Category Archives: In the News

Land conflict no more! Community theater wows one community

In the News, Media, Newsroom,

http://grassrootsgroup.org/2012/12/land-conflict-no-more-community-theater-wows-one-community/

By Christopher Maclay

In May 2012, we began an exciting partnership with the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) to pilot an innovative community theater approach which facilitates processes of problem examination and solving, develops empathy among participants, and encourages reconciliation. Two groups – Anga Konya (meaning ‘Who will help me?’) and Atoo Pi Iya (meaning ‘I will die for my stomach’) – were chosen for the pilot, as they had requested support in community theater activities.

 

Group members act out the violence of the LRA conflict, which they saw as the root cause of ongoing land wrangles

This November, the first phase of this pilot came to close, with Anga Konya and Atoo Pi Iya hosting a fantastic day-long event for their community. The groups had spent several months examining their problems through theater and developing their own solutions to these problems. The final community performances gave the groups the opportunity to present their findings and recommendations to their wider community.

 

Community members listen closely to the messages being shared

Both groups decided that their final performances should be on land conflict, and it was chosen that the title of the event should be: ‘My Land, My Heritage: land conflict and the need for reconciliation.’ Groups decided to host the event together, at a central location which the most people could reach. As part of the event, the group invited local politicians, as well as local traditional leaders. The chief guest was Otto Matthew, the Land Minister of the Ker Kwaro Acholi (the traditional cultural institution of northern Uganda).

 

The Local Councillor III presents his thoughts on the theater performances, and land conflict in the region

Each group put on a play that explored how land conflict arose out of the process when people across northern Uganda returned from displaced persons camps to their homes. Many people in northern Uganda lived in camps for up to twenty years during the terrifying Lord’s Resistance Army conflict, and land conflict continues to cause significant unrest in the region. The plays explained how land conflicts can arise, and showed how they can be solved; through mediation, discussion, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

 

Members of Atoo Pi Iya act out efforts to mediate a land conflict

After the performances had been completed, and the speeches made, group members excited the crowd with a follow-up performance of traditional dance and drumming. More pictures to come soon!

1,000 LRA victims missing in Gulu

In the News

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20723&Itemid=114

SUNDAY, 02 SEPTEMBER 2012 19:24

WRITTEN BY ALEX OTTO

About a third of the people abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Gulu alone are still unaccounted for, an NGO has said.

Statistics presented by Children and Youths as Peace Builders (CAP) Uganda this year indicate that some 1,036 abducted people in are still missing as a result of the conflict in northern Uganda. A new project, the Justice and Reconciliation Project, on Friday urged the Justice, Law and Order sector (JLOS) to come up with mechanisms to address the issue of missing persons.

The Right to Know campaign, launched on Friday August 31, arose from the realization that although the guns have fallen silent, many families continue to seek answers as to the whereabouts of their loved ones. Speaking at the launch of the campaign in Gulu, the Acholi paramount chief, Rwot David Onen Acana, urged families not to give up hope.

“It’s not too late for us to call for accountability for these people because we are not doing it for ourselves only but we are doing it for the past, the present and the future. Some people in history have never been traced. In Uganda we had different regimes and by the way of their rule and administration, some people disappeared and this was done in the manner of military action,” Acana said.

“The End of Amnesty: Whither “Peace Versus Justice” in Northern Uganda?” Justice in Conflict blog, 12 June 2012

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“The End of Amnesty: Whither “Peace Versus Justice” in Northern Uganda?” Justice in Conflict blog, 12 June 2012
http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/06/12/the-end-of-amnesty-whither-peace-versus-justice-in-northern-uganda/

By Mark Kersten

I couldn’t resist contributing to the discussion that Mark Schenkel has begun with his fantastic post on the expiration of northern Uganda’s Amnesty Act. Readers shouldn’t let the fact that the story hasn’t been widely covered fool them into believing it isn’t of tremendous importance or that its implications aren’t significant. As Mark has shown, it is and they are.

