Tag Archives: gender justice

Stakeholders in northern Uganda developing a road map to redress for SGBV

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Judith Awari, the chairperson of Kuc Odwogo Women's Group in Agweng and a member of the Women's Advocacy Network, speaks during a consultative dialogue with stakeholders on conflict-related SGBV in northern Uganda in Lira, 8 September 2016. Oryem Nyeko/Justice and Reconciliation Project.
Judith Awari, the chairperson of Kuc Odwogo Women’s Group in Agweng and a member of the Women’s Advocacy Network, speaks during a consultative dialogue with stakeholders on conflict-related SGBV in northern Uganda in Lira, 8 September 2016. Oryem Nyeko/Justice and Reconciliation Project.

PRESS RELEASE 8 September 2016

LIRA – Urgent policy change is needed to provide redress to conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), say civil society and survivors in northern Uganda.

Through three consultative dialogues between 8 and 13 September 2016, a variety of stakeholders across northern Uganda are working to develop a roadmap to redress conflict-related SGBV.

Organised by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), the events bring government officials, civil society organizations, victim representatives, academia, cultural and religious leaders in Lira, Adjumani and Gulu.

“We need to step up the advocacy,” says Michael Otim, the former head of office for the International Center for Transitional Justice in Uganda, “We’ve made strides and we’ve had several meetings in the past, but there is rarely any follow through. These consultative dialogues, however, are very important because they allow us to design strategies to push for real redress for SGBV crimes.”

Since 2014, JRP has implemented a project called ‘‘Redress for Sexual-and Gender-Based Violence on Conflict Related Wrongs’’ aimed at supporting transitional justice (TJ) efforts of female survivors of SGBV in the northern Ugandan districts of Adjumani, Lira and Pader with funding of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The consultative meetings aim to discuss key issues that emerged from research under the project, including establishing the extent of SGBV revictimisation among female survivors of conflict SGBV, reintegration challenges facing children born of war and their mothers, engaging men in redress for conflict SGBV as well as redress for conflict SGBV.

The dialogues provide an opportunity for officials to learn perspectives of survivors to inform policy and implementation.

“I want the local government and other authorities to know that they should channel government programmes to women so they can support children born of war,” said Judith Awari, a member of the Women’s Advocacy Network based in Agweng, Lira, during the meeting. “When [government programmes] are brought to men alone, their benefits of the do not reach women and children.”

Following these meetings, a roadmap for policy recommendations will be developed and a report published to inform the Ugandan government and other actors in TJ to address the unredressed needs of war-affected women and particularly survivors of conflict-SGBV.

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Media Contact. Oryem Nyeko, Communications and Advocacy Team Leader, onyeko@justiceandreconciliation.com, 0471 433008

About the Justice and Reconciliation Project. The Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) promotes locally sensitive and sustainable peace in Africa’s Great Lakes region by focusing on the active involvement of grassroots communities in local-level transitional justice. Formerly a partnership of the Gulu District NGO Forum and the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada, JRP has played a key role in transitional justice in Uganda since 2005, through seeking to understand and explain the interests, needs, concerns and views of the communities affected by war between the Lord‟s Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda (GOU). For more information please visit http://www.justiceandreconciliation.com.

Redress for survivors of SGBV in northern Uganda is still a challenge

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In northern Uganda during the long-standing conflicts, sexual violence was perpetrated against men and women, boys and girls at an unprecedented rate by state and non-state actors and civilians. Violence during the war included rape, forced marriage and pregnancy, sexual exploitation and sexual molestation by rebels. When there is conflict, survivors of sexual violence face a number of challenges, such as meaningful reintegration in the community, rejection and re-victimisation in the society. Others, on the other hand, experience physical, psychological and economic re-victimisation, such as marital abuse, rape, domestic violence, fear of the unknown, trauma and poverty.

After the incidents of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), women were left with children they bore. Many of the women do not know the whereabouts of the children’s fathers. With no meaningful support from the local government, these women are left to care for their children singlehandedly. Lack of support for the children has been a cause of more psychosocial harm for the mothers who struggle daily to care for their children amidst social rejection, abuse, poverty, economic constraints, as well as other challenges.

