Up to 8,000 children have been abducted by the LRA and forced through brutal methods to become child soldiers and virtual slaves in northern Uganda. Practice of the Lord Resistance Army to seize children to server as soldiers, servants or sex slaves. President Yoweri Museveni has been unable to reconcile the the Bacholis in the North and the Bagandas in the South. The LRA is supported by the Sudan in its opposition to Museveni, but the LRA tends to attack the Bacholi people more than Museveni. UN agencies seek to develop skills for self-reliance among refugees and phase out general food distribution by mid 2002.
Most refugees are from Sudan.
But the chairman of the Sabiny Elders Association, a council of clan leaders, insists that many if not most girls and young women, there will be no genital cutting. The Ugandan writer Rosemary Kyarimpa, a leading feminist activist, makes the the upbringing of girls in a patriarchal environment the theme of her first work of fiction, Echoes of Her Voice. She represents young women, not only as victims, but also as survivers who are waking up and refusing to be oppressed. Women in the war-torn western Uganda districts of Bundibugyo and Kabarole face increasing food insecurity and lack access to adequate health care as fighting continues between government troops and rebels.