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 Ongakocame about.
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.