I wanted to highlight just how remarkable it is that not only has the expiration of Part 2 of the Amnesty Act come as a surprise to many observers, but it has subsequently been met with barely a murmur – almost as if it wasn’t all that important. This is noteworthy in its own right. When the ICC intervened in northern Uganda in 2004 and subsequently issued arrest warrants for LRA leader Joseph Kony and four other senior rebel commanders, the “peace versus justice” floodgates opened. The debate was pervasive and polarizing. Much of it revolved around the over-simplified but potent question of whether rebels should be forgiven via amnesty or punished via the ICC. A legion of local and international voices declared that peace could only be achieved if LRA rebels could be guaranteed that they would not be prosecuted if they left the bush. This view was premised on fears that the threat of prosecuting rebels would leave them with no option but to continue fighting. They consequently called on the ICC to back off and give peace through forgiveness a chance. Of course, the ICC warrants stayed in place. However, thousands of LRA combatants received amnesty certificates following their defection from the rebel ranks.

Just years later, the “peace versus justice” debate has virtually disappeared. Take, for example, the prosecution of Thomas Kwoyelo, the former senior LRA commander who was detained by the Ugandan forces (UPDF) in 2009. True, the controversy around Kwoyelo’s prosecution  has concerned whether he should be issued an amnesty. But the debate has almost exclusively been a legal debate, centering around whether or not he is eligible to receive an amnesty under Ugandan law (answer: absolutely) and whether receiving an amnesty is in contravention of Uganda’s international obligations (answer: I don’t think so). What the debate hasn’t been about is whether granting Kwoyelo amnesty would risk undermining the progress northern Uganda has made towards order and stability.

Consider too the example of Caesar Achellam, the LRA rebel commander who was recently “captured” by Ugandan military forces. Again, there exists no palpable concern that arresting Achellam and possibly putting him on trial jeopardizes peace in northern Uganda. Interestingly, the Achellam story has received significantly more international coverage than the Kwoyelo trial. But it received attention primarily because of Invisible Children’s ‘KONY2012′ campaign. As I noted previously, virtually every story about Achellam’s “capture” cited KONY2012 and the now world-famous “hunt for Joseph Kony”.

Moreover, in my experience interviewing individuals involved in the northern Ugandan peace process, including government ministers, religious and civil society leaders, as well as delegates from the peace talks, there remains almost little to no concern that the ICC or any form of trial justice risks undermining peace. In short, it really does appear that northern Uganda has moved beyond the “peace versus justice” debate.

To those who study the region, this will come as little surprise. Northern Uganda is currently enjoying the longest period of ‘negative peace’, or what many call a “silence of the guns”, in decades. During and following the Juba Peace Talks (2006-2008) the LRA, and the conflict between the LRA and the Government of Uganda more generally, was exported out of northern Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Sudan. Sure, the LRA had been operating in these areas long before the Juba negotiations, but no large-scale LRA attacks have occurred in northern Uganda since the talks began. Today, it is not fear of LRA offensives or abductions that dominate public discourse in northern Uganda. Instead, it is critical issues such as nodding disease, low education standards and land grabs.

I find this development particularly interesting as it fits within the context of the history of ‘transitional justice’. Other states too have only sought trial justice after a period of impunity when amnesties were granted to perpetrators. I have previously argued (see here and here) the record suggests that it is only when fear that prosecution will destabilize or undermine a transition to peace dissipates that societies stop opposing prosecutions.

Of course, this does not mean that a policy recommendation for transitional states should be to issue amnesties and then to revoke them when they’re good and ready. In the northern Ugandan case, no amnesties will be revoked; amnesty certificates simply won’t be issued any longer. More importantly, sequencing peace and justice through the use of amnesties may be a fallacy – no combatant or perpetrator would ever trust the use of amnesties that they knew would subsequently expire or be revoked.

None of this is to say that there is no longer any reason to continue granting amnesties. Some continue to believe amnesty remains an integral ingredient in helping to promote peace in northern Ugandan – and they might be right. For example, Michael Poffenberger, of Resolve, recently argued that the Amnesty Act can still play an important role in diminishing the LRA as a rebel force.

Moreover, the expiry of the amnesty was clearly done without much concern for the democratic process. The issue wasn’t discussed in Uganda’s Parliament. Troublingly, local citizens and groups weren’t properly or sufficiently consulted. The opinion in northern Uganda, as assessed by Justice and Reconciliation Project, clearly indicates a majority support for the continuation of the Act.

There remains a desperate need for a comprehensive and cohesive transitional justice strategy in Uganda. Amnesties for low-level LRA rebels outside of northern Uganda should probably be included. But it remains remarkable just how far northern Uganda has come since the days when the “peace versus justice” debate dominated the headlines. It is increasingly unfeasible to argue that unless the Amnesty Act is continued, the very peace that northern Uganda enjoys is itself at risk. In other words, the very boundaries of the amnesty debate have changed. Amnesty or not, the people of northern Uganda will continue on their path towards peace and justice.

