Some of the Basongora Women’s Group. Photo: John Lampen.
Peacebuilding in Uganda
John Lampen describes the valuable work being done by the Rwenzori Peace Bridge of Reconciliation in Rwenzori Mountains.
Peace has to be made (by agreement between the parties in conflict), kept (by the legal system, police, monitors, village elders, clergy and others) and built. Peacebuilding is the slowest part, often almost invisible, as group attitudes change, old grudges dissolve, and young people learn the skills of resolving problems. Visiting the Rwenzori mountains annually over the last fourteen years, I have seen marked changes in this war-torn region, as our small group of committed people works together to make the future different from the past, and many others learn to trust them and support their efforts.
Quaker Peace and Service first sent me in 1998 to work with the Ugandan Fellowship of Reconciliation. Their trainers took me to Kasese District in the west, on the Congo border, to meet a group of women, who became the core of a local branch called Rwenzori Peace Bridge of Reconciliation (RPBR). Several women had to leave the meeting early because news came that insurgent guerrillas were raiding their village, and they were afraid for their children.
The attackers were from the ADF, an insurgent group whose tactics resembled the better-known Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, abducting and enslaving children, raiding and burning villages, and placing landmines to deny the mountain farmers the use of their land. Fortunately, this war ended in 2003, but RPBR is still extremely active, and I have helped them as a consultant, trainer and fundraiser ever since. My local meeting, Stourbridge, supports the work and in 2008 Central England Area Meeting offered oversight.
RPBR works to reduce conflict at family, village and tribal levels. It is a network of women’s groups, school peace clubs, farmers’ co-operatives, literacy projects, and clubs for teenage girls who are not in school. Friends in Britain give the central office about £5000 annually for salaries, office and vehicle expenses. This year we found the money to replace their ageing car with an off-road vehicle. The member groups are self-financing (except for one project, which I helped to start, the Ibanda Literacy Schools). RPBR organises training events in conflict handling from domestic violence to community disputes, human rights and access to the law, and strategies for group organisation. Its experienced mediators can help with problems beyond the skill of the village mediators.
Respect is growing for RPBR among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Uganda because it achieves impressive results on a small budget, and reaches deeper into the rural and mountain communities than most. Its main activities since my last visit have been in providing human rights education, training paralegal workers in the village communities, and supporting the growing number of trained community mediators. They held one conference for delegates from the school peace clubs, and another, in which I took part, for our clubs for teenage girls not in school. We invited a nurse/midwife to come in to answer the girls’ questions, and they were also addressed by the women’s MP for the district.
Three other scenes are especially vivid in my memory. Two years ago there was a violent dispute in one area between the majority community, who are agriculturalists, and the Basongora, a small and reclusive tribe who are cattle-keepers with a different language and culture. Their traditional grazing lands and water supply were being taken over by the cultivators. RPBR helped to mediate this and set up a consultation process to prevent future violence. On my visit I was delighted to find that the Basongora Women’s Group and members of another disadvantaged small tribe had both joined the RPBR network. I helped to lead listening workshops with each group. The Basongora women presented a drama to show their side of the conflict, and we discussed the roots of the problem.
The second was a training session with Kaminyawindi Progressive Students’ Association, a small peace club of children in a village we reached by motorbike up narrow paths. We played conflict-solving games together and did a dramatic exercise called ‘the fire in the village’, which emphasises the need to work together to solve problems. It is a sign of the energy of RPBR members and local people that they have founded so many small and faraway groups to carry our message of constructive conflict handling.
The third was a group of policemen, including three senior officers, who asked for a training in ‘handling complex situations’ – those incidents where the rule-book and usual procedures do not give guidance. They shared some fascinating stories of handling some very difficult situations, usually with great sensitivity. We drew out the underlying principles, and looked at why things sometimes go wrong. Police often find it difficult to share at such a personal level with outsiders, and indeed some of the junior officers had never heard these stories before. The request attested to the growing credibility of RPBR, and we were glad that they seemed very satisfied.
