AS THE WORLD struggles to bring peace to Lebanon, away from the headlines another conflict is balanced on a knife-edge between peace and war. Northern Uganda may get less media coverage than the Middle East, but the suffering there is no less acute. Millions have been driven from their homes; thousands have been killed. Since the war began, more than 25,000 children have been kidnapped by the brutal rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and forced to fight.

As I write, peace is a real possibility in northern Uganda. For the last month, the LRA and the Ugandan Government have been in talks aimed at ending the 20-year war that has forced almost two million people to live in camps, vulnerable to disease and unable to feed themselves. The negotiations are seen by many observers as the best chance for peace in ten years, but they are fragile and could easily break down.

In December 2004, I visited northern Uganda with Oxfam, and was able to see for myself what life was like. While I was there, I saw thousands of children walking into town centres to sleep rough on the floors of schools and hospitals. Among them were children as young as 6 carrying toddlers on their backs and clutching their bedding. Towns are the safest places in northern Uganda, as the LRA rarely attacks them. So, parents were sending their children to sleep rough on the streets, knowing that they were safer there than in their own homes.

At that time, up to 40,000 children were making this journey every night. Now, the figure is nearer 10,000. In the past few months, LRA attacks have decreased significantly, meaning that people have been able to start to piece together their lives again.

For the past ten years, more than 90 per cent of the population of northern Uganda has lived in camps. These are overcrowded, unsanitary places where the toll on children has been especially heavy. This year, it was estimated that 41 per cent of all deaths in the camps were among children under 5, that almost 50 per cent of children were stunted because of malnutrition and that across northern Uganda 250,000 children received no education at all.

The camps are surrounded by miles and miles of rolling, fertile countryside; a landscape that gave this region a reputation as “the breadbasket of Uganda” before the war. But for the past decade this land has been a no-go area for the people who live in the camps; the risk of attack from the LRA was simply too high. Amid some of the most fertile land in Uganda, they were forced to rely on rations from the World Food Programme to survive.

Now, as the LRA attacks have decreased, so people have been able to start farming again. At the moment, the first harvest in many years is being brought in. It is not a bumper crop; it is still too dangerous to cultivate many fields. But it is a start. People are telling Oxfam staff that they are able to visit their old homes again, although they won’t start rebuilding until they know peace has really come. The atmosphere in the camps has changed with people busy drying their crops and tending their animals.

People have also told Oxfam staff that their children are now able to attend school much more often. The LRA often targeted schools because they wanted to abduct school-age children. Now parents can send their children to school without worrying that they won’t come back.

And with the number of abductions down, so the numbers in reception centres for children who have escaped from LRA captivity is also very low at the moment. When I was there, I went to one of those centres and met a young man called John, who had recently arrived. I remember watching him sit under a mango tree playing an instrument. Its melancholic sound was mesmerising. It seemed that now only music could obliterate memories of the atrocities he had committed.

If the peace talks succeed, the abduction of children such as John should become a thing of the past. But all these gains could be lost if the talks break down and fighting starts again. The British Government has recently taken a real lead in galvanising international action to reduce suffering in northern Uganda. And I ask them to do everything they can to support these talks.

If these negotiations fail, it will not just be a lost opportunity. It will, most likely, mean that almost two million people in northern Uganda are once again trapped in camps, relying on food aid and fearful every day that their children will be taken from them in the middle of the night.

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