All posts by Isaac Okwir Odiya

Barlonyo vigil

Standing together for the commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the Barlonyo massacre

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Barlonyo vigil
Mourners light candles in memory of Barlonyo victims during a candlelight vigil, 2012.

On behalf of the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), it is my honour to celebrate with you the lives of those who perished during the tragic Barlonyo massacre of 21st February 2004. I am honoured by the legacy set by the victims’ community to commemorate the lives of their loved ones on an annual basis.

Remembrance has proven to be a strong tool for social reconstruction especially in dealing with trauma, conflict and tension, and also in addressing stigma within the community. It provides an opportunity to understand shared conflict experiences and for victim communities to chart a way forward to deal with their transition challenges for harmonious coexistence.

Promoting justice and reconcililiation

Community memorialization is also a community relevant transitional justice approach to justice and reconciliation, an approach that needs to be supported by local government and international organizations to promote justice and reconciliation especially in the absence of official transitional justice framework. I want to applaud Lira district local government for taking up the challenge of leading the arrangement of this year’s Barlonyo memorial prayer as well as thank all partners that supported the process.

Over the last 11 years, JRP has played a key role in understanding and explaining the needs, concerns and interests of war-affected people in northern Uganda through research and documentation. Adopting a victim centered approach, we have built the capacity of many victim communities to play a lead role in advocating for justice, accountability and reconciliation as well as dealing with their conflict challenges on their own.

We have also supported community justice, accountability and reconciliation initiatives which have moved victims to another level in as far as social recovery is concerned. We are happy to see the community of Barlonyo, with whom we have worked with for a long time, keeping up the momentum to socially reconstruct their society by collaborating with other partners, especially local government.

Holistic approaches

In a survey we conducted in 2015 on opportunities for regional reconciliation, we found a number of justice, accountability and reconciliation needs within communities and between the different ethnic communities in northern Uganda. This is a huge transition challenge that calls for holistic approaches to provide substantive responses to the transition challenges.

I therefore urge the government of Uganda to pass the transitional justice policy of Uganda and expeditiously implement programs to answer the justice, accountability and reconciliation needs in war affected communities. This will go a long way realize sustainable peace and reconciliation in northern Uganda and achieve national unity.

In conclusion, I want to thank the community of Barlonyo and Lira district local government for initiating the commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the Barlonyo massacre. I urge every stakeholder for a positive remembrance through an approach that deals with conflict trauma, stigma as well as the reconciliation needs of the affected community.

JRP remains committed to support justice, accountability and reconciliation efforts of conflict affected people and we shall always be there for victims and with victims.

May the souls of those who perished rest in peace and their spirits leave to promote community and regional reconciliation.

Okwir Isaac Odiya is the Head of Office with the Justice and reconciliation Project

 

ABCD Young workshop in Milan

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Participants in the ABCD Young workshop pose in Milan, Italy, November 2015. Photo courtesy of Soleterre.

 

During the month of November 14th to 24th 2015, I represented JRP in ABCD young, an international advocacy and digital activism for human rights workshop organized by SOLETERRE held in Milan, Italy at Lombardia hotel. The ten day workshop was attended by 24 participants from Uganda, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Honduras, Spain and Italy. It aimed at building the capacity of young people to develop a platform for human rights advocacy. In June 2015, JRP began working with SOLETRRE to jointly implement the project ABCD young; Young people across borders, culture and diversities with over all objectives of improving quality of youth work and to increase synergy and complementarities.

Being the 2nd workshop for the same participants, I was the only new participant and the first facilitator was such very concerned to make me fit in the group. Applying theatre skills to make a new participant join and feel at ease, the other participants were made to seat themselves in a circle and I was asked to find my way in the circle and join them. Belonging to a practical community theatre background, it took me few seconds to get in the circle as I tickled them and they had to break apart. I did that after consulting with the facilitator on whether it was culturally appropriate to tickle since we all came from various cultural backgrounds. I was then formally introduced to the old participants of the ABCD young program.

Over the workshop, four themes were discussed and these include the following.

Theatre of the oppressed: This requires investing in people’s emotion to understand their needs and to create change. Theatre approach is a tool that can be applied when dealing with a group(s) of people that requires appropriate tool to enable then participate. We learned that the oppressed group of people find it hard to get involved and participate in a given course. Therefore theatre is a tool that can make them open up. Theatre is instrumental in building trust, listening skill, responding to distress, building team, creating harmony, perseverance and agreement.

Advocacy: The facilitator guided us to agree that advocacy aims at improving the condition of the marginalized. It requires effective research and analysis, campaigning, networking and alliance and lobbying to achieve an advocacy goal. It is important to understand the stakeholders and to influence institutional program. Those with power and interest needs to be understood and engaged appropriately during advocacy process and the objectives and goal for the advocacy must be clear. To build a campaign, you need to work with others and step such as elaboration of common goal, creation of a process in a team working dimension, defining long term strategy and developing a specific role for every expertise are crucial. An institution like an NGO needs to be credible, transparent, open minded, have specific expertise, creative, have strong value, be willing to share responsibility and have networking capabilities.

The usage of photographs during advocacy: We also learnt that using photographs in advocacy keep the historical context of the event and while using photograph, the story text must be in line with the image. Photograph has the characteristic of universal language and it has immediate impact. Images are powerful in attracting people’s attention, contextualizing the setting and in summarizing the news. To make a project using photograph, you should chose/take photograph that portray human rights gaps, create a theme over the photograph and share to the public to trigger reaction for action to change the state of affair.

