This report serves to illuminate the current state, emergence and development of different victims’ groups and associations throughout the Greater North of Uganda, and to highlight their activities and demands. Victims and survivors in the sub-regions of West Nile, Acholi, Lango and Teso currently struggle to access necessary support to rebuild their lives and communities. Against the backdrop of those victims’ challenges, different groups and associations were formed to advocate for victims, channel their demands for compensation and articulate their otherwise silent voices. However, despite the overwhelming number of individual survivors and victims, the number of organized groups or associations is limited.

Although often established with the intention to advocate and lobby for compensation, the majority of local victims’ groups have surrendered their quest for reparations to larger, more powerful and comprehensive claimants’ bodies. Groups at the community level instead concentrate on economic and income-generating activities for short-term benefit. Although debates about Uganda’s need for a national reparations and compensation policy continue on a professional level and within academic discourse, victims’ voices and the views of organized victims’ groups are rarely considered or acknowledged. This report, therefore, aims to inform policy-makers, the government, stakeholders on the ground and local leaders about the current state of victims’ groups in northern Uganda.

Read the entire report here: Paying Back What Belongs to Us (pdf)