Invisible Children- Source #4

This article discusses a small Ugandan town called Lira, which has been serving as a place of refuge for those displaced by Joseph Kony's LRA. This article shows that although there may be camps that serve as a place to home displaced victims of the war, there is truly no escape. The article says of Lira, "There is fear and anger, thousands more people are without the services so desperately needed. Hospitals and clinics are without medicine. There is a lack of food and water, medical care. But thousands are flocking in for safety; tens of thousands want to remain near just to be safe." This particular passage underscores the point that the hell Joseph Kony has created is unescapable, especially for the children "night commuters" who hide during the daytime and flock to such camps to find shelter at night. The desperation in Uganda, especially from the children, is staggering. The more I read about this issue and how severe it has become, the more I support the efforts of organizations such as Invisible Children. While their efforts go primarily to helping children of Uganda and other war-torn regions of Africa that struggle with the problem of child soldiers, in helping the children they will be hugely instrumental in the ending the conflict altogether, seeing as how children make up the vast majority of Kony's army (as of 2009, approximately 20,000 children had been abducted by the LRA). In effect, the dismantling of Kony's followers can allow for the more peripheral, yet still grave, issues such extreme poverty, famine, and disease to be addressed and ultimately rectified.