This book considers the ways in which human rights agencies exacerbated the oppression of Acholi people forced out of their homes and into refugee camps throughout the war. The author uses many interviews with Ugandans to establish how human rights “protections” set up for the Acholi fed into Museveni’s long persecution of northern Ugandans and functioned like de facto internment camps. The book is not meant to legitimize Joseph Kony’s crimes. Rather, it suggests the complexities of human rights work and uses the case of Uganda to underscore how international attempts to help have sometimes exacerbated conflict and harmed innocent people. This is an important read because it challenges the notion that simplistic military solutions motivated by human rights concerns represent a kind of comprehensive peace process.
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