SocialDocumentary.net | Mike Odongkara | Witness Northen Uganda (WNU)

Photographer: Mike Odongkara

Title: Witness Northen Uganda (WNU)

Location: Uganda

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UGANDA: A Child mother carries her little baby in Gulu, Kaunda Ground. The camera captured her emotion as she walked away after breast feeding, Feb. 6, 2006.

Hundreds of such women’s voices are not heard. Rape cases and sexual abuse is rampant: "at least 60 percent of women in the largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-torn northern Uganda have encountered some form of sexual and domestic violence," a new survey has revealed.

The report, titled "Suffering In Silence", is a joint Uganda government and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) study. PHOTO/MIKE ODONGKARA

Northern Uganda is the worst place on earth to be a child today, says a former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict, Dr. Olara Otunnu. According to Oxfam, the rate of violent death in northern Uganda is three times worse than Iraq's.

Since 1996, the Ugandan government herded more than 1.7 million people in northern Uganda into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

The WHO reported in 2005, that in northern Uganda, over 1,000 people die each week of starvation and preventable diseases.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) describes the level of suffering in northern Uganda as "an emergency out of control."

As a Catholic missionary priest who has worked in northern Uganda for two decades describes it, "everything Acholi is dying."

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Photo Publishing:

• Agence France-Presse (AFP)
• European Press-photo- agency (EPA)
• Associated Press (AP)
• Reuters
• “Home Away From Home” (Can. Film)
• Uganda Rising (Can. Film)
• University of Toronto (OISE)
• Daily Monitor
• PMA Magazine –St Christian Graphics Ltd.
• New Vision
• Leadership Christian Magazine.
• Uganda Scope Magazine
• Oyeng Yeng

This project–"Witness Northern Uganda," I thought would be useful resources for people to understand Northern Uganda conflict through the mindset of an individual.

I wished to highlight this because women and children are key target: suffering and dying a silent death in an oppressive situation in Internally Displaced person camps (IDPs) as documented.

The strength of the photographs is based on lifestyle how I related to the objects before composing those frames. I believe in the power of image as a great tool for communication.

WNU is my first interactive web project, and my goal is to document and bear witness to the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda. This is worth million-dollar stories of an eyewitness account in the region for the past 22 years, "through the lens." Followed by “human life”– a traveling exhibition created on Ning

The suffering and killing, done by some individuals body to destabilize and control the region like the LRA-rebel group of Joseph Kony, Yoweri Museveni government using state political machinery to intimidate taxpayers creating fear over the nation.

War that has deprived over 1.7 million people of their normal life for 23 years The longest African War, “the worst humanitarian catastrophe” of my life from 1986 to 2006.

Writers, researchers, and journalist sometimes report from second hand information, but I bring you in camera.

It’s really a very difficult experienced I managed. A child growing up in a war torn area to compete with normal environment is challenges. Thanks for reading me.

To license this work for editorial, creative, or other uses, click on the OZMO logo above.

This will take you to the Ozmo website where you can review the cost and license for the photographs in this exhibit.

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