Thousands of Ugandan children took to the streets last month, but peace between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) -- blamed for kidnapping 20,000 children since the late 1980s -- and the government remains elusive, Gina L. Bramucci of the Italian Associazione Volontari per il Servizio Internazionale (Italian Association of Volunteers in International Service) writes from Uganda.

It has been 14 months now. Fourteen months of daily rebel attack, villages burned, buses ambushed, children abducted.

The numbers continue to climb -- 800,000 displaced, 20,000 "night commuters," 8,500 abducted -- and we declare one more humanitarian crisis for the global tally.

But the world tired of the story of northern Uganda long ago.

The past months may have been more violent than usual, but armed rebel conflict has been going on for nearly 18 years here.

Peace is an alien word, and it is easy to abandon hope from continents and oceans away.

Still, on a mid-July day in Kitgum town, one of northern Uganda's main urban centers, civilians offered the world one small reason to take note.

Approximately 20,000 young people marched through the town on July 14, carrying messages directed at Uganda's political and religious leaders and protesting a rebel insurgency that has put countless children on intimate terms with violence, hunger and death.

They held signs that asked for a lasting peace and an end to fear: "We don't want to become killers." "We do not want to die." "We children cry day and night for peace."

Most children in northern Uganda have little knowledge of peace.

They have spent their childhoods displaced from their homes and schools, sleeping in bus parks, on shop verandas or on the grounds of hospitals and Catholic missions.

Parents, hoping to protect children from rebel abduction, send them each evening to population centers or any place of perceived safety.

The LRA has abducted more than 20,000 children since the late 1980s.

Captives are forced to serve as porters, soldiers and, in the case of girls, sex slaves.

Within the LRA ranks, around 90 percent of "soldiers" are estimated to be abducted children.

They are often forced to murder family members and neighbours, and then placed on the frontlines against the government army.

Human Rights Watch reports that the LRA has abducted 8,500 children since June 2002 alone.

Violence in Uganda's Acholiland, a region named for the tribe that dominates three northern districts, escalated when the government army launched an aggressive offensive against the LRA in March 2002.

While the military continues to promise a near victory, rebel activity has increased steadily, spilling over into districts to the southeast that were previously untouched by the war.

The history of the conflict is long and complex.

A series of rebel movements took hold in the late 1980s, after President Yoweri Museveni fought a guerrilla war to overthrow the short-lived presidency of Tito Okello, an Acholi.

Defeated and disenfranchised, armed Acholi soldiers retreated back to the north.

Acholiland became the breeding ground for several resistance movements, the most prominent of which was the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena.

Claiming to take orders from a holy spirit, Lakwena won the loyalty of former soldiers as well as highly educated Acholi.

The movement's cause was defined as a war against evil, which followers identified in the government army.

The Holy Spirit forces marched toward Uganda's capital city, coming within 80 kilometres and incurring heavy losses before finally facing defeat.

During this period, a breakaway faction headed by Lakwena's young cousin, Joseph Kony, was building momentum.

His LRA rebels continue to fight today.

For years the Ugandan government and international observers alike have trivialised the LRA's long-running insurgency.

Viewed as an incomprehensible and crazed band of rebels that poses no real threat to the government, the LRA becomes easy to dismiss.

Despite this, as recently as 2000 the LRA's political arm submitted a paper at a peace conference organized by Acholi leaders in Nairobi.

The rebel movement's statement explained its original and primary objective as the defense and protection of civilians against the aggression of the Ugandan government army.

"Members of the LRA are ordinary peaceful law-abiding peasants," it read. "LRA (is) fighting to defend their lives, human rights and dignity, protect their people and land and assist others to liberate themselves."

Most long-time observers in the region are at a loss when asked to react to such statements, which run contrary to LRA actions.

Far from sowing peace, the LRA moves through the countryside looting and burning villages, killing and maiming civilians, planting landmines and abducting children.

Nonetheless, President Museveni, who billed "Operation Iron Fist" as a war on terrorism, has proclaimed his troops largely successful.

He has requested increases in military spending and promised that if the army had new helicopters it would be able to finish the job.

But civil and religious leaders in Acholiland consider the LRA essentially "victorious."

The few aid agencies and Catholic missionaries who have maintained a presence in the region highlight the lack of protection for civilians and the inability to meet humanitarian needs due to insecurity

Hospital admissions are at double capacity, the majority of schools have been closed or burned, and severe food shortages are looming.

On the political front, relations between Uganda and Sudan grew tense with renewed accusations that Sudan is supporting the LRA.

Youth who escape captivity report large supplies of arms coming from elements within Sudan.

At the same time questions continue to circulate about whether Museveni is aiding Sudanese rebels.

International mediators made significant progress in pushing for Sudanese peace talks in early 2003, but the inextricable link to northern Uganda is often considered a minor issue.

In the past, Acholi religious leaders actively met with LRA commanders in an effort to build trust and convince rebels to leave the bush.

Such attempts at dialogue have been rendered impossible by the violence of the past 13 months.

Members of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, while adamant that a lasting peace will depend entirely on a commitment to confidence building and reconciliation, now admit their desperation.

"We are dying at the roots," says former Protestant bishop Macleord Ochola. "Unless the world sees, we have no future."

Pointing to U.N. intervention in other African conflicts, Acholi leaders now call for outside assistance, international pressure for protection of civilians and consideration of the crisis at the United Nations.

Aid agencies have been vocal as well, calling attention to the Ugandan army's duty to protect civilians.

Until some semblance of security is established in Acholiland, agencies seeking to deliver aid remain largely unable to access remote areas.

This, combined with a second consecutive planting season lost due to insecurity, caused the U.N. World Food Programme to declare 1.6 million people in need of "life-saving" food aid.

The European Union and the U.S. government have taken some notice of the upsurge of conflict and the desperate humanitarian situation.

In early July, members of the European Parliament offered a resolution demanding greater protection of civilians and a return to dialogue, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has launched a peace initiative that could give ballast to other peace efforts in the region.

Kitgum's July peace demonstration succeeded in capturing fleeting attention at a national level, but the lasting peace requested remains elusive.

When night fell the children returned to sleep in hospitals and bus parks, competing for places sheltered from the threat of rain.

They pulled thin blankets around their shoulders, and they wondered if the guns would rock them to sleep.