Northern Uganda is the centre of a brutal, two-decade insurgency by a cult-like rebel group that has seen 2 million people uprooted from their homes and tens of thousands kidnapped, mutilated or killed.

• More than 20,000 children abducted
• Over 700,000 people still in camps
• Violence and disease killed 1,000 a week at height of conflict

Led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is notorious for massacring civilians, slicing off the lips of survivors and kidnapping children for use as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.

The long conflict has threatened to destabilise the volatile central African region as rebels seek shelter in neighbouring countries and violence spills across borders.

Hopes for lasting peace were raised after a landmark truce brokered in August 2006 by neighbouring south Sudan, often a haven for the rebels, brought relative stability to the war-weary north.

But the fact that international arrest warrants hang over top LRA officials is an obstacle, although a deal allowing the creation of special war crimes courts in Uganda has been lauded by many as a practical solution.

Violence also plagues Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region, where an influx of small arms has exacerbated banditry and cattle raiding. Karamoja often suffers from drought and food shortages, with more than half a million people receiving aid in 2007.

People displaced in camps and elsewhere (as of March 2008)	1.2 million (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre)
Average life expectancy (whole of Uganda, 2005)	49.7 years (UNDP Human Development Report , 2007-2008)
Percentage of undernourished population (2002-2004)	19 percent (UNDP, 2006)
Percentage of underweight children under five (1996-2005	23 (UNICEF - State of the World's Children 2007)