LRA WAR BREAKING WOMEN'S BACKS
By Sarah Muwanga, Kampala

December 16, 2003 – (New Vision - Kampala) It is the third day of a peace building and conflict management workshop at Gulu teacher's centre. Most of the participants are women who belong to the Grassroots Women for Development (GWARD), an NGO in Gulu. Others are members of the Uganda Media Women's Association (UMWA).

The meeting is mainly focusing on health in the internally displaced people's camps, women and children's rights in the camps and nationalising the war in the north.

Margaret Odong, the promoter of GWAD, says some of the activities include sensitising women and youth on HIV/ Aids and on conflict management and peace building. "Since we started the organisation in 1998, we have been telling women to spread the gospel of peace negotiations to end the war."

Odong says the women in Acholi want to talk peace because the LRA fighters are their children, husbands, brothers and relatives some of whom were abducted to go and fight. She says some of these rebels escape and go home to see their parents. "We have told the mothers not to reject and ridicule them but to persuade them to come out of the bush peacefully."

Meanwhile, women in the area are struggling to fend for their families. They risk their lives by stealthily going to the gardens to get food amid the insecurity in the area. Some of them get raped while in the garden.

Odong says most women do not allow their daughters to go out in the gardens because they risk being raped, abducted and tortured. Women sell some of the food donated to them and the little they get from the gardens in order to acquire other essentials like salt, soap, paraffin and drugs.
Women also have to give their husbands money for waragi and cigarettes. One lady participant said her husband committed suicide because she refused to give him money for waragi. She said her in-laws threw her out of the home saying she was responsible for her husband's death.

The war in the north has rendered men redundant and idle especially those in the camps. They rarely go to gardens because they are the first targets to be abducted by the rebels. In palenga camp, men said apart from fishing in the nearby Toki river, they have nothing much to do. Some of the maize offered by World Food programme to people in camps is used to make local brew.

The men's drunkenness and idleness has caused more problems to the women. Domestic violence, rape, defilement, forced marriages and moral degeneration are all on the increase in Gulu. Sexually transmitted diseases including Aids are spreading fast and women cannot control births for they have limited access to family planning services.

Christine Akumu Okot in-charge of gender affairs at the district said poverty has made fathers to marry off their daughters very early. Many women who live in the camps are single mothers whose husbands were abducted. some are young mothers who were raped and do not know the fathers of their children. Women in northern Uganda are carrying the biggest burden of the LRA war on their backs. These women need physical and moral support.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200312160551.html