1 Introduction
1. In February 2006 some members of the International
Development Committee visited Uganda as part of our inquiry into
Conflict and Development: peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.[1]
We went to Uganda because its Government had been engaged in a
conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north for
the last 20 years, but was making good progress in its poverty
reduction programmes in the rest of the country. We met officials
and Government ministers in Kampala and visited two Internally
Displaced Person (IDP) camps in Gulu district. At the time there
was an improvement in the security situation as a result of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan which formally ended the
civil conflict in the south and deprived the LRA of their safe
haven there. We were told that the LRA had moved recently to eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo, itself a conflict-affected area.
2. In our report we noted poor conditions in the
IDP camps, where 1.7 million Ugandans lived, including high rates
of infant mortality, and a general unwillingness to return to
villages despite some improvement in the security situation. We
commented on the cost, borne largely by the international donor
community, of running the IDP camps—US$200 million a year—and
questioned whether the Government of Uganda should be doing more
in this regard. We also questioned whether, in providing this
level of ongoing funding, the international community was providing
a disincentive for the Government of Uganda to seek an urgent
resolution to the conflict.
3. Throughout the 20 years of the conflict there
have been many attempts at ending it through negotiation and by
military means. None has been successful. However, soon after
our visit the Juba Peace Talks, brokered by the Government of
Southern Sudan, began. These talks have been seen by many as the
best chance for a number of years to achieve peace. In the context
of these Peace Talks we decided to return to this issue and to
assess the prospects for sustainable peace in Uganda.
4. This report is structured as follows: Chapter
2 looks at the peace negotiation process beginning with the Government
of Uganda's referral to the International Criminal Court and then
assesses the Juba Peace Talks. Chapter 3 focuses on how best to
build and sustain peace and development across Uganda in the aftermath
of the conflict. Because this is a Ugandan conflict it is important
that the solutions and the post-conflict reconstruction process
should be Ugandan-owned. However the international community also
has a role to play, working alongside Ugandans, in helping to
ensure that the peace negotiations succeed and that sufficient
resources—human, technical and financial—are directed
at re-development of the north so that the conflict does not recur.
Our recommendations are therefore directed primarily at what the
UK Government and the wider donor community should do in delivering
their shared responsibilities for development.
5. We are grateful to those who gave oral evidence
to the Committee: Gareth Thomas MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State, Department for International Development (DFID), Meg
Munn MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO), Eric Hawthorn, Head of DFID Uganda, Robin Gwynn,
Head of Africa Department (Equatorial), FCO, Barney Afako, a human
rights lawyer, Marieke Wierda, of the International Centre for
Transitional Justice and Nick Grono from the International Crisis
Group. We also held informal discussions with a group of visiting
northern Ugandan representatives: Rwot David Onen Acana II, Rebecca
Amuge MP, and Michael Otim and Geoffrey Okello from the Gulu
District NGO Forum. We are grateful to them for the opportunity
to exchange views. In addition we would like to thank the individuals
and organisations who sent us written submissions, all of which
contributed to the inquiry.
1 International Development Committee, Sixth Report
of Session 2005-06, Conflict and Development: peacebuilding
and post-conflict reconstruction, HC 923. Back
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