Paper short abstract:

Northern Uganda has been affected by war and conflict for decades, with around 30,000 young people being abducted or joining the Lords' Resistance Army between 1996 and 2000. This paper asks: what happened to those people that subsequently escaped and passed through reception centres on their way ‘home’?

Paper long abstract:

Northern Uganda has been affected by war and conflict for decades, with around 30,000 young people being abducted or joining the Lords' Resistance Army between 1996 and 2000. Many of these people subsequently escaped or were captured by the Ugandan army; and they passed through reception centres on their way 'home'. These reception centres were managed with the support of international humanitarian agencies but no-one knows what subsequently happened to them. They have been much more invisible than the so called 'invisible children' that have been the focus of media campaigns about the situation in the region. This paper presents research that has found out where they are now, and how they are surviving. Drawing upon long term ethnographic research and interviews with 234 people (who were selected by taking a 10% random sample of records at a reception centre in Gulu), the paper highlights aspects of social integration and exclusion in the post war setting of northern Uganda. One problem that many encounter is cen, a kind of malevolent emanation from those that have experienced or perpetrated violence. It can make social healing a fraught process. Another issue is the relative insignificance of local reconciliation rituals that have been a prime focus of those advocating local justice. Overall, the paper highlights the discrepancies between the lived experiences of those who have been caught in the war and the normative assumptions of those running assistance programmes that are purportedly aimed at helping them.