DanChurchAid
Uganda
How to sustain peace?
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Church of Uganda-ACT
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| People living in camps for the displaced in Kitgum queue to receive food and other items. |
Source: By Esther Harder, ACT International
Ask Pastor Sam Eibu, a peace worker for the Church of Uganda, whether he prefers sitting at his office desk to getting his shoes dusty in a village, and he will not hesitate in his answer: “When we are going to sustain peace, we need to go to the communities.”
Eibu works in Soroti, a small city in northern Uganda, a region that has known little peace for the last two decades. As many as two million people have been forced from their homes by violent attacks from the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), causing immense suffering and instability. The civil conflict, simmering for a generation, has created an atmosphere of tension and insecurity among people.
Church of Uganda addressing the immediate needs
It is in this context that the Church of Uganda (CoU), a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, has been working to address the immediate needs for food, shelter and other material items for people forced from their homes and living in makeshift camps in the region. But with a longer-term perspective, CoU has also been working to train people at the grassroots level in creating peace.
Eibu has transferred his charge to interact with communities in seeking peace over to the Amuria peace promoters (PPs) he trained early in 2005. The PPs have taken his advice personally and have persisted in their conflict mediation and data collection within their home communities.
Many of the PPs report that their neighbors in the Alere, Amilimil, Amusus, and Willa parishes of the CoU are supportive of their work. Community members are beginning to trust the skills of the PPs and are learning to seek them out, especially for conflicts that are not being solved through traditional means.
An analysis of data for one month in mid-2005 showed that miscommunication and land disputes topped the list of conflict types in terms of frequency in all four parishes.
At times, the peace promoters refer the more difficult conflicts to the CoU’s peace department; they are encouraged to do so. The frequency of requests for help has continued to diminish as the months have passed and as the PPs gain experience. Now, more reports to the peace department are containing explanations of how PPs have been able to resolve conflicts themselves within the communities they are working with.
In similar ways, CoU will continue to provide training in peace building under the recently issued ACT appeal - Assistance to IDPs in Northern Uganda (AFUG 61) - which is a continuation of the response of the last few years by the ACT members in Uganda, which also includes The Lutheran World Federation-Uganda.
With the support it receives through the new 2006 appeal, CoU plans to hold peace-training workshops for representatives from camps for displaced people in the Kitgum, Pader, Gulu, Lira and Apac districts of Northern Uganda. Upon returning to their camps, these representatives will share what they have learned with others in their camp.
From its earlier peace-building efforts, CoU has many success stories.
Spreading peace
The vision for peace promotion of CoU’s Pastor Eibu within the cluster of CoU dioceses he works with is to target the border areas where conflict has been greatest. He knows the decades-long civil conflict in the broader region of Northern Uganda cannot be ended by the CoU alone, but he knows peace must be planted in small ways – in individual communities – where it will hopefully grow and spread.
Esther Harder is the information officer for the Church of Uganda, a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.
DanChurchAid is a member of ACT International - a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies.