Drama!, GRG Blog, 31 May 2012

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Drama! Our innovative new partnership on Community Theater with the Justice and Reconciliation Project, GRG Blog, 31 May 2012

http://grassrootsgroup.org/2012/05/drama-our-innovative-new-partnership-on-community-theater-with-the-justice-and-reconciliation-project/

by Christopher Maclay

This May, GRG established an exciting partnership with the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) which will see two groups piloting an innovative reconciliation-through-theater project.

In response to groups’ requests for support in dance and drama activities, GRG looked out at how we could best use these recreational interests – which are very popular in Acholi culture – to support reconciliation and reintegration of ex-combatants on the ground.

Picture: The group Anga Konya in Labigiriang are encouraged to ‘let their creative energy flow’!

Then GRG found JRP. JRP has been working in Northern Uganda since 2005 on the promotion of transitional justice and reconciliation through documentation, community mobilisation (particularly of victims’ groups), gender justice, and policy guidance. In the last couple of years, JRP has also piloted a methodology which seeks to support communities to examine events of the war through theater.

When GRG proposed applying this methodology with its groups which combine both ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’, JRP jumped at the idea, and we will be piloting the scheme together with two of GRG’s groups in Lamwo district over the next six months. On 22-23 May, GRG and JRP facilitated introductory sessions with the groups, examining the impacts of the conflict in these communities, and presenting how theater can be used to examine these issues. One beneficiary from the group Atoo Pi Iya in Ayuu Alali explained that he wanted to explore the fact that some ex-combatants were abducted and forced to do ‘terrible things’ but others think that they wanted to do it. A lot of these ex-combatants, he explained, wanted to talk about what they did publicly but they fear retribution.

This is where the theater comes in. After training of facilitators in June, the groups will then design their own plays based on issues important to them. These plays will encourage participants to examine why people did what they did, and to understand how it affected others. The groups will then act out the plays to their communities and encourage them to join in the discussion. As one group member from the group Anga Konya in Labigiriang explained, ‘We like doing theater in this community, but we never realized we could use it to confront such issues.’

GRG is very excited to have established this partnership with such an innovative organisation, and we will keep you updated as the theater project evolves!

Ex-LRA women demand apology, Observer, 31 May 2012

In the News,

Ex-LRA women demand apology, Observer, 31 May 2012

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19034:ex-lra-women-demand-apology&catid=34:news&Itemid=114

By Alex Otto

Gulu – Former LRA fighters who have since returned from the bush should apologise to the women whose rights they violated during the insurgency in northern Uganda, a meeting here has heard.

During the launch of the Women Advocacy Network (WAN) at Gulu’s Churchill Courts hotel, Evelyn Amony, who was in LRA captivity between 1994 and 2005, spoke of the pain of seeing her former tormentors moving freely yet they have never sought forgiveness.

“These men gave us children, raped and forcefully abducted us and they also made us experience pain at a very young age. Some of us are here struggling with life because of them but they don’t care about us,” Amony said.

WAN has membership of over 200 women from the Acholi sub-region, many of them carrying traumatic and physical scars of an LRA insurgency that has since migrated to DR Congo and Central African Republic. The issue of reconciliation between perpetrator and victim of war is a thorny one, complicated by the paradox that many of the former were themselves abducted by the LRA and brutalised into violent combatants.

Amony feels that formerly abducted women should also be educated or – just like many men – allowed to join the army, so that they can earn a living and support their children.

“There is unfairness between men and women; how comes the men are being integrated into the army and educated but the women are just left to suffer?” Amony said.

Lily Grace Anena, who spent seven years with the LRA, revealed that people like her found it difficult to get husbands because many parents would not allow their sons to marry a formerly abducted girl. Retired Bishop Macleod Baker Ochola urged the government to comprehensively address the challenges of formerly abducted women.

