GULU, 11 March 2011 (VoM) – Behind closed doors, Northern Uganda is referred to as “the place that God forgot”. Over the past two decades, a rebel movement, The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has unleashed brutal violence on the local population. Under the command of the rebels, mother has been forced against daughter, nephew against uncle, and neighbour against neighbour. Untold thousands of civilians have been raped, felled by machetes and claimed by bullets.
In addition, approximately two million people – roughly 80% of the total population of Northern Uganda – have been displaced and herded into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Upon captivity, young boys have been forcefully indoctrinated and turned into child soldiers, and young girls into sex objects for the warlords. The twenty-year insurgency that started in 1986 has been characterised in international humanitarian circles as “one of the world’s most forgotten crises.”
Today, the war that started in Uganda has spilled over to neighbouring countries: Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Joseph Kony is still on the run, but a semblance of calm has returned to Northern Uganda.
In a bid to foster peace, the Government of Uganda has on several occasions offered amnesty to the rebels. In exchange for laying their arms down, the ex-combatants are being given full pardon for all crimes committed and have been allowed to come back home. This process, known as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) has seen many rebels return home. In some circles, this acronym is extended to include another “R” that stands for an additional component known as ‘Rehabilitation’: DDRR.
Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) in Africa
According to Ernest Harsch of Africa Renewal, one of the leading analytical magazines on the socio-economic challenges facing Africa: “DDR programs across Africa show that reintegration is a complex and long-term process. It is fraught with difficulties and depends on the success of wider efforts at economic recovery and political reconciliation.”
The process of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration is not a new phenomenon in Africa. Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Angola are some of the countries that have rolled out DDR programs similar to the one being run in Northern Uganda. Each of their programs was met with some challenges and Uganda’s DDR program is also experiencing bottlenecks.
The scramble for limited resources
Following the Government’s amnesty, the combatants in Northern Uganda have been returning home in droves. As the ex-combatants reintegrate into society, they continue to face several psycho-social and economic challenges that include stigmatisation, heavy reliance on food aid, endemic poverty, and ongoing trauma related to the war. According to a report commissioned by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, these challenges are often made by worse by limited economic opportunities and low standards of education.
The return of the ex-combatants is coinciding with the return of thousands of displaced Ugandans from crowded IDP camps where they have been living for the last two decades. The internally displaced persons started moving back home in September 2007 after the Ugandan government began closing down camps. This mass influx of returnees has served to exacerbate the smooth reintegration of the ex-combatants, who are now being forced to join in squandering for the meager resources that are available to the local population. One such meager resource is land.
In a recent article published by IRIN, a news agency that provides in-depth analysis of humanitarian developments around the world, it was reported that owing to the large number of returnees, disputes over land in Northern Uganda are escalating. An explosive situation is in the offing with clan turning against clan in a frantic effort to mark their territory. Charles Obwoya, a local resident who was attacked in December last year by members of a rival clan asserted to IRIN: “Here you have to be armed with a spear or machetes because you can’t predict what can happen at any moment.”
Situations like this can in many instances work against the success of a DDR program. Massimo Fusato, a researcher at the University of Colorado and the author of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants says, “After ex-combatants have been demobilized, their effective and sustainable reintegration into civilian life is necessary to prevent a new escalation of the conflict. In the short term, ex-combatants who do not find peaceful ways of making a living are likely to return to conflict. In the longer term, disaffected veterans can play an important role in destabilizing the social order and polarizing the political debate, becoming easy targets of populist, reactionary, and extremist movements.”
Not ‘DD’ plus ‘R’
According to Mr. Francis Kai-Kai, former head of Sierra Leone’s national DDR committee, “DDR should not just be ‘DD plus R’ with reintegration as an afterthought, but a continuous, integrated process. You don’t just focus on men and weapons, but on their futures as well.”
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Region: Africa, East Africa, Uganda
Theme(s): Migration, DDR(R), Post-conflict reconstruction, IDPs
The author is a humanitarian analyst and she writes on migration. Email her on: msanyu@yahoo.com
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