The 'Invisible Children' of northern Uganda

It is 4 p.m. when the doors to the broken-down hospital swing open. Small children rush in and search for a spot on the dusty floor where they will spend the night. Within a few hours, the ground is completely covered in squirming bodies, and not one square foot of space remains vacant. This is no slumber party- it is the nightly survival technique of the youth of northern Uganda.

Juniors in Social Studies teacher Jim Mogge's second period AP World History class sit, entranced by the images of African children flashing by on the television screen. Mogge has just played a rough cut of "Invisible Children," a documentary film about northern Uganda started in 2003 by three young Californians who, on a trip to Africa, stumbled upon a humanitarian disaster they never knew existed.

The teens sitting in the classroom continue to stare, eyes fixed on the television. Before dawn, the crowd of children in the documentary wakes up to wash, pray and begin their daily routines. Some go to school, but most simply roam the streets. Their parents are nowhere to be found- they are either dead from the growing AIDS epidemic or in the outskirts of town where it is too dangerous for children. When 4 p.m. rolls around, it's back to the hospital, bus park veranda or dirty basement for- hopefully- another safe night.

Though it is a monotonous and tiring routine, it is necessary. According to Rachel Santos, an editor for the University of California at Davis International Affairs Journal, a guerilla war that has displaced over 1.5 million people and killed hundreds of thousands has been raging across northern Uganda for more than 19 years. The dissenting group, called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has abducted about 30,000 children to add to their ranks as soldiers since the war began. For this reason, children sleep together in masses in highly populated towns where the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF), soldiers associated with the Ugandan government, offer them some protection.

In spite of the war's great impact on Uganda, most Americans remain unaware of it. In a survey of 100 humanitarian professionals by AlertNet in 2005, the crisis in Uganda was rated as the second most under-publicized emergency of present day. Blair's lack of awareness of the situation reflects this rating well. According to an informal Silver Chips survey of 100 students conducted on November 22 during 5A lunch, 93 percent of Blazers said they were unaware of the guerilla war in northern Uganda.

The war has also been largely ignored by the U.S. government and outreach organizations. It wasn't until this year that Congress passed the Northern Ugandan Crisis Response Act, the first American legislation to address the disaster in northern Uganda yet. United Nations Humanitarian Assistant Chief Jan Egeland has described the guerilla war in northern Uganda as "the world's greatest neglected humanitarian crisis."

The disaster in northern Uganda has been invisible to most for years, but the passionate few who are informed in America, and even at Blair, are working to change that.

The forgotten crisis

In 2003, Bobby Bailey, Jason Russell and Laren Poole decided to go Africa for the summer to capture startling footage of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. But when they arrived in southern Sudan, they were discouraged by the lack of action they found and decided instead to make their way to northern Uganda.

They were introduced to a society of Ugandan children, called "night commuters," on one of their first nights in Uganda. A local woman took Bailey, Russell and Poole to a nearby bus park at night, where they saw over 1,000 children lying packed side by side on a tightly spaced veranda, guarded by a single armed soldier. They were touched by the Ugandan children and decided to record their story in a documentary film that has not yet been released to theatres, entitled "Invisible Children."

The first thing Bailey, Russell and Poole needed to learn about to create their documentary was the history of the war. Uganda has had tension between its northern and southern regions since it gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962. According to the United Nations, the south has always held most of the country's wealth and power, leading to a sense of neglect and inequality among the Acholi people that populate the North.

According to the documentary, the rebel movement can be traced back to one woman in the 1980s- Alice Lakwena, who believed the Holy Spirit spoke to her and ordered her to overthrow the Ugandan government for being unjust to the Acholis. Lakwena and her followers gained momentum with the growing resentment of the Acholis toward the government. When Lakwena died, however, there was no clear leader of the movement, so Joseph Koney, who claimed to be a cousin of Lakwena's, took control of the conflict and transformed Lakwena's rebel army into the LRA.

Soon, the rebels lost most of the support for their cause, so they resorted to abducting children, usually between the ages of five and 12, from their schools, homes and villages, according to Santos. Children are considered the best option for building the LRA's ranks because they are impressionable enough to brainwash, big enough to carry a gun and plentiful enough to create huge masses of fighters. What began as a quick solution to fill the ranks has become the LRA's main method of "recruitment"- 90 percent of their troops are now children, according to the documentary.

Junior Tim Nicklas, who viewed "Invisible Children" in one of Mogge's classes, is appalled by that statistic. He believes that a rebel army predominantly made up of children his age and younger should be of more concern to Americans. "I think it's pretty messed up that no one in America knows about this," says Nicklas.

Once the children are abducted, they are brought to the "bush," as the children call it in the documentary, and the soldiers randomly choose one or two children to mutilate and kill in front of the others as an example. After the children are initiated as soldiers by means of fear tactics and attempts to break emotional attachments to their homes, the LRA teaches the children what it is they do best: kill. According to a 2003 study of 301 former child soldiers conducted by Ilse Derluyn at the University of Ghent, 77 percent of child abductees had seen someone murdered and 39 percent had been forced to kill someone with their own hands. Most other children had also been beaten brutally and forced to burn down towns and houses and abduct other children. Furthermore, 35 percent of female soldiers had been sexually abused, according to the study. Those who manage to escape the rebel ranks hide from the LRA during the day, because otherwise they are hunted down by name and brutally murdered for betrayal.

In light of violent tactics like these, the Ugandan government is often blamed for not working harder to defeat the LRA. While there have been many attempted peace talks, either the LRA or the government has backed down on all of them. It wasn't until July 2005 that the government of Uganda finally put out five arrest warrants for LRA leaders, including head Joseph Kony.

Making them visible

When Bailey, Russell and Poole returned to California, they did not forget the children they met in Uganda. They founded Invisible Children, an organization to help raise awareness and money for the children in northern Uganda.

Bailey, Russell and hope to build a safe community for the people of northern Uganda, but such a feat would cost $20 million. On the DVD of their documentary, they ask for people's time, talent and, of course, money to help the cause. They suggest that viewers throw house parties where they show the documentary to raise awareness about the crisis, because "when people know, they will act," says Russell in the documentary. They also suggest bake sales or selling bracelets inscribed with the name of one of the highlighted children in the documentary, like the ones being sold at local Target and Starbucks shops this holiday season.

People across the country have taken an interest in Invisible Children's safe community campaign, with over 60,000 money donations made to the organization, according to the Invisible Children web site, as well as a few walk-a-thons, bake sales and public viewings of the documentary.

Nicklas says he plans on educating more people in his community and possibly raising some money by creating and showing a trailer of "Invisible Children" during services at a few local churches. He also plans to organize a public viewing of the documentary as soon as he finds a venue in the area.

Students for Global Responsibility (SGR) has given some attention to the crisis. The group plans to donate the money it earns from the SGR Spectacular to Invisible Children, according to junior Avi Edelman, an active member. Amnesty International also plans to raise money for the cause.

While these efforts are meant to help the disaster in northern Uganda, they bring no immediate aid or solution to the victims. Mogge believes no dramatic steps have been taken to solve the problem in Uganda because this humanitarian disaster is in many ways still unseen. As it says on the Invisible Children web site, "These innocent children are Invisible: because they roam distant battlefields away from public scrutiny, because no records are kept of their numbers or age, because their own armies deny they exist."

Russell's solution to the problem, as he states in the documentary: "Let's make them visible."

Visit invisiblechildren.com to donate money or get involved.