“Where to With Transitional Justice in Uganda?” Justice in Conflict blog, 22 April 2012

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“Where to With Transitional Justice in Uganda? The Situation After the Extension of the Amnesty Act,” Justice in Conflict blog, 22 April 2012
http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/04/22/where-to-with-transitional-justice-in-uganda-the-situation-after-the-extension-of-the-amnesty-act/

By Patrick Wegner

Regular readers of this blog are aware that Uganda has both an amnesty law in force since 2000 as well as an International Crimes Division (ICD) at the High Court which is able to try crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The 2000 Amnesty Act is broad, essentially granting ‘blanket amnesty’ for all crimes committed during rebellion if the reporter agrees to renounce armed struggle. Despite the Amnesty Act being in force, the Department of the Public Prosecutor (DPP) in Uganda charged a mid-level commander of the LRA, Thomas Kwoyelo, with crimes against humanity under the Geneva Convention. JiC has reported extensively about the trial in the past, you find all the articles here. Despite several court rulings that Kwoyelo has a legal right to receive amnesty and should be set free, the DPP argued that amnesty is not applicable for crimes against humanity. In violation of these court rulings and due process, Kwoyelo remains in jail at Luzira Prison, Kampala.

The Government of Uganda (GoU) has not taken a clear position concerning the Kwoyelo case and the clash between the blanket amnesty and the existence of a Court Division able to try international crimes. Therefore the upcoming review of the Amnesty Act in May 2012 has been anticipated with uncertainty and curiosity by observers. Will the GoU move away from the past amnesty approach and give in to the DPP that had stated it wanted to bring more charges against former LRA rebels? Or would it uphold the amnesty approach followed since 2000?

Now the Deputy Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, announced on Saturday 14th of April in Gulu that the extension of the Amnesty Act for two years is a done deal and that the law just waits being gazetted. (Thanks to Sharon Nakandha from Avocats sans Frontières Uganda for forwarding the article). This has some important implications for the way forward in transitional justice in Uganda.

It is important to acknowledge that the Amnesty Act was passed with strong civil society pressure from northern Uganda. Many northern Acholi see the LRA rebels as their abducted children and want them to lay down arms and return home. According to asurvey conducted by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) in December 2011 98 per-cent of the northern population believe that the amnesty is still relevant and should not be abolished. Abolishing the amnesty would thus go against the wishes of the formerly war affected population in northern Uganda. President Museveni has no reason to alienate his northern constituency (he received a majority in northern Uganda for the first time in the 2011 elections) by attacking a law that many see as very useful.

Former LRA Commander Thomas Kwoyelo in the courtroom (Edward Echwalu/Reuters)

According to recent figures from the JRP survey, 22,520 rebels have taken amnesty so far – 48 per-cent of them LRA members. Abolishing the amnesty law now would not have revoked those amnesties but, in the context of the ongoing detention of Thomas Kwoyelo, it would surely have stirred fears among LRA returnees. In my interviews with LRA officers in northern Uganda their fears of being tried years after they returned from the bush, be it by the ICC or the ICD, was very tangible. The fact that the amnesty was prolonged is also important for the military efforts to combat the LRA in the DRC, Central African Republic and South Sudan as it ensures that the formerly abducted fighters have a way out. The Amnesty Act can thus contribute to weaken the LRA by luring out fighters from the ‘bush’.

Yet, the fact that the Amnesty Act will apparently simply be prolonged without any changes also means that Uganda’s national concept for transitional justice remains incoherent and contradictory. Uganda has a blanket amnesty in place that covers any and all crimes, a notion that is on the retreat in international law. Many would indeed even argue that a blanket amnesty is not acceptable in international law: The Inter-American Court for Human Rights ruled so famously in its Barrios Altos case and the UN has instructed its envoys to not endorse blanket amnesties in peace negotiations. Yet, under Uganda’s Amnesty Act even Joseph Kony himself would have a right to receive amnesty.

At the same time, Uganda created a Division that is capable of trying these crimes but will not be able to do so as long as the amnesty remains in place in its current form. The GoU could have solved this problem and brought the Amnesty Act into line with international standards.

A reception centre for LRA abductees (Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations)

According to the Amnesty Act the Parliament of Uganda has the power to revoke the amnesty for individuals on request of the Minister of Defence. It would thus be theoretically possible to revoke the amnesty for the LRA Commanders most responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Museveni had threatened several times to exclude the LRA commanders from amnesty only to then publicly ask Kony and his Commanders to accept the amnesty offer of the government. The Ugandan High Court even explicitly ruled in October 2005 that amnesty remains available for the LRA commanders. These inconsistencies may re-emerge in the future as the GoU once again failed to clarify its stance. If Joseph Kony was arrested tomorrow, the GoU would be caught between its constitution and the amnesty law on the one side, and its international legal obligations to surrender Joseph Kony and his key commanders to the ICC on the other side.

