POLITICS-UGANDA:
UN Official Takes the Temperature of the Peace Process
Joyce Mulama
NAIROBI, Sep 12 (IPS) - Efforts to bring peace to northern Uganda have been highlighted over recent days during a visit to Africa by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland.
For two decades, the region has been gripped by conflict between government forces and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel movement that wishes to establish an administration based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
Thousands of lives have been lost in the fighting, while the LRA has also achieved notoriety for its human rights abuses - notably the abduction of children to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves. U.N. estimates put the number of children kidnapped since the start of the war at about 25,000.
Addressing journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi Tuesday, at the end of his eight-day trip, Egeland repeated a call made earlier in his visit for women and children still held by the LRA to be freed.
"We advocate for the release of the women and children…We will do all we can to help the women and child soldiers as they arrive at the assembly points," he said (Egeland is also the U.N's Emergency Relief Co-ordinator). This was in reference to centres established in southern Sudan where rebel fighters are expected to assemble, as negotiators from Uganda's government and the LRA continue the latest talks aimed at ending the conflict.
The talks have been taking place in the south Sudanese capital of Juba, under the mediation of the government of southern Sudan. Discussions began over two months ago and are now set to resume, with Ugandan officials and rebels having reached a truce in August.
In the course of his trip, Egeland visited Juba, apparently in a bid to give renewed impetus to the peace negotiations. While there, he met the president of south Sudan (and vice-president of Sudan), Salva Kiir; the vice-president of southern Sudan, Riek Machar; and representatives from Uganda's government and the LRA - including deputy rebel leader Vincent Otti.
Sudan's involvement in Uganda's northern war dates back more than a decade, when the Khartoum government began supporting the LRA in response to Uganda's backing of south Sudanese rebels. The Sudanese civil war came to an end early last year.
Egeland also spent a night at a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in the Gulu district of northern Uganda, where he held talks with persons forced from their homes about the difficulties they are facing - and their hopes for the peace process.
Disease and malnutrition are rife in the IDP camps, which house close to two million Ugandans displaced by conflict.
The war has also created what are termed "night communters": thousands of children who walk to towns, where they spent the night in streets and church compounds in an effort to avoid abduction by the LRA.
However, the relative peace following last month's truce has seen the number of night commuters reduced from a peak of 40,000 to 10,000 in the towns of Gulu, Kitgum and Kalongo says Martin Mogwanja: representative in Uganda of the United Nations Children’s Fund.
"Those who are still coming in are fleeing not from fear of abduction but social problems, such as overcrowding," he told IPS.
The improved situation in northern Uganda notwithstanding, there is apprehension about the peace process - not least that indictments by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against LRA leader Joseph Kony, Otti, and three other rebel commanders could jeopardise negotiations.
The five have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity - and warrants of arrest have been issued for them. However, reports indicate that the commanders have made a final peace deal contingent on the ICC lifting the indictments.
There are also indications that some in northern Uganda favour the use of traditional systems of justice to make LRA members accountable for their conduct during the war.
But, Egeland maintained that the ICC indictments must be allowed to proceed: "The notion that indictment will stop the peace process is wrong…justice must be served, and in a way that will not block peace or reconciliation."
He has also noted that Uganda's government has rights abuses to answer for in northern Uganda, a charge echoed by a Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group.
"The Ugandan military has failed to protect civilian populations not only from the LRA but also from its own troops, who have in some cases been the major source of insecurity in the camps (for internally displaced persons)," said the group in a briefing issued in January, titled 'A Strategy for Ending Northern Uganda's Crisis'.
"It must redeploy in ways that prioritise protection, and the government should try any soldiers accused of human rights abuses and punish them appropriately if they are found guilty."
Egeland's visit also took him to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he reportedly spoke out against the violence towards women and girls that has characterised conflict in this country - as well as in Uganda. (END/2006)
Send your comments to the editor |