There is an increase in domestic violence due to poverty, alcoholism and other war related factors. Survivors of SGBV encounter violence in their marriage. They are stigmatised by co-wives, in-laws and even husbands. Domestic violence evolves as a result of female barrenness due to rape and/or sexual molestation and HIV/AIDS contracted during war. Some survivors of SGBV are blamed for HIV in the marriage, especially if it is known that they contracted the disease after being raped. Some men blame the women for health issues they have contracted, even if it is not certain that they have been infected by their partners. For women who cannot give birth as result of complications that arose after the sexual violence, this is a source of re-victimisation, leading to violence and abuse in their homes.

According to research conducted by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) in 2015 ( the report is yet to published) with 103 female survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, because of the lack of social support, SGBV survivors rely on their own constructive/positive coping mechanisms to prevent and minimise chances of re-victimisation.

In the absence of social support, some survivors adopt negative coping mechanisms, such as abuse of alcohol and other substances. One of the women we interviewed stated that she was not an alcoholic before her abduction. However, after she returned from captivity, she became an alcoholic who would fight with her husband if he refused her alcohol. According to her, alcohol was her source of psychological consolation and a way of dealing with the stigma she faces.

Despite a number of programmes to support SGBV survivors, there are a number of challenges that impede survivors’ access to redress and justice in the community. These challenges include systematic barriers, such as customary laws, the marginalised role of women in the community, poverty and complicated legal procedures. These challenges prevent women from obtaining justice and redress in the communities they live in. There is also a need to reinforce the principle of transitional justice to ensure a smooth reintegration process and redress for SGBV survivors into the community by providing reparations in order for them to have a better life.

Women training on how to plan for the future

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A member of Awee Ikoko Women's Group in Lira demonstrates to her group members how she plans to save money according to the Saving With a Purpose plan.
A member of Awe Ikoko Women’s Group in Lira demonstrates to her group members how she plans to save money according to the Saving With a Purpose plan.

A week ago the JRP team conducted financial management training in Aromo sub-county with members of Awe Ikoko Women’s Group one of the groups under the Women’s Advocacy Network housed by JRP. The objective of the training is to impact knowledge to victims of SGBV in five WAN groups to have increased agency to plan for their future, know about savings and credit options in their communities and to learn how to make a savining with a purpose to fund their income generating activities.

We also aim to ensure that the women understand the benefits of business planning and how to manage the performance of business planning as well as how to record manage performance of business through record keeping. The training we did in Aromo training focused on saving with a purpose, record keeping, investment decisions, planning for the unexpected.

The training was facilitated by an expert in the field of village and loan saving scheme (VSLA) who really used different approaches from lecturing to sharing of experiences and then group discussions where the participants expressed themselves to have understood what was taught. This was witnessed on how they were able to demonstrate individually their business plans and how they will be able to invest through saving with a purpose.

One woman said she will save 2,500 shillings every week for six months alongside the normal VSLA scheme to enable her buy a goat and then use the same procedure to acquire what she has not been able to acquire before.

Post-training

Post training the women of Awe Ikoko said they will put the knowledge gained into good use by planning well and investing in things where they are able to realize profits which was not the case before, keep record of their investments like farming, VSLA, Saving With a Purpose (called ‘SWAP’ for short) as others have always used their money to buy clothes.

The significance of this training is that the women will be able to share their knowledge with other women in the community. As a member of the group stated: “I will go and teach my daughters in law about the knowledge have acquired today, as this is very crucial to help plan for the future.”

A member said this knowledge is going to build their capacity as a group and individual members in their household which will ensure sustainability and independence of the group at one point in time.

Communities can provide for themselves if their capacities are built and trained basic concepts. Looking at the training, the women are hard working and are doing things like farming but they did not have the knowledge on how to invest in it and use proceeds to enable them get the basic needs in life which they have longed for.

Victoria Nyanjura is a Project Assistant with JRP’s Gender Justice department.

Reintegration of children born of war thanks to family reunions

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The two-decade war in northern Uganda was characterised by various forms of sexual violence against women, such as rape, sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Many children were born as a result of these crimes, and this has had a profound effect on women. Now that a relative peace has returned to the region, one of the ongoing reintegration challenges is dealing with the identity of the children who were born in captivity or a result of sexual violence. Many of their patrilineal ties are unknown. But in Acholi culture, like in many areas in Uganda, a child’s identity is linked to his or her father. In addition, many of these children are now constantly asking their mothers and other family members about their identity and the whereabouts of their fathers.

