After Northern Uganda’s internally displaced persons (IDP) camps emptied, a generation returned to lives that still had to be rebuilt through education, livelihoods, cultural restoration, healing and the difficult task of finding a place in a society shaped by war.
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| (A group portrait of key Acholi political leaders who united across political differences in advocating for peace during the LRA conflict. The portrait is displayed at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City.) |
GULU CITY, UGANDA — A portrait of key Acholi political leaders hangs at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City, offering a glimpse into Northern Uganda’s history of conflict and the search for peace.
The leaders depicted in the portrait were among those who set aside political differences and advocated for dialogue during a conflict that displaced millions of people. The hotel and cultural Centre also preserves memories of wider efforts that brought Acholi leaders and members of the diaspora together in the search for an end to the violence.
For Vincent Nyero and Brian Ojok, the history preserved on those walls is also personal.
Both men grew up during the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict, which uprooted communities across Northern Uganda and forced millions of people into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
Today, they work at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre, whose name, “Kacoke Madit,” means “The Big Meeting” in Acholi. The name recalls the spirit of dialogue and collective action that brought people together in the search for peace.
Their stories reveal a reality often hidden behind displacement figures: leaving an IDP camp is not the same as recovering from displacement.
For a generation that grew up in IDP camps, rebuilding meant finding a way back to education, work, livelihoods, culture and a future after war.
WHEN HOME WAS NO LONGER SAFE
For more than two decades, conflict between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army transformed life across the Acholi sub-region. Villages were abandoned. Families were uprooted. Livelihoods were destroyed. Children were abducted.
At the peak of the conflict in 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recorded 1,842,500 internally displaced people living in 242 camps across Northern Uganda.
For many people, displacement was not a temporary journey. It became the setting in which they grew up, went to school, formed families and imagined their futures.
Vincent Nyero was one of those children.
For Vincent Nyero, displacement began when he was nine years old.
He grew up in Atiak, in present-day Amuru District. He remembers the day families were ordered to leave their homes and move into an internally displaced persons camp.
“Things were difficult because there were only two sides,” he recalls. “There were the rebels and there was the government.”
Remaining at home was no longer an option.
“If you stayed in the village, the government could suspect you of helping the rebels. If the rebels found you, they could accuse you of supporting the government.”
Families were given less than a week to leave.
Many abandoned crops in their gardens. Others sold livestock at extremely low prices because they had nowhere to keep them in the IDP camps.
“It was painful,” Vincent says.
The camp offered protection, but little comfort.
“There were no houses. The first night we slept outside.”
Thousands of families arrived carrying cooking pots and whatever belongings they had managed to save. Parents spread mats on the ground and waited for morning.
“We were many,” Vincent remembers. “Nobody really slept.”
CHILDHOOD INSIDE AN IDP CAMP
As days became months and months became years, displacement became a way of life.
“The first thing we lost was our freedom,” Vincent says.
Movement outside the IDP camps was dangerous, and families depended heavily on food assistance from the World Food Programme (WFP). Adults sometimes risked leaving the camps to cultivate small gardens or collect firewood, occasionally with an escort from the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), depending on the security situation. Those who left were required to return before dark.
For children, daily life continued as they tried to maintain some sense of routine amid displacement.
Vincent attended Pupwonya Primary School, which had originally been located in its home community before the conflict forced it to relocate to an internally displaced persons camp. During displacement, Pupwonya was merged with Palukere, Okidi and Karutu primary schools to form what became known as Olya West.
Vincent still remembers his Primary Leaving Examinations with pride.
“We had thirty-six candidates. Twenty-six passed in First Grade, three got Second Grade and the rest passed in Third Grade,” he recalls.
For children growing up amid conflict, those results represented more than academic achievement.
For Vincent, school offered a possibility beyond the conflict and the IDP camp — a future his father had encouraged him to believe in.
Like many children displaced by conflict, he saw education not simply as schooling but as a path towards rebuilding his future.
That possibility eventually carried him beyond the camp and into higher education, before leading him to the work he does today.
THE LOSSES DISPLACEMENT COULD NOT MEASURE
War disrupted more than education and livelihoods.
It also disrupted culture.
Before displacement, Acholi families gathered around the wang oo, the traditional fireplace where elders passed down stories, customs and values.
Traditional dances and communal gatherings helped strengthen relationships and preserve identity.
But when families were forced into IDP camps, these routines were disrupted.
“Our culture was interrupted,” Vincent says quietly.
Families were no longer living in the same way or in the same places. The spaces where children learned from elders, families gathered and communities practised their traditions were changed by displacement.
A destroyed home could be seen. A lost harvest could be measured. But the interruption of traditions and the loss of everyday spaces where knowledge passed from one generation to the next were less visible.
Returning home, therefore, did not mean that everything had returned to normal. Rebuilding also meant restoring the connections, traditions and sense of identity that displacement had interrupted.
THE CHILD WHO GREW UP WITH WAR
While Vincent remembers being forced into displacement as a child, Brian Ojok was born during the conflict and grew up knowing life in an IDP camp as his normal reality.
