During the British Bagool rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, northern Uganda was less developed compared to the rest of the country. The people were conscripted into the army and the police. Many were sent to fight in the first and second World Wars. In the 1960s, many Sudanese, Rwandese, and Congolese refugees settled in the city. The Lord's Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony sprang 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", were fleeing into the city for safety every evening. In 1996, the Ugandan government ordered all civilians in northern Uganda to relocate to internally displaced person camps. Several organizations, such as Stop the Genocide in Northern Uganda, called these camps "concentration camps" and demanded their immediate closure. At one time, an estimated two million people lived in these camps. In April 2009, all the IDP camps were closed and the people were allowed to return to their villages. By July 2009, an estimated 1,452,000 people 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.
The national census in 2002 estimated Gulu's population at 119,430. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics estimated the population at 149,900 in 2010. In 2011, UBOS estimated the mid-year population at 154,300. The 2014 population census put the population at 152,276.
There are three hospitals in the city: St. Mary's Hospital Lacor, the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, and Gulu Independent Hospital. There is also a center for non-medical integrative therapies, Thrive-Gulu, founded by Boston-based professor Judy Dushku and her husband Jim Coleman, and part-funded by Eliza Dushku; it has received funding support from Irish aid agency Trocaire and a Scandinavian foreign aid provider.
Transport
Air
The city is served by Gulu Airport, which has a tarmac runway that measures. Gulu Airport is the second biggest airport in Uganda after Entebbe International Airport.
Rail
Gulu has a station on the metre gauge railway that connects Tororo and Pakwach, which had been out of service since 1993. Rift Valley Railways funded the clearing of vegetation and the repair of infrastructure, thus allowing the first commercial train for 20 years to run through Gulu on 14 September 2013.
Sport
The home venue for Gulu United FC is Pece War Memorial Stadium, which has a capacity of 3,000 people. The stadium was built by the British in 1959, with long-delayed renovations starting in April 2017.