The children find that not knowing their home is a painful aspect of their sense of identity. In Acholi culture, children are born into their paternal family and thus acquire the identity of that clan. Additionally, boys can expect to inherit land from their fathers in order to establish their own families. In Acholi culture, knowing one’s “home” (paternal village) is an integral component of social belonging, according to a Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) field note on children born in captivity (2015). Family members are part of the child’s well-being and therefore play an important role in reintegration. Family connections often provide comfort, key survival resources and a sense of belonging. This has made family reunions an important aspect of reintegration for children born in captivity and their mothers. Family reunions do not only help in reintegrating the children but also contribute to the reconciliation process in communities. Many families acknowledge that, according to cultural and social norms,children should know and have a relationship with their paternal lineage.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

According to research conducted since 2005 by JRP among women who were affected by war, the issue of children’s identity is an important justice issue. When the Women’s Advocacy Network (WAN) was formed in 2011, one of its objectives was to advocate the promotion and respect of the rights of children who were born during the war and/or born as a result of forced marriages involving women who had been abducted. Children’s identity was one of the issues that WAN raised in a petition to the Ugandan parliament in 2014. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in November 1989, states that a child should be cared for by his or her parents and that children should preserve their identity, including family relations.

Reuniting children with their paternal or maternal relatives is a way to rebuild life and relations after conflict for both women and children. Some of the reasons that women give for the importance of reuniting children with their families include pressure from children who have grown up and want to know their relatives, access to land for children born of war, supporting children born in captivity to get to know their relatives and thus avoid incest in future, obtaining family support for children born of war and supporting children born of war have a sense of belonging and identity.

Challenges of the reunion process

The family reunions are not always easy to arrange. One peculiar challenge in the reunion process has been use of pseudonyms by commanders. In addition, people who were abducted often concealed their real identities in order to protect their families from retaliation by the LRA for alleged “mistakes” that they had made. This has made it difficult, in some instances, to locate the homes or relatives of the children.

Since 2011, WAN and JRP have reintegrated numerous children with their paternal and maternal families. From January to July of 2016 alone, nine children were reunited with their paternal families. This has enabled children and their mothers to rebuild their lives. Families have also been able to reconcile for the sake of the children.

Nancy Apiyo is a project officer in the Gender Justice Department of the Justice and Reconciliation Project.

This article was originally published on Let’s Talk, Uganda.

Using radio to talk about reintegration of children born of war

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Women participate in a radio talkshow in Kumi to talk about the reintegration of children born of war.
Women participate in a radio talkshow in Kumi to talk about the reintegration of children born of war.

On the 17th of July, two members of the Women’s Advocacy Network and two survivors of SGBV from Kumi district participated on a radio talk show at Continental FM. The talk show was organized by the representative of the Iteso Cultural Union and Teso Kumi Women’s Peace Initiative to create awareness of the challenges that children born of war are facing and lobby for support from the community about their reintegration. It was also used as a platform to engage the communities on the challenges that war affected women are facing in the community such as stigma, lack of access to land and the ongoing suffering they face in taking care of the children and break silence around these issues. This was aimed at ensuring communal acceptance of children born of war and their mothers.

Three months earlier, on the 28th of April, during a dialogue that was held in Kakanyero Hotel in Gulu between cultural leaders and war affecting women across the northern Uganda region, cultural leaders pledged to use radio as a tool to sensitize communities about issues affecting children born of war and their mothers. The dialogue provided a platform where war affected women engaged cultural leaders about the reintegration challenges they and the children are facing as a result of the conflict. The talk show was a fulfillment of an obligation by one of the cultural leaders.

The Women’s Advocacy Network continues radio talk shows as platform to engage communities on issues affecting war affected women and their children to support their smooth reintegration in the communities.

We Accept Our Own Blood: Reintegrating Children Born of War through Family Reunions

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In 2014 when members of the Women’s Advocacy Network petitioned the Ugandan Parliament for redress for harms caused by years of conflict in northern Uganda, the identity of children born war was a key issue they raised. The issue is not only important to mothers but to their children as well who find that not knowing their relatives is a painful void in their sense of identity.

During one of visit to a family, one mother, a member of WAN, told us: “My daughter kept on asking about her paternal relatives and I promised her I would get the home and grant her wish.”