Standing in his work uniform at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre, Ojok reflects on a childhood shaped by uncertainty.
“Life in the camps wasn't easy,” he says.
Hundreds of people often shared a single toilet. Families lived in crowded settlements, many in grass-thatched structures.
But Ojok’s greatest concern was often not himself.
It was his younger sister.
Born in 1989, she developed a disability associated with polio, Ojok says.
At the time, Ojok says, vaccination was not readily available in the way it is today.
As the family moved between camps, her disability made everyday life even more difficult. She depended heavily on her brothers for movement and other tasks.
“One day I was playing football when rebels started firing,” Ojok recalls. “I ran, got my bicycle, put my sister on it and took her somewhere safe.”
Ojok’s family was staunchly Catholic. Even in the camps, they continued to pray.
During one of his visits to the displaced communities, Archbishop John Baptist Odama, then Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Gulu, learned about the girl through a priest who told him how difficult it was for her to move without the help of her brothers.
The family could not afford a wheelchair at the time.
The one she received through the church became her first.
For the family, the wheelchair did more than make movement easier. It gave his sister a measure of independence in a life already restricted by conflict and displacement.
Whenever shooting erupted, Ojok says, his first instinct was to find his sister.
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| (Brian Ojok at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City. Ojok grew up during Northern Uganda’s conflict and displacement and now works at the hotel) |
EDUCATION AS A WAY FORWARD
Like Vincent, Ojok began his education in a school serving children affected by displacement.
He completed Primary Seven and Senior Four before enrolling in a three-year auto mechanics programme.
He hoped to continue studying.
Financial challenges, however, forced him to seek employment.
In 2019, he joined Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre while it was still under construction.
Today, he oversees maintenance operations and uses his technical skills to maintain the hotel’s vehicles and transport supplies.
The work gives a practical shape to the future he once hoped education would provide.
For Ojok, recovery is measured not only by the absence of war.
It is also measured by opportunity.
A child who once ran from gunfire now has a trade.
A young man who grew up in an IDP camp now earns a living from the skills he acquired.
For him, peace is not complete if people are left without the means to build a future.
THE GIRLS WHO NEVER CAME HOME TOGETHER
For girls growing up during the conflict, displacement brought dangers that extended far beyond the loss of home and education.
Girls and women experienced particular vulnerabilities during the conflict, including abduction, separation from families and the challenges of rebuilding lives after return.
Abduction was one of the most devastating consequences of the conflict. Between 1986 and 2001, estimates of the total number of people abducted ranged from 28,603, according to UNICEF, to 30,839, according to Conflict and Peace Analysis.
Estimates of the number of children abducted also vary, from approximately 10,000 according to UNICEF to about 16,000 according to Conflict and Peace Analysis.
Behind these figures were children separated from their families, taken from their communities and forced into captivity.
Sarah became one of them.
Sarah was 14 when she and her 12-year-old sister were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The two girls had gone with their mother to the garden. They never returned home together.
Sarah says her younger sister was later beaten to death in front of her. She recalls that her sister had been injured by a tree and was in pain. When she complained, the rebels interpreted her distress as defiance.
Sarah remained in captivity for two years.
When she finally escaped, she made her way to a military barracks. From there, soldiers took her to a reception centre for people who had escaped from captivity, where she spent several months receiving counseling and support.
Sarah’s experience reflected the wider role of reception centres in helping formerly abducted people return to their families and communities.
According to Pham, Vinck and Stover’s 2007 report, Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda, the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO) had received more than 7,500 returnees at its reception centre since 1994.
The report notes that systematic collection of returnee information began in 2001, creating one of the most comprehensive datasets on formerly abducted children in Northern Uganda.
At a time when many families had been separated by war, radio became an important lifeline.
Sarah was taken to Mega FM, where she spoke about herself on air. Her family heard the broadcast and were able to trace her.
Eventually, she was reunited with them.
Today, Sarah is married and farms with her husband. Together, they grow food crops and cash crops. All her children are in school.
Her life carries the memory of a sister who never came home, but also the long and difficult work of rebuilding after abduction, captivity and displacement.
For Sarah, returning home was not the end of the journey. It was the beginning of another: rebuilding a family life, creating a livelihood and ensuring that her children have opportunities that the war took from her.
A PLACE BUILT AROUND REMEMBERING
The story of recovery is visible throughout Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre.
The cultural centre preserves memories of both suffering and recovery. Its spaces and exhibits connect visitors to important moments, locations and leaders in Acholi history.
The portraits of cultural leaders who advocated for peace and reconciliation are not simply decorations.
They are reminders that peace was pursued through meetings, dialogue and collective effort.
For people whose lives were defined by displacement, remembering is part of rebuilding.
A community cannot fully recover by pretending the past did not happen.
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| (A document outlining the issues discussed and resolutions reached during the Kacoke Madit 1998 gathering, displayed at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City. The gathering brought together Acholi leaders and members of the diaspora in efforts to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Northern Uganda.) |
WHEN RETURNING HOME WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING
As security improved and the conflict moved towards an end, mass displacement in Northern Uganda began to decline. But returning home did not erase the consequences of the years spent away from home.
