From 1996 the Ugandan army ordered the rural population of Acholiland into 'protected villages', giving families days to move and firing on those who remained; by 2005 some 1.8 to 2 million people were living in more than 200 camps, which were overcrowded, dependent on food aid, and only partly protected, being attacked repeatedly by the Lord's Resistance Army. A 2005 mortality survey by the Ugandan Ministry of Health with WHO and UN agencies found roughly 1,000 excess deaths a week in the camps, overwhelmingly from malaria, AIDS and other preventable causes rather than violence, a rate the survey described as far above emergency thresholds. The Lord's Resistance Army abducted an estimated 24,000-66,000 children and young people to serve as fighters, porters and wives, and committed massacres including at Barlonyo in 2004. Uganda referred the situation to the International Criminal Court in 2003; the Court issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and four commanders in 2005 and in 2021 convicted Dominic Ongwen of 61 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including attacks on the Pajule, Odek, Lukodi and Abok camps. Camps were dismantled from 2006 after the Juba talks and most residents had returned by 2011; the Ugandan government maintained the camps were necessary protection, while human rights organisations and Acholi leaders characterised them as forced encampment.
The Ugandan army moved the rural Acholi population into guarded camps during the war against the Lord's Resistance Army, which abducted tens of thousands of civilians
Uganda's 2002 census counted about 1.15 million people in the three Acholi districts, of whom aid agencies estimated more than 90 per cent were living in 'protected villages' at the peak in 2003-2005. The wider camp population of roughly 1.8 million also included displaced people from the Lango and Teso sub-regions further south.
The lower figure is a conservative reading of the 2005 Ministry of Health/WHO mortality survey, which found around 1,000 excess deaths a week in the camps at that time, extended over the peak camp years. The higher figure is the extrapolation used by some Ugandan and international advocacy organisations across the whole encampment period. Violent deaths from LRA attacks and army operations are a small fraction of the total; most excess deaths were from disease and malnutrition in the camps.
The International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch and the 2005 Ministry of Health/WHO survey documented abductions of children, forced marriage and rape, massacres at camps, and mortality from hunger and disease inside them.
Uganda