Author	Hans van de Veen
Publication	Searching for Peace in Africa
Year	2000

Summary

Under the Idi Amin, Milton Obote and Tito Okello regimes, Uganda had a long history of civil conflict and gross human rights violations, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Out of seven major political changes since its independence in 1962, four ended in large-scale bloodshed. However, a period of political stabilisation and economic recovery started when the National Resistance Army (NRA) marched into Kampala in 1986. Since that moment, Uganda has shed its shameful reputation for state violence and the government has succeeded in stabilising and pacifying large parts of the country. Of the more than twenty armed groups active in the 1980s, only a handful have survived to continue their armed struggle.
President Museveni has been hailed as the architect of Uganda's successful recovery. Uganda had gradually become one of Africa's most hopeful examples of reform, boasting growth rates of seven per cent or more, year after year. In the beginning of 1998 a confident Museveni told journalists: 'There isn't anything we can't solve. The big problems are behind us.' Today, however, it looks as though he may have spoken too soon.
The humming economy has started to sputter, the army is fighting deep in the Congo, tourists and many more local people have been attacked and killed and bombs have exploded in the capital, Kampala. Uganda's much vaunted political stability is looking shaky, and confidence in president Museveni and his government has taken a serious knock.
Several observers regard the decision to send some 15,000 troops into the Congo in 1998 in support of a rebellion against Museveni's erstwhile prodigy, president Laurent Kabila, as a major error. 'Launching one rebellion in the Congo in 1996 looked audacious, launching a second was foolhardy', The Economist magazine argued (May 1, 1999). The attempt by Uganda and Rwanda to topple Kabila by flying hundreds of troops and rebels across the Congo to attack the capital, Kinshasa, ended in disaster. The rebellion drew little support on that side of the country. The intervention also brought most neighbour countries into the war on Kabila's side.
The Ugandan government argues that it is forced to keep troops in the Congo because the Kinshasa regime encourages Ugandan rebel groups to infiltrate Uganda's and Rwanda's western border from eastern Congo. This may be a valid argument, however, the western border remains insecure. Hundreds of civilians and security personnel have lost their lives since the beginning of 2000.
In Kampala, rebels have carried out some twenty bomb attacks in the past years, killing some 45 people. In the north, war against the messianic LRA is going on. As yet, the government has failed to crush it militarily or to find a political solution. This war is also fuelled by Uganda's foreign adventurism; the LRA as well as other rebel groups in the country are helped by Sudan in retaliation for Ugandan support of rebel groups in South Sudan.
Today, most Ugandans - forty per cent of whom are categorised by the UN as living in poverty - are unhappy at the cost of the wars. More worrying for the government is the fact that aid donors - who pay more than half of the government's running costs - are losing sympathy with the regime. While Uganda in 1998 qualified as the first country to profit from an international debt-reduction scheme (HIPC), the IMF in March 1999 delayed a US$18m loan because of the increased defence spending.
After holding power for longer than any other Ugandan leader, Museveni's popularity seems to be waning among the population. From a minority group in the south-west, he fought his way into power in 1986 with a popular, well-organised guerrilla movement. He promised democratisation but retained military control. At the same time, he set up a broad government based on his 'Movement', although it also included opposition leaders. The old political parties were not banned; they were, however, prevented from operating. Arguing that first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all democracy exacerbates religious and ethnic tensions in Africa, the Ugandan government introduced a 'no-party system'.
Museveni was elected in 1996 for a five year term, in elections that were peaceful and orderly. Since then, the government's base has narrowed and critics argue that the 'Movement' now looks more like a one-party affair. Pressure has built up for more democracy and Parliament has proved to be no lap dog. A referendum held in 2000 on whether to retain the no-party system or allow multi-partyism had a mixed result. Although 90 per cent of those who cast ballots chose the Movement, only half of the registered voters turned out. The Movement claimed victory, but so did the restricted political parties, which had called for a referendum boycott. Since then, the debate on whether to allow political parties to operate has not been silenced.
The presidential election in early 2001, is seen by many observers to be even more important for the future of the country than the referendumon whether to retain the no-party system or allow multi-partyism. In the meantime, constitutional changes have been introduced to guarantee greater degrees of participation and transparency at local levels, based on districts and village councils. Observers agree that this decentralisation of power has provided a degree of stability by contributing to security, improving the infrastructure, helping settle disputes and initiating small self-help projects, although with considerable regional variation.

