A call to actionThe countries of the Great Lakes Region of Africa are faced with a daunting range of interconnected challenges, including a need for justice and reconciliation, armed conflicts that either continue unchecked or threaten to resurface, the crises of refugees and internally displaced people, tenuously stable governments, and tensions that cross the borders of countries, religions, and ethnicities. The governments, both local and national, are unable or at times unwilling to address all of these challenges and certainly cannot do so alone. Resources are often scarce or only intermittently available.
Religions for Peace’s Conflict Transformation program in the region began in June 2002 at the request of religious leaders in Burundi and DR Congo and representatives of national inter-religious groups in Rwanda and Uganda. Since that time, the inter-religious councils have become self-sustaining advocates and activists for peace. Women of faith have been involved in all trainings and are taking an increasingly active role in the IRCs’ conflict programs.
Religious leaders and communities, often among the more influential and trusted local groups, have already been taking an active and important role in reconciliation processes and the building of confidence and trust between communities. They have collaborated to advance the Gacaca process in Rwanda, engaged in inter-faith solidarity visits to conflict-torn regions of DR Congo, addressed the post-trauma needs of their communities, and taken many other steps to build peace.
Religions for Peace has facilitated trauma healing trainings with inter-religious councils (IRCs) in Rwanda and DR Congo and participating religious leaders are now using those trauma healing techniques in their own communities. In Uganda, an advocacy project focusing on the conflict in the South has led to more understanding of the impact of the conflict in the North, especially on the part of influential religious leaders. In Burundi, the very existence of an IRC and its cooperative actions have reduced stereotyping between the constituent communities and provided a model for unity and reconciliation.
The IRCs continue to be active agents in improving security in their communities, building confidence between groups and across borders, advancing justice and reconciliation and working to prevent further conflict.
The Inter-religious Council of Uganda’s peacebuilding program activities include training the Peace and Conflict Resolution Committee to work on advocacy and media, completing a strategic-planning workshop, and implementing a strong advocacy program to end the violent conflict.
Religions for Peace participated in an advocacy workshop in Gulu with religious leaders from Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. The 2004 workshop allowed the leaders to share experiences and perceptions of conflict in order to shape a joint advocacy strategy and frame practical ways of strengthening solidarity between the two communities.
The workshop participants noted that the 18-year conflict has resulted in the loss of lives, abduction and use of children as soldiers, breakdown of social and moral fabric, displacement of civilians, sexual violence, growing rate of HIV/AIDS infection, proliferation of small arms and light weapons in the region, and increased ethnic tensions within Uganda and Sudan. The participants called for enhanced, coordinated and effective regional and international responses to resolving the conflict in Northern Uganda, and they appealed to the warring parties to pursue a peaceful political solution to the conflict.
