Students Walk for Ugandans

Harvard students marched in Boston on Saturday to raise awareness of what former UN Under-Secretary General of Humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland called “the world’s most neglected humanitarian crisis.”

The three-mile GuluWalk aimed to draw attention to the victimized children of Northern Uganda’s Acholiland and the estimated 20-kilometer trek that many abandoned children walked daily to avoid abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Robert J. Ross ’09, a member of the Harvard College Coalition for Ugandan Peace, organized a group from Harvard to participate in the walk.

“Harvard students have an immense capacity to do good in the future,” he said. “Even just gaining awareness of these underrepresented issues is important.”

This year’s Boston GuluWalk raised $6,692 by the day of the walk, according to Allyson Black-Foley, an organizer of the walk and a staff assistant at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Founded in 2005, the GuluWalk is now held in 100 cities worldwide, according to the organization’s Web site.

The funds raised by the walk enable international organizations like the Lui Institute for Global Issues to provide humanitarian support for the nearly 1.7 million people displaced by the conflict and for the re-integration of former child soldiers.

After Uganda’s independence, continued conflicts amongst rebel groups have thrown the nation into turmoil. Civilians of the north, particularly in the Gulu province, have fled to squalid Internally Displaced Person camps that are poorly supplied and defended by the central government, according to the Web site.

“The war may appear to have ceased, but it will cost us more to restore the hope and happiness that used to take place in this nation” said Julian J. Atim, a Ugandan physician and human rights activist.

Speaking to the crowd assembled in Boston Common after the walk, Atim said that students could help the cause simply by making phone calls and forwarding e-mails, even without attending events like the GuluWalk.