IHRP: HRIF 7 - Riddell, Watchful

Human Rights in Focus

Watchful
Photographers: Timothy Riddell / Kaly Galanis

Location: Pagak Camp for IDPs, Gulu District, Uganda

With staff from War Child Holland, we helped out on an activities day, organizing games for children who lived in a nearby IDP camp - a huddled cluster of mud and thatched bandas, which is always vulnerable to the outbreak of entirely preventable diseases and to attack from the Lord's Resistance Army. These children have grown up here amidst terrible trauma - a 20 year conflict which has dispersed millions and brought human cost visible everywhere and heard in countless stories impossible to believe. Still, that day, most of the children, many of whom may have been forced to serve as soldiers or child brides to soldiers, laughed and just had fun. Some of the children stood apart and just watched the others play. It was an eyeopening and difficult experience, but I'm glad to have had the opportunity to contribute to War Child Canada's continuing Northern Uganda Child Legal Defence Project, which offers much-needed legal services to these amazing - and amazingly resilient - children.