It is also strange that the GoU apparently did not wait for a report of the Transitional Justice Working Group of the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS) of the Government in which JLOS would have published its results of conducting surveys about the amnesty and traditional justice in all of Uganda. The Transitional Justice Working Group is charged with developing a coherent concept for transitional justice in Uganda, presumably providing for a comprehensive approach including amnesty, traditional justice, a truth commission and trials. The JLOS plans are impressive on the paper and could provide a blueprint for transitional justice concepts in post-conflict areas (see here for details).

Why did the decision makers not wait for this valuable feedback before deciding whether and how to prolong the Amnesty Act? One can only hope that the final suggestions of the Transitional Justice Working Group will be taken more seriously for the sake of a coherent and comprehensive approach towards transitional justice in Uganda.

“Ex-LRA abductees struggle to survive,” Daily Monitor, 7 April 2012

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“Ex-LRA abductees struggle to survive,” Daily Monitor, 7 April 2012
http://www.monitor.co.ug/SpecialReports/-/688342/1381202/-/item/0/-/nrtagaz/-/index.html

By Moses Akena

Eighteen years ago in an afternoon of May 1994, the then 10-year-old Evelyn Amony’s innocence and education was robbed off her after she was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels from her way home after classes at Atiak Pupwonya Primary School in Atiak Sub-county, Amuru District.

Now 28, Amony, who was in Primary Four when she was abducted, was taken with three children below 12 years old as was preferred by the rebels. She says she was immediately taken to Kilak hills (Kony’s base then) where she baby sat most of his children, including two she identified as Salim and Ali.

However, her group later left for Palutaka in Sudan in October of that year where she stayed at the home of the LRA leader, whom she said guarded her jealously. “While in Uganda, he used to tell me that he will not let any man touch me vowing to get for me a good man at the right time to marry,” she reminiscences.

Ironically, one day in 1997, it did not occur to her that he (Kony) was the ‘good man’.
Amony, who at the time was 15 years old, says she vehemently resisted advances by Kony because he was her father’s age mate.

What astonished her, Amony recalls, is the rebel leader telling her that she should blame her mother for bearing her with her beauty and for her being hardworking and tidy.
“I tried escaping that night from the camp but I couldn’t go far because the place is mountainous and I didn’t know that I was rotating within the same place,” she says.

Tried to escape
After spending the night in the bush, an LRA patrol team arrested her the next day and took her back to the camp. Here, she met and narrated her ordeal to the senior LRA commanders then; Otti Lagony and Vincent Otti. This could not stop the mandatory punishment of 50 strokes of the cane that such a case attracted.

“He (Kony) told them that he is the final man and immediately ordered me to go and prepare tea despite feeling pain on my buttocks from the beating,” she says. Amony later conceived and bore three children for Kony before her eventual escape in August 2005.

Now eight years after her return, Ms Amony bears no hallmark of the grandeur she anticipated.
Squeezed in a grass-thatched mud and wattle hut in Kirombe, a Gulu Municipality suburb, Amony, who has also married a former abductee, is struggling to take care of the three children and two others that she adopted.

“I have a challenge taking care of the three children because I don’t know their clan though I hear their father comes from Odek Sub-county,” the LRA victim adds.
Luckily, two of her eldest children (all girls) are being taken care of by their paternal uncle and are studying in a Kampala primary school .

Aryemo’s case
Amony’s dilemma is shared by 27-year-old Grace Aryemo, a mother of three, who shares a small grass- thatched hut with her three children in Laroo, three kilometres out of Gulu Town near Gulu University.

Rejected by her family in Lacekocot in Pader District and castigated together with her children by her aunt whom she was staying with for being an “evil person,” she found solace in crushing rocks at a stone quarry near her home.

Once in a while, she manages to crush a container of about 100kgs of which she gets about Shs2,000 a day. However, she says she has hardly got any money in the last one month, adding with a melancholic tone of how she and her children occasionally forgo food when there is no money.

For Amony, a trip back home to Atiak presents chilling memories because people in the area blame her group for the April 1995 incident in which more than 300 people were massacred by the LRA.