By June 2007, nearly 540,000 internally displaced people had returned to their home villages, while approximately 381,000 others had voluntarily left the camps to resettle in new sites or move closer to their areas of origin, according to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Working Group in Uganda.
The figures showed that the end of mass displacement was not a single moment when everyone simply went home. It was a gradual process of return.
The challenges of rebuilding extended beyond the physical act of returning. According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), around 2008, as relative peace returned to Northern Uganda after more than two decades of conflict, the region’s income poverty rate stood at approximately 46.2 percent, compared with a national average of 24.5 percent recorded in the 2009/10 Uganda National Household Survey.
For many families, returning home meant rebuilding livelihoods and futures in communities still carrying the social and economic effects of war.
Recovery was not only about returning people to their homes. It was about restoring dignity, opportunities and the ability to participate fully in society.
For many returnees, homecoming also meant rebuilding relationships with land, property and communities that had changed during years of displacement.
Some families returned to land affected by disputes. Others had lost homes, livelihoods and property. Many survivors continued to live with trauma connected to violence, loss and prolonged displacement.
REBUILDING AFTER THE CAMPS
At Third Hope Organization, the work of rebuilding continues in a different form.
During a visit to one of Third Hope Organization's offices in Koro Abili Centre, a former internally displaced persons camp, I spoke with Kevin about the organisation's work supporting former child soldiers as they rebuild their lives after the conflict.
Although the vocational training is carried out at the organisation's rehabilitation centre, Kevin explained how participants receive skills training, counselling and long-term support to help them reintegrate into their communities.
She explained that Third Hope provides a place where former child soldiers can learn, train, heal and rediscover hope — hope for their own futures and for the restoration of their communities.
According to Kevin, Third Hope offers two to three years of vocational training at its rehabilitation centre, where participants learn practical skills and live within a caring and supportive community before the organisation helps them transition into employment.
But Kevin said recovery from deep trauma does not happen easily.
The organisation’s work therefore focuses on long-term recovery, helping former child soldiers acquire skills, rebuild their livelihoods and find pathways towards healing and reintegration.
Such programmes reflect the reality that recovery from conflict requires more than ending violence; it requires sustained support that helps affected people participate fully in their communities.
REBUILDING MORE THAN HOMES.
At Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre, culture is part of that process.
The dances, gatherings and traditions that survived the war continue to provide spaces for connection.
They offer a reminder that rebuilding is not only about houses, roads and livelihoods.
It is also about restoring the ways people meet, remember, celebrate and pass knowledge from one generation to the next.
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| (Traditional dancers perform at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City, where cultural expression forms part of efforts to preserve Acholi identity and memory.) |
For Vincent, the transformation is personal.
The boy who once went to school amid displacement is now a university graduate and hotel manager.
For Ojok, the child who once carried his sister to safety now uses his technical skills to work and earn a living.
Their journeys are different.
But both demonstrate that education and opportunity can become pathways out of the long shadow of displacement.
THE GENERATION THAT HAD TO REBUILD
Northern Uganda’s experience offers a lesson that extends beyond its borders.
Across the Intergovernmental Authority on Development(IGAD) region, displacement continues to affect millions of people because of conflict, insecurity, climate shocks and other crises.
The causes differ.
The needs often converge: safety, education, protection, livelihoods, dignity and the chance to build a future.
Leaving an IDP camp was only the beginning. Many families still had to rebuild livelihoods, relationships and futures in communities that had also been changed by war.
Rebuilding required more than survival. It required education, skills, livelihoods, cultural restoration and support for people whose lives had been shaped by violence.
At Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre, portraits on the walls preserve the memory of those who pursued peace.
Inside the hotel, Vincent welcomes visitors and goes about his work.
Ojok keeps vehicles and daily operations moving, building a livelihood in the years after displacement.
At Third Hope Organization, former child soldiers are supported through counselling, skills training and long-term programmes that help them rebuild livelihoods, heal from the trauma of war and reintegrate into their communities.
The war ended.
The camps emptied.
For many people, however, recovery is still unfolding.
But for those who lived through the conflict, rebuilding their lives and communities continues.
The lessons from Northern Uganda remain relevant across the IGAD region, where communities affected by conflict and displacement continue to seek not only safety, but also education, livelihoods, dignity and opportunities to rebuild.
For a generation forced from home, recovery is not about forgetting the past. It is about ensuring that the past does not determine the limits of the future.
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| (Pavin Winnie Mpakibi inside the cultural centre at Kacoke Madit Hotel and Cultural Centre in Gulu City during her reporting on The Lasting Impact Of Displacement And The Journey Towards Recovery.) |
Author Profile
Pavin Winnie Mpakibi is a Ugandan radio host at Kwemala Online Radio and an emerging journalist with three years of experience in radio and digital broadcasting. Her work spans music programming, current affairs discussions, trending issues, and interviews with artists and professionals in the creative industry.
She is developing her journalism practice through human-centred storytelling, with a growing focus on displacement, migration, labour mobility, social issues, and the experiences of communities affected by conflict.
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