PODCAST: Life After The Lord's Resistance Army In Uganda

Life of the Law podcast follows the life of two children born in northern Uganda who were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel movement (LRA). The three-part series traces their last 30 years, how they survived, who they became and what their life is like now.

The LRA and its leader Joseph Kony fought with the Ugandan government for over 20 years in a conflict that took many lives and left millions displaced.

The United Nations estimates more than 100,000 people were killed while 60,000-100,000 children were abducted. More than 2.5 million displaced civilians were forced to live in the most deplorable conditions in camps across north and north-east Uganda. The LRA war also impacted on thousands of others in three other African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Kony remains at large in the Central African Republic after having been kicked out of Uganda and South Sudan about ten years ago. Although northern Uganda has been peaceful since then, the questions of justice and redress remain largely unaddressed.

This podcast, which I worked on during its earlier stages, comes at a time when Dominic Ongwen, one of the LRA rebel commanders, himself abducted as a child solider, faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC). Ongwen became the youngest person ever to be indicted by the ICC in 2005. Outside the prominent international trial not much has happened in terms of local justice efforts in Uganda.

This podcast takes us through the challenges that individuals and communities face including women who were victims of conjugal slavery, their children, how they struggle to fit into the community after their escape, as well as community struggles to rebuild after more than 20 years of devastating conflict.