She says at worst, she only spends two days at home because it is only her father who is fond of her. She cannot dare ask her brothers for share of the family land.
Amony says the hostility extended to the children who are labeled ‘bush children’ might bring a similar problem in future.

Their concern is shared by hundreds of women, who at a tender age, were among more than 100,000 children abducted, coerced, and for the case of the girls, impregnated by senior LRA commanders.

Hundreds of children are believed to be in captivity of the LRA, most of them as child soldiers. The women, through their umbrella association, Women’s Advocacy Network, last week held a meeting in Gulu Town organised by several NGOs in the region.

They cited, in a memorandum read by Grace Acan, who was abducted from St. Mary’s College, Aboke, in 1996, denial of land and other property to them, stigma, and refusal to ask for forgiveness by their husbands, financial difficulty and favouritism of the male returnees as reasons for their concern.

They also say their family members and those of their husbands have rejected them and their children, accusing them of killing them while in the bush and carrying with them a curse.
Most of them after being rejected by their relatives and husbands have opted to rent houses near Gulu Town from where they have to live from hand to mouth.

Aryemo, for instance, makes beads at home which she sells to supplement what her husband, with whom she is yet to bear a child, gets from riding a boda boda motorcycle.

NGO’s work
Santo Okema, the programmes officer at Ker kwaro Acholi, a cultural organisation, responding to concerns raised by the women that they have been ignored by the cultural institution as has been the norm in the past, promised to raise their concerns at a meeting of traditional leaders.

Susan Blanch Alal, the programmes manager at World Vision Uganda Children of War Rehabilitation Programme, said more than 14,000 children have since benefited from their programme.
She added that the organisation came in to support former abductees and people affected by war after detecting challenges with their reintegration in the community.

“We have developed a proposal on how best to reintegrate the formerly abducted persons in the community and make their lives fruitful and peaceful with the other community members,” Alal says.

Mapenduzi Ojara, the district chairperson, says they are aware of the grievances of the women and promised to look for solutions through programmes like the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for northern Uganda.

Big struggle
He says recovery from war is a complex process that calls for a lot of commitment from the government and development partners who he says should design projects that are relevant to the women.

“What we are looking for now is to empower the women to access services and to also offer them psychosocial support,” Ojara says. The women are also particularly upset that some of the men who returned from captivity are enjoying more limelight than the women and have not taken any steps to take care of their children or ask for forgiveness.

“It’s painful that they took us to the bush, abused us, and impregnated us. They know they were our abductors and they don’t want to come and ask us for forgiveness,” Aryemo narrates.
For instance, in January, former LRA spokesperson, 50-year-old Sam Kolo graduated from Gulu University with a degree in Business Administration and immediately set his ambitions on getting a Master degree.

For Amony and the other women, their beauty still remains but the good life they dreamt of in childhood has been robbed off them and it is a struggle to rekindle it, something that they may realise much later in life and with little significance.

“#Ugandans 2012,” Canadian International Council, 12 March 2012

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“#Ugandans 2012,” Canadian International Council, 12 March 2012

http://www.opencanada.org/features/ugandans2012/

By Erin Baines

After being relentlessly pursued by the Ugandan military for more than a year, eight-year old Aling – a daughter born of forced marriage to one of the high commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – was tired and scared. One morning after a particularly deadly attack, she turned to her mother and asked, “Mama, why can’t we just leave this army?”  Her mother had spent 14 years as a forced wife. She knew the risks involved in betraying the rebels, yet she could not refuse her child. They left that night.

The commander was enraged.  He sent 20 of his best soldiers to bring back his daughter and kill his wife. As they went, one of the soldiers said to the others, “Aling’s mother is a good woman. She has helped us many times when we were injured or needed comfort. Why should we not follow her instead of the commander?”  They too escaped, joining Aling and her mother at a rehabilitation centre in Pajule, Pader District. 

Some days later, having heard that his soldiers, wife and daughter were in the nearby centre, the commander dispatched another 70 soldiers to attack the place, ordering them to kill everyone.  As they got nearer, the soldiers surrendered their guns to the local officials.  They too followed the lead of Mama Aling, the mother of the child who asked if it was not time to go home.

