GULU
In 2006, northern Uganda was nearing the end of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency. Some 1.8 million people had been displaced and tens of thousands kidnapped, mutilated or killed. Ten years later, the region appears rejuvenated: a bustling trade and business centre with buildings shooting up and a renewed sense of optimism. However, scratch beneath the surface and you find an unequal recovery and plenty of hidden scars.
“The economic boom in northern Uganda is only in the hands of a few, who were not perhaps adversely affected by the war,” said Joyce Freda Apio, a Kampala-based transitional justice expert.