Fall 2007, Volume 11 Number 3

Table of Contents

If youth are the future, then what is the outlook for northern Uganda, where an entire generation of children has grown up knowing only turmoil and hardship?

Onek, who is twelve, was with his sister collecting firewood along the camp perimeter when they encountered a rebel ambush; he escaped but his sister was taken into captivity and hasn’t been seen since. Jennifer, who was thirteen at the time, was raped by a gang of government soldiers, who forced her to watch on as her sister suffered the same fate. She has since discovered that she is HIV-positive. 

Onek and Jennifer were among the children I met on my most recent trip to northern Uganda.  My name is Daniella Boston and I co-founded uNight: for the Children of Uganda (www.unight.org) in collaboration with the Ugandan Diaspora as an advocacy group to bring peace and sustainable development to the blighted north of their country.

Since 1986, northern Uganda has been afflicted by a civil war, which has culminated in a humanitarian crisis that ranks among the gravest tragedies in the world today.  For over two decades innocent civilians have been caught in a violent struggle between the Ugandan government army (UPDF) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. Innocent civilians have been systematically tortured, raped, and murdered with impunity; their children taken and forced to fight, to kill or be killed.  In Acholi, the epicenter of the crisis, the Government forcibly  evicted approximately 1.6 million people from their homes and herded them into concentration-like camps. The camp populations were condemned to live in conditions so severe that at the height of the conflict over 1,000 people died each week; the majority were children. In 2006, the Government and the LRA signed a tentative peace agreement and the fighting has ceased.  However, after two decades of civil war, an entire generation of children and young adults know nothing but life in camps – and their hopes and dreams are likewise bound by this reality. 

Youth constitute over fifty percent of the population. It will be impossible to rebuild northern Uganda without their participation. These war-affected young people have neither adult role models nor a network of peers to sustain them through their personal development. By building relationships with a concerned global network, including student-led chapters at high-schools and colleges, uNight works to create a platform for people like you and me to know northern Uganda not only for its tragedy but for the humanity, vitality and promise of its people.

In Uganda, the uNight team will build local training centers where these war-affected children can gain the skills they will need to reconstruct their society.  We have established a mentoring program to provide after-school training in literacy, numeracy, technology, leadership and entrepreneurship.  These programs will leverage the ability of young people to solve their own problems and will promote the agency and dignity of the very youth we set out to support.

For as long as they can remember, Onek and Jennifer have lived with war; they have never known the opportunities peace brings. Despite all they have gone through, Onek and Jennifer are determined to receive the education and life-skills necessary to succeed and help others. Onek wants to become a journalist and Jennifer a doctor.

uNight youth centers will seek to provide teenagers like them with the chance to realize some of their hopes and dreams.

Consider this scenario: Onek and Jennifer have begun a literacy class, and things have begun to change. Onek’s grades in school have begun to improve, and he decides he wants to go to university, just like his mentor, the young man who helps him with his writing assignments. Next week, he will begin a computer class. He hears that he will be able to send his letters instantly through space to other people who have heard and care about his experiences. He is glad to have the opportunity to be a voice for his people.  At the youth center clinic, Jennifer receives the antiretroviral treatment necessary for her to survive into adulthood.  Jennifer’s school does not have well-trained teachers nor does she have any adult role-models to look to for guidance. Through uNight’s technology lab and mentoring program, uNight links Jennifer with a medical-school student in the United States, who can tutor her online and send her additional materials to read.

When you listen to children like Jennifer and Onek, one is not struck by a sense of haplessness, but by the tentative optimism and hope that they exude.  Children like these are the solution. However, northern Ugandan youth do not have the self-confidence or education, and lack the resources, professional training and market access necessary to create their own opportunities. uNight hopes to play a role in changing these circumstances.

Children like these give me confidence that the work I am doing with uNight is worthwhile and important. When I meet young people with the strength of character of Onek and Jennifer, I know that the help uNight provides will be humble in comparison to the potential contribution such children will make to society at large.

            Daniella Boston is Executive Director of uNight: For the Children of Uganda. She may be reached at daniella@unight.org. For further information, go to www.unight.org.

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