The Gallery
All text and photographs copyright of Our Forgotten Children
Uganda
The Lord's Resistance Army
The Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, has abducted thousands of children from their homes in northern Uganda.
After their abduction, the girls have been raped and the boys forcibly trained to fight in Kony's army. Seeking to overthrow the government of Uganda, Kony says he wants to establish a state based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
The children of Uganda have other pressing problems. HIV, for example, which has wiped out 35% of this generation's parents, and the increasing incidence of children from a woman's first marriage being abandoned when she weds a second time.
The odds against a Ugandan child's survival, let alone its happiness, seem overwhelming. Until you come across a tableau like this one (pictured above), in a broken archway near Kampala: two little girls, staring back at you, unaffected - just daring you to ignore them.
Mbale
Located near the Ugandan border with Kenya, Mbale is a small town in the process of reinventing itself. Once a haven for arms traders and smugglers, it is now a vibrant food-basket and market centre.
It also boasts one of the best education records in all of East Africa. After two years of bumper harvests and record prices, people began to see the benefits of legitimate business. With employment on the rise, Mbale's population almost doubled and the building of new schools became a priority.
But Mbale remains, first and foremost, a trading centre. On a busy Saturday morning in the marketplace, Jomo and his brothers are hard at work cutting onions. Being the oldest, Jomo might have expected to inherit the vegetable stall from his father. But a high school diploma promises to open up a whole new world.