Pownall in Kampala
Published: 30 March 2006

The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year insurgency has cost $1.7bn (£980m), according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released today.

The violent death rate for northern Uganda is 146 deaths a week or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day, says the report.

"The Ugandan government, the rebel army and the international community must fully acknowledge the true scale and horror of the situation in northern Uganda," said Kathy Relleen, a policy adviser to Oxfam, one of the organisations behind the report.

The report, by the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, puts the cost of the war in northern Uganda at $1.7bn over the past two decades. It says this is equivalent to the United States' total aid to Uganda between 1994 and 2002. "Twenty years of brutal violence is a scar on the world's conscience. The government of Uganda must act resolutely and without delay, both to guarantee the effective protection of civilians and to work with all sides to secure a just and lasting peace," said Ms Relleen.

The report is being released ahead of the arrival of the UN's humanitarian chief Jan Egeland in Uganda tomorrow. Mr Egeland will hold meetings with non-governmental organisations, ministers and Uganda-based UN officials before touring a camp in northern Uganda.

Almost two million people have been driven from their homes in the 20-year insurgency, and forced to live in government-controlled camps for their own protection. Rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army hold no territory but regularly abduct children, using the boys as soldiers and the girls as sex slaves. The report estimates that 25,000 children have been abducted during the war.

[..]

The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year insurgency has cost $1.7bn (£980m), according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released today.

GOI: Not many people care about what is going on in Africa and many people can't even name one African country. And yet their is genocide and brutal dictatorships that rival (or are at least as bad as) the situation under Saddam's Iraq:

-Equitorial Guinea is currently being run by a brutal dictator who came to power by way of a coup against his uncle whom we summarily executed. All political parties are banned and the dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema rules with an iron-fist through a military state.

-Sudan is a disaster as we all know (at least I hope you know about it) where people are being massacred, women raped and where people are forced to flee their homes for refuge camps in TChad by militas.

-Somalia is a lawless country that is split into fiefdoms ruled by waring factions and militias. The people of Somalia also suffer from severe drought and famine.

-Congo: After years and years of civil war this country is trying to have free and fair elections but thriving and waring militias are preventing them.

-Ivory Coast is a West African country in which I lived for 2 years. It is currently split into two sections with rebels ruling the north and the government ruling the south. Talks have so far not led to much improvement.

-Sierra Leone is currently in the grips of a civil war and according to Human Rights Watch over 5o,ooo people have been killed in the conflict and over one million displaced.

GOI: At this rate freedom isn't on the march but rather at a crawl. Bush better institute the draft (which would demand that every woman, man and child sign up) and get going or his perfect Jeffersonian Democratic utopia pipe dream won't happen. Bush is learning (at the expense of the lives of our brave soldiers, those of the Iraqis and our treasury) that you have to pick your interventions carefully or you will just make the violence and the situation worse.

Not to mention that you can not force people into Democracy. It's interesting that Bush wants more Americans to learn history when he himself didn't learn from our attempt to force democracy on the Vietnamese and ended up fighting a persistent insurgency for 10 f**king years!!

---End of Transmission---