Following the Ugandan Civil War, militant Joseph Kony formed the Lord's Resistance Army and launched an insurgency against the newly installed President Yoweri Museveni.

The LRA has been accused by the International Criminal Court of widespread human rights violations, including mutilation, torture, slavery, rape, the abduction of civilians, the use of child soldiers, and a number of massacres.

Former Uganda People's Democratic Army commander Odong Latek convinced Kony to adopt conventional guerrilla warfare tactics, primarily surprise attacks on civilian targets, such as villages.

[30] March 1991 saw the start of "Operation North", which combined efforts to destroy the LRA while cutting away its roots of support among the population through heavy-handed tactics.

Two weeks after Museveni delivered his ultimatum of 6 February 1994, it was reported that LRA fighters had crossed the northern border and established bases in southern Sudan with the approval of the Khartoum government.

[30] Sudanese aid was a response to Ugandan support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) fighting in the civil war in the south of the country.

The government's response was a scorched-earth policy ordering all Acholis to leave their homes in 48 hours and move to "protected villages" beginning in 1996, later called Internally Displaced People's Camps.

[34] In March 2002, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) launched a massive military offensive, named "Operation Iron Fist", against the LRA bases in southern Sudan, with agreement from the National Islamic Front.

[35] After several months of uncertainty, LRA forces began crossing back into Uganda and carrying out attacks on a scale of brutality not seen since 1995 to 1996, resulting in widespread displacement and suffering in regions, such as Soroti, that had never previously been touched by the insurgency.

International aid agencies questioned the Ugandan government's reliance on military force and its commitment to a peaceful resolution.

[38] In mid-September 2005, a band of LRA fighters, led by Vincent Otti, crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the first time.

However, the populace remained cautious about the prospect of a peace deal, with many refusing to return to their ancestral homes before a definitive end to the insurgency.

The talks were again mediated by the Government of Southern Sudan, but with the support of the United Nations and logistic facilitation from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

[52] In November 2007, an LRA delegation led by Martin Ojul journeyed to Kampala to restate its commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

In May 2010, US President Barack Obama signed the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act into law.

In October 2011, Obama announced the deployment of 100 US troops to aid other anti-LRA forces in subduing LRA leader Joseph Kony, citing the aforementioned act in a letter to the heads of both houses of Congress.

[4] On 23 March 2012, the African Union announced its intentions to send an international brigade of 5,000 military troops "from Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Congo, countries where Kony's reign of terror has been felt over the years ... to join the hunt for rebel leader Joseph Kony and to "neutralize" him.

Because he was a leading military strategist for the LRA, Achellam's arrest signified a considerable setback for Joseph Kony's fight to evade capture.

[70] On 4 December 2013, 13 LRA militants including senior commander Samuel Kangu were killed in the aftermath of a UPDF ambush in CAR.

[79] On 21 January 2015, LRA militants killed three FARDC soldiers in the aftermath of an ambush conducted at the town of Nangume in the vicinity of Wando, DRC.

[80] On 5 February 2015, a band of twenty suspected LRA guerrillas abducted eight people and engaged in looting in the villages of Dizaga and Digba, DRC.

[84] On an unspecified date in April 2017, a United States special forces soldier shot and killed an LRA fighter who drew a weapon on the American.

[86] On 19 April 2017, Uganda announced that it would begin withdrawing forces from the Central African Republic where it has been trying to hunt down Joseph Kony in the country for 9 years.

On 7 April 2024 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group conducted an operation in the Haute-Kotto prefecture near the town of Sam Ouandja to apprehend the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony.

The LRA also operated across the porous border region with Southern Sudan and most recently into the north-eastern Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Nearly two million civilians have been forced to flee their homes, living in internally displaced person (IDP) camps and within the safety of larger settlements, sleeping on street corners and in other public spaces.

[93] By triangulating data from different sources on the number of former abductees, the research conservatively estimates that the LRA has abducted 24,000 to 38,000 children and 28,000 to 37,000 adults as of April 2006.

[90][94] While the LRA now appears to consist of less than two thousand combatants that are under intense pressure from the Ugandan military, the government has been unable to end the insurgency to date.

The conflict continues to slow down Uganda's development efforts, costing the poor country's economy a cumulative total of at least $1.33 billion, which is equivalent to 3% of GDP, or $100 million annually.

Because of this phenomenon, religious leaders from different denominations staged a one-week solidarity demonstration by sleeping in the streets with the children, which generated further attention of the conflict from the world.