Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War

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Evelyn Amony, 2006

Photo: Erin Baines

Due to public health risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, all national museums of Canada - including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) - have made the decision to close their doors to visitors and all other groups, effective tomorrow (Saturday, March 14) until further notice.

Conversation with Ugandan women who survived captivity.

Two Ugandan women abducted as girls and held captive for years by a notorious military rebel group will be at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) next week to open a new exhibit called Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War.

Evelyn Amony was abducted at age 11 and forced to marry infamous Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony when she was just 14. Grace Acan was abducted with 138 other girls from St. Mary's College Aboke, a Catholic boarding school, at age 16. They will speak at a public event in the "Rights Today" gallery on October 23, joined by curator Isabelle Masson and representatives of the Toronto-based Conjugal Slavery in War project. 

The new CMHR exhibit explores the trauma of captivity, conjugal slavery and forced labour from the perspective of these two women. It includes artifacts such as a bullet-riddled skirt once worn by Amony, hand-made drawings of life in the rebel camps, and animated films with clips from CMHR oral history interviews conducted with the two women. 

Their experiences reveal a dimension of war that is too often ignored. While sexual violence is commonly seen as an unfortunate consequence of armed conflict, it is often a deliberate strategy. This issue has increasingly gained international attention. Last year's recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize (Denis Mukwege, a doctor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman from Iraq) were honoured for their efforts against the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Ododo wa means "our stories" in the Luo languages of northern Uganda. By connecting use of storytelling in healing with the unique voices of Acan and Amony, the exhibit amplifies the hopes, courage and strength of women survivors as they work for awareness and justice.