Reuniting children born of war with their families, therefore, is in a way a form of redress since it contributes to rebuilding life and relations after the conflict.

In the past few years, the WAN has been approached by several women who were abducted, former commanders of the LRA, relatives of children born in captivity and survivors of sexual violence in camps to support them in mediation and tracing for the maternal or paternal families of the children. This year, its members with the support of JRP and Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice have conducted 10 dialogues and visits with families of children born of war. The objective has been to ensure mutual understanding of the reintegration process by both maternal and paternal families, reconcile families and ensuring acceptance of the children.

In some cases, lack of acceptance of children born of war in new marriages that their mothers are in has made mothers want to bring their children together with their paternal families. During one of the pre visits one of the mothers whose child had been suffering in her new marital home said, “My child is not wanted in my home.  She was bewitched and is now paralyzed.”

Children are also being reintegrated so that they can have access to land, have an identity and a sense of belonging as well as have family support. Some of the children have also now grown up and asking for whereabouts of their relatives.

In all the families where dialogues were carried out the idea of reintegrating children was welcomed. The children are also a source of closure in the families from the loss of their sons and daughters. During one of the dialogues a relative of a deceased former commander said, “… his children are his resurrection.”

The idea of children being a ‘resurrection’ of their dead parents was common in all the families that dialogues took place. A clan leader in one of the families said, “We want the child, he will stand on behalf of our lost child.”

Children are also accepted in respect and honor of dead relatives. A family member in one of the homes said, “We accept our own blood and cannot refuse them. Perhaps the spirit of the dead will haunt us if we don’t.”

Tracing of the homes of the children has been difficult due to challenges because in LRA captivity people often used fake names and concealed true information about their families. Sometimes there is also lack of support from relatives who fear that they might lose the bond they have with the children once they get to know their other relatives. This is especially common with maternal relatives and in laws.

Despite these challenges, this is an opportunity for children who want to to fully reintegrate in their communities through family reunions. This year we plan to help 12 children reintegrated in their families.

New internships at JRP

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JRP holds a capacity building workshop is held at Parabongo sub-county, Agago district in early 2015

JRP is looking for a vibrant and creative individuals to support our Gender Justice and Communications departments.

Communications Intern

We’re looking for creative current or recent university students with great writing skills and an interest in transitional justice and human rights in Uganda and Africa’s Great Lakes region to apply here. Read more about (and apply to) the position here.

Gender Justice Intern

Current or recent Master’s degree students in peace and conflict studies, law, development studies, social work or any related field are encouraged to apply to this six month internship with our Gender Justice department. Read more and apply here.

For future updates sign up to our Job’s & Internships mailing list. You can also find the Justice and Reconciliation Project on LinkedIn.

Listen to JRP’s new podcast

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We at JRP are very excited to launch a new podcast where we’ll be reflecting on justice and reconciliation issues in northern Uganda and Africa’s Great Lakes region. The first episode features Oryem Nyeko, Lindsay McClain Opiyo and Nancy Apiyo talking how about JRP’s new field note, My Body, A Battlefield: Survivors’ experiences of conflict-sexual violence in Koch Ongako came about. 

Listen to the podcast below:

A transcript of this episode can be read here: http://justiceandreconciliation.com/media/audio/2015/jrp-podcast-episode-1-documenting-conflict-sexual-violence/

JRP Podcast Episode 1 – Documenting conflict sexual violence

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Oryem Nyeko: Hi this is Oryem Nyeko, I am here with Lindsay McClain Opiyo who is the team leader for Gender Justice here at JRP. We are trying something new – we are trying to do a podcast. This is our first episode and we are very excited.

We are here to talk about a new publication that JRP has just put out which is a field note called “My Body, A Battlefield”.

Lindsay is a co-author and Lindsay I wanted to hear from you what this field note is all about. Maybe if you can give us an overview of this report?

Lindsay McClain Opiyo: Thanks Oryem. Yeah, this is our latest field note from JRP that is looking at everyday experiences of conflict-sexual violence in Koch Ongako, a community in Gulu district here in northern Uganda.

The field note is documenting men and women’s experience of conflict sexual violence during northern Uganda’s long standing conflicts both at the hands of state and non-state armed actors and also at the hands of civilians when they were living in internally displaced person’s camps.