Since the early 2000s, the Ugandan initiative, the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), a Ugandan initiative, has recorded some of the worst human rights abuses that have taken place during the war, and the efforts of people like Mama Aling to stop them.  JRP documents the stories of ordinary people caught between the warring parties – of those pressed into fighting against their will, and those who are born of circumstances not of their choosing.  The organization got the help of dozens of persons in displaced camps who, for years, volunteered to keep track of, and record, what was happening there.

At the height of the war, the original JRP team walked, rode bicycles and boda boda (motorcycles), and travelled in the backs of trucks to reach areas that no international journalist or advocate would go to.  At the time, people weren’t permitted to travel even a few kilometres our to town after curfew.

Members of the JRP team – who are about the same age as Jason Russell, the maker of the Kony 2012 film – document the memories of massacre survivors.  They record stories of sexual violence and the ways women and men resist armed soldiers. They speak to parents whose children are still missing. They listen to commanders who surrendered and who regret the atrocities they committed. They try to move beyond the good-guy-bad-guy model, recognizing the extraordinary circumstances in which soldiers commit violence against others, as children who grew up in war and were forced to fight.

Sometimes this work is overwhelming. It often feels like documentation and advocacy is not enough. At some point, each member of the team has held heads in hands and wept following an interview, or after meeting a community. After the tears, they gather courage and write it all down. Then they go and talk about it with local officials and request a resolution.

They publish reports and news articles, do tours and hold radio programmes in order to bring the voices of communities to national and international debate and attention. This isn’t always an easy task.

In 2007, Boniface Ojok, the project’s coordinator, met with the LRA and government representatives to the peace talks. He sat in between the heads of the two delegations and told them what he has seen and learned about justice from people on the ground.  

Co-founder Michael Otim put his life on hold for more than two years, attending each and every peace talk between 2006 and 2008 as an advisor to a delegation of cultural and religious leaders.

JRP’s advocacy is not just with officials and leaders, however.  It also engages the communities most affected by the war. JRP’s members utilize oral history, dance, song, drama, poetry, radio programs, community dialogues and public marches to share what they have learned at national debates, and to promote ownership of advocacy. They help survivors found their own advocacy groups, and when resources are available, they bring survivors to meet with officials and leaders.

For example, JRP supports storytelling sessions among a group of war-affected women Gulu, a town in northern Uganda. These sessions provide a space in which women can speak freely about their memories of war and the challenges of daily life. As word spread about the group, so many women wanted to join that new groups started to form.  On International Women’s day this year, IRP formally launched the Women’s Advocacy Network, with over 200 members.  The group’s chairperson, Evelyn Amony, spent more than 10 years in captivity. She believes she survived the war to tell her story, and to help others tell theirs.

This is courageous and exhausting work, but JRP is not alone. Hundreds of local and national organizations work to document and remember, and to insist on justice. There is Human Rights Focus (HURIFO), for instance, which operated as the only human-rights organization in the region for many years.  There is also the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interdenominational group (Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Muslim) that has repeatedly met with the rebels and government in attempts to persuade them of the need for peace talks.  

There is Alice Achan, who rallied her community together to build a shelter for the hundreds of children who escaped rebel captivity but had no where to go, and no way to find their parents.  In the shelter, she loved and nourished each one of them until they could be reunited with their families. Then there is the Concerned Parents Association, which formed after 139 girls were abducted from St. Mary’s College in Aboke. Women like Angelina Atyam travelled the world over and back (she even met Oprah!) to find their children.

During the nearly 10 years I have worked in Uganda with advocates, survivors and researchers, I have never heard them lobby for military intervention.  In fact, the opposite is true: Ugandans have consistently insisted on an amnesty process for rebels, recognizing that many soldiers were forced into combat as children. Most prefer to talk peace rather than wage war. It is common knowledge that the first to be killed in military raids are the most recently abducted kids.

This is not to say that Ugandans do not want to stop Kony, or that they do not want justice. Nor is it to say that local leaders are perfect and know all the solutions, or that they speak with one voice. This is not the case. 

The point is, Ugandans, along with people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Sudan and many other countries around the world, are working for peace in both extraordinary and ordinary ways that are often off “the grid”.  

They do so that the world is a better place for their children – so that it is better for Jason Russell’s children – and they do it without ever being called a hero.

So alongside the current media hubbub around Kony 2012, how about celebrating the heroism of thousands of Ugandans like Aling, Boniface, Evelyn, and Alice, building peace and working for justice despite the war.  How about #Ugandans2012?