Digitalizing advocacy: to digitalize advocacy: The usage of social media such as face book and twitter, televisions, electronic billboards/posters and newsletter are some of the tool that can be employed to reach your target audience to buy their support to an advocacy. When using social media, the goal and objectives of the campaign should be well thought of and the medium chosen should encourage exchange of ideas between the initiator and the target pressure group: opening a face book page can allow elaborate campaign. While posting advocacy issue, sharp remarks/questions that provoke positive reaction to the campaign should be made. For the case of campaign on poor health service in health centers in a given community, question such as, “this is our routine; do you want the same for your child?” could make visitors to that site feel empathy and join the campaign with comment for change.  Use of social media should help you to make comparison with other situation by posting photograph that depicts context of human rights gaps.

As part of the workshop, we also visited a social center for supporting young minds growth and the municipality of Milan. The social center for young minds supports young people of all races in both academic and social development. In our visit to the Municipality of Milan, we interacted with the management of ‘House of Rights’ that is coordinating human rights activism in Milan. In my analysis, gender gap mainstreaming is not as much of a priority issue there as is the case of Uganda.

The workshop was participatory in nature with a lot of group work giving opportunity to share personal experiences and relating the theme to the local context of human rights abuse in our respective countries. While in the workshop, I was imagining the reparation gap for victims of conflict with medical challenges being posted in social media with their voice clips.

The workshop was closed with evaluation themed to content of the workshop, facilities, facilitators’ ability and welfare. With the knowledge gained from the workshop, participants are expected to launch a human rights campaign either as a group or on their own to denounce human rights abuse of a given nature in their respective locality. I would as well integrate knowledge and skills learnt in the workshop in our ongoing program and when developing new activity proposal.

Okwir Isaac Odiya is the team leader for Community Mobilisation at JRP.

 

 

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Communities in Lango and Acholi work to memorialise their experiences

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A capacity building workshop is held in Parabongo earlier this year.
A capacity building workshop is held in Parabongo earlier this year.

With funding support from USAID-SAFE Program, the Community Mobilization department at JRP conducted a series of trainings on themes of memory and reconciliation with 39 members of Community Reconciliation (CORE) teams in seven communities across Lango and Acholi sub-regions. Held in May, 2015, these trainings covered a range of topics including conflict mitigation, peace building, forgiveness and reconciliation, gender mainstreaming in peace building and reconciliation programs, trauma healing and counseling skills, and memory and memorialization. This helped the members of the CORE teams to understand the importance of memorialization and to envision an ideal memory and reconciliation project for their communities.

During the training, the participants examined the following questions in order to come up with an ideal memory project for each of the seven communities:

  • What are the conflict events that occurred in your areas?
  • What conflict event do you want to remember?
  • How would you like to remember it?
  • What memory projects would promote healing, advocacy and reconciliation for your communities?
  • What ideal memory project can you implement in your community?

These guiding questions helped the CORE team members to come up with ideas for memory projects in consultation with their respective victims’ communities, which could be implemented within five months in their communities. The seven communities came up with the following innovative ideas for community memory projects which are now nearing successful completion.

Lukodi: The community of Lukodi chose to write a book which documents life before the war, and also emphasizes how culture has been eroded by war and makes suggestions on how it can be rejuvenated. They also chose to legally register the acquired piece of land which serves as the memorial site for the Lukodi massacre of 2004. This would enable the community to transfer a monument for the massacre which is in another area to this land and to develop the site.

Parabongo: The community of Parabongo, with guidance of the CORE team, chose to construct a new memorial stone to replace an older barely visible monument. They envisage having a more visible monument in memory of the people killed by LRA in Parabongo in 2006.

Atiak: Together with the CORE team, the victims’ community in Atiak chose to develop a list of conflict memorabilia to be preserved to document their memory of the war. They also decided to develop a profile of those who were killed in the 1995 massacre, and after verifying the list of names, they will engrave and place it onto a memorial monument. The community also pledged to facilitate a process of community-led documentation through the use of arts to preserve memories of events that became a turning point in the lives of the people of Atiak at the peak of the war.

Burcoro: The community of Burcoro chose to construct a monument in memory of the people killed during the military operation led by NRA in Burcoro in 1991. They wished to preserve memories of state-led atrocities that were never acknowledged.

Odek: The people of Odek also felt they were never publicly acknowledged to have suffered during the LRA war. To them, putting up a memorial monument would communicate what they went through in order for them to also be considered for post-conflict reconstruction services. They, therefore, chose to construct a memory stone in memory of the mass killing by LRA in Odek.

Barlonyo: The community of Barlonyo decided to beautify their memorial site in order to celebrate the lives of their loved ones who perished in the 2002 massacre. They chose to fence and beautify the memorial site with a variety of beautiful flowers blooming in gardens adjacent to well-paved walkways.

Abia: In Abia, the community chose to erect a monument in the form of a statue of a helpless woman which depicts their plight in the aftermath of the massacre of 2004. They also decided to make a painting on the wall of memorial school in memory of their war experiences.

JRP pledged to support the seven communities in the implementation of their respective community memory projects, which have been shaping well over the last five months. As the projects near completion, JRP is proud to reaffirm its support to showcase community-relevant approaches to justice, healing and reconciliation.