There’s kind of three big takeaways that we would like people to have from the report. One, is that it doesn’t take a big massacre or a big event to make peoples experiences during the war worthy of documentation. As readers will find from the report, a lot of the accounts are of women and to some extent men just going about their daily lives during the conflict and how they were targeted for sexual violence by different conflict actors.

Two would be the importance of methodology when you are actually trying to document and preserve accounts of conflict sexual violence. All too often especially with prosecutions and court processes, investigations, it’s very cut and dry, and we use methodologies like storytelling and focus group discussions in order to get people to open up about these very stigmatized events that happened to them. And that’s our second takeaway that it’s important to use this more informal methodologies to document these experiences.

And our third takeaway is that it is very important to have documentation of these experiences in order for survivors to advocate for redress. So we hope that the report will be something that survivors can actually use when they are petitioning government and other bodies for reparations and other forms of redress for what they went through.

(Oryem) We know that this is just one community in northern Uganda that experienced this conflict. How emblematic do you think that it is, in terms of the bigger picture of sexual violence on questions of accountability and healing and so on?

(Lindsay) Our sample size was relatively small. We talked to 60-something people. A little over 50 of them admitted to being survivors of conflict sexual violence, so it is not a humongous sample size and we were exclusively looking at Koch Ongako. But what we found within those accounts is that a lot of patterns started to emerge. One of the most interesting ones was this idea of dangerous spots and that due the nature of women’s lives during the war that they were targeted for conflict sexual violence while they were going about daily life, while they were going to the gardens to dig, while they were even going to buy salt to cook for their families.

So one would imagine that this is fairly representative of other communities within northern Uganda. There is nothing about Koch that would necessarily make it different from other communities but it is definitely something that would merit more research to see the extent to which these lots of pardon also were in other communities.

(Oryem): I’m here now with Nancy Apiyo who is a co-author of My Body, A Battlefield and she was here in 2013 when the Gender Justice team began the research process for this field note in Koch Ongako.

I wanted to know from you Nancy, what was that process like doing this documentation? Obviously these stories are very painful and I imagine it was very traumatic for some of those survivors to talk about their experiences. So could you tell us a bit more about what you witnessed when you went though this documentation process?

Nancy Apiyo: When we started to work with the community of Koch in about 2012, we noted that from the stories that the women would share there were stories of violations during the conflict of sexual violation and violations of that nature. Most of the women we interacted with at that time mentioned to us that they were living positively with HIV and most of them linked it to the conflict and some mentioned that they got the HIV out of the rape.

So as a team we were touched by this and we did not want it to just stop there, we didn’t want these stories to only remain in those storytelling circles because the first objective of those storytelling was for healing purposes, to build confidence around the women and we did not have this idea of publishing these stories out to the public. But when we heard this we felt it was important to let the world know what really happened in Koch and break this silence of what the community went through during the conflict around that time. So we had a discussion with the women about what they thought about more people outside the community knowing what they went through and if that was important to them and they responded that it was important that the rest of the world knows what happened to them in the community. And that is when we got this idea of publishing this story or beginning to write and have an account of what happened in Koch during the conflict.

(Oryem) Where there some people who, maybe, didn’t feel comfortable speaking out in the beginning but eventually opened up a bit more as the process went along?

(Nancy) There were women who once they heard others talk they also began to open up and they were like, “When I heard her story it compelled me to also talk about my own story. I felt that actually what she went through is even worse than what I went through and this alone gave me the courage to also stand up speak about what I also went though.”

I think listening to each other’s story and knowing the fact that they all went through these things, they identified with each other and giving them also the confidence to speak by listening to someone’s story they also get the courage to also talk about their own stories.

(Oryem) I know that the field note doesn’t just talk about the experiences of women, there are also some quotes that you have from men. What was that process like, getting the stories from the men?

(Nancy) We didn’t have men at first. Our first plan was to talk to the women and get in to the sexual violence that women went through. But as we worked with women they informed us that there were also men who also went through SGBV but they were quiet and nobody was reaching out to them. So we told them that if they wanted the men’s stories also to be out, that is also up to the community to decide and it would be also important. So it’s the women who reached out to the men, talked to them and brought them into the storytelling circles and the men were also able to share their stories. Although with the men we had a one-on-one interviews with them and not a group kind of thing.

