Gulu: History
During the British rule in the 19th and 20th centuries, Northern Uganda was less developed than the rest of the country. The people were conscripted into the army and the police, with many sent to fight in the First and Second World Wars.
In the 1960s, many Sudanese, Rwandan and Congolese refugees settled in the city.
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), under the leadership of Joseph Kony, sprung up in the 1990s after Auma/Lakwena went to Kenya. The LRA became increasingly violent in Gulu and surrounding communities. Up to 15,000 children, known as "night commuters", would flee into the city for safety every evening. In 1996, the Ugandan government ordered all civilians in northern Uganda to relocate to internally displaced person (IDP) camps. Several organizations, such as Stop the Genocide in Northern Uganda, called the camps "concentration camps" and demanded their immediate closure. At one time, an estimated two million people lived in the camps.
In April 2009, all IDP camps were closed, and the people were allowed to return to their villages. By July 2009, an estimated 1,452,000 people (80.7 percent of those living in the camps) had voluntarily left the camps to return home. Since the spring of 2007, there has been relative peace in the region as the LRA became a much less significant threat.