But the good thing with this documentation also the methods that we kept on using, using pictures, songs, dramas, sometimes they act out these issues, sometimes they draw them in pictures. Things like that. Such exercises helped to reduce the tension around violation and make the women relax, and the men, and enable them to talk.

(Oryem) Was there any particular story that struck you individually as a person that you could tell us about?

(Nancy) One of the women who had been raped – gang-raped, actually, by the government soldiers and she had tried to get justice in vain and had given up and had moved on, okay tried to move on. And so, during this day she was not in the first lot of women that we shared stories with or we listened to and as time went by, I think, a year later, her colleagues asked her to join the storytelling circle. They informed us that there is this lady we know that she really went through something very bad and it would be good for her to benefit from this. So, during one of the retreats, they brought her. They had already talked to her and she had accepted the whole thing and so she came.

I remember one of her first statements was she thought that she would never have the opportunity to share this story to anyone. She would never be listened to again. And to her the fact that this documentation process was an opportunity for her and all those other women who have gone through sexual violence to get justice. And to her the reason why she came for that particular storytelling at that time for that retreat was so that women who were violated get justice and it wasn’t for her, it was for somebody out there who went through the same thing that she went through to get justice and so that the world to knows that these things really happened. She wanted people to listen to what she went through.

And so this lady told us all the details of how she was raped, the whole experience. There is a book that I read where we are told that sometimes when somebody is being raped they get numb at that particular time and they are oblivious of what is happening and may not know even what is happening and when it comes to narrating, they may not give you all the details of maybe, he unzipped like this, he turned me like this or this is what they did. But this lady gave us all the details of what really happened that day and to me I think that is the story that really changed… and that is the story that kept me going to really write this and I really wanted this report to come out. That is the story that stood out for me most.

(Oryem) What do you hope is going to happen with this publication, with this being disseminated all around the world? What do you hope? What’s your goal?

(Nancy) For now, I think the short term goal for now as I see is first of all to break the silence. There is no much documentation of sexual violence that happened in the camps. Most of the narratives we have been hearing was for abduction and things that happened in captivity but not really what happened in the camps during the conflict. So me I think, step one, that this report is going to do is to share that really sexual violence happened in the camps, the stories.

There are reports I know of what happened… Human Rights Watch indicating this and this, but the narratives from the community indicating that this happened, so I think this report is first of all going to contribute towards that knowledge that during camps, the same people who were supposed to protect the people did this and even at the hands of the community themselves, the women faced this kinds of violation.

(Oryem) I want to close, with a question about the title, My body, A Battlefield. Could you tell us how that title came about?

(Nancy) During one of the discussions we had with the local leaders, one of them mentioned that men suffered in the war but the women suffered using their bodies. During the war it’s their bodies that suffered, and to me that is the statement that stood out for me and that is where we got the title for this book that my body was a battlefield to show how during the war, the battlefield was actually the woman’s body. Women were not taken maybe to be as soldiers. Those who were at the camps were not recruited as mobiles. They were not beaten or made to do hard labor but as soon as she is got, she is raped and that is the kind of punishment that women faced during the conflict. They felt the brunt of the conflict on their bodies. That statement really stood out for me and that is how we got the title of the report.

My Body, A Battlefield: Survivors’ Experiences of Conflict Sexual Violence in Koch Ongako

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My Body, a Battlefield: Survivors' Experiences of Conflict Sexual Violence in Koch Ongako
My Body, A Battlefield: Survivors’ Experiences of Conflict Sexual Violence in Koch Ongako

Sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV), especially in the context of protracted conflict, continues to be one of the least accounted for crimes in Uganda and the world. In January 2013, the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) embarked on a process to document, through storytelling and other participatory methods, the experiences of conflict sexual violence that occurred during more than two decades of conflict between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Koch Ongako, a community in Gulu district, northern Uganda. The purpose of the exercise was to document and acknowledge these violations and their long-term consequences on the lives of male and female victims and the community in which they live, to help survivors come to terms with the past, and to inform policies and processes to provide redress and accountability. It is envisaged that this document shall inform and feed into national processes for transitional justice (TJ), both in terms substance and the participatory process used to engage victims.

Download this publication here: My Body, A Battlefield 2015-12-01(pdf)