Conflict Dynamics

Uganda has a total of 56 ethnic groups. In an attempt to accommodate ethnic sentiments, the government has permitted the re-establishment of traditional monarchies. However, the 'if-people-so-wish' clause in the monarchic restoration bill prevented the Ankole people for instance from recreating their kingdom, due to ethnic sentiments. It remains an open question if ethnic disputes can be accommodated via re-establishing kingdoms.
The north-south division remains an important factor in Ugandan politics. After some twenty years of rule by northern ethnic groups, the NRA-victory in 1986 meant that for the first time southern ethnic groups took state power.
The government has been accused of amassing wealth in the south and the west at the expense of Nilotic ethnic groups in the north. Northerners claim they suffered more than the rest of the country when the World Bank demanded a reduction of Uganda's public service. The majority of the remaining state-owned companies are headed by people from around Museveni's home area. The Museveni-regime has also failed to prevent persistent human rights abuses by the army in the northern region.
The Holy Spirit Movement first became active in the north-western region in 1986. In 1989 it was replaced by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, which operates from Sudan and is actively supported by the Sudanese government. The LRA's stated goal is to rule Uganda on the basis of the ten biblical commandments. Although the LRA claims it has a political agenda and aims to overthrow the government, its support base seems too limited. Most Acholi people in the region are opposed to the violence employed by the LRA. Since 1994, the LRA has been able to increase its strength to about 2,000 men. When it allied itself with the West Nile Bank Front in 1994, the Ugandan government began cross border operations in Sudan giving the conflict a regional dimension.
In 1997, the army had 20,000 soldiers deployed in the northern part of the country along the border with Sudan in order to combat the LRA. This represents nearly half of the army's personnel. Escalation of the conflict over the past two years has resulted in the displacement of some 300,000-400,000 people, around fifty per cent of the population of Kitgum and Gulu districts. According to Amnesty International, up to 10,000 boys and girls have been abducted in the past few years. Children have reportedly become the main source of recruitment for the various rebel operations in Uganda. The high level of insecurity has had a devastating impact on the health and education systems in the northern districts.
The Western Nile Bank Front sprang from a number of Amin loyalists active in the 1980s. When Museveni came to power, several guerrillas regrouped in Sudan and offered their services to the Sudanese regime. In 1993, the group was reactivated and dedicated itself to exacting revenge for Uganda's activities in southern Sudan. It suffered severe losses in 1995. After further reorganisation and being resupplied by the Sudanese government it made an alliance with the LRA. In 1997 the Front's forces reportedly were depleted by combat in southern Sudan. In February 1998, the Ugandan army also reported a string of successes against the organisation. However, a few months later the Front began new incursions from bases in the DRC. New activities of another small armed opposition group, the Ugandan National Rescue Front, have also been reported in the north-west.
The north-east of the country is inhabited by the Karamojong pastoralists, a marginalised minority of about 100,000 people. Since the Karamojong acquired automatic weapons the region has become a virtual no-go area. The area is suffering from environmental degradation and is periodically struck by famine. The military has been involved in regular punishment expeditions in the fight again cattle-raiding. Vigilantes have taken the law into their own hands, resulting in a breakdown of law and order. Guns are plentiful and gangs have terrorised the local population. An estimated 30,000 illegal weapons are in circulation which are used to rustle cattle and ambush and raid vehicles. These raids extend across the borders into Kenya and Sudan and on numerous occasions have provoked serious incidents with neighbouring countries.
When militant muslims extended their activities, the Ugandan authorities called on sheik Luwemba to help stop the development. Luwemba condemned the so-called Tabliqs and ordered the destruction of two mosques thought to be headquarters of the extremists. In 1995, the government ordered an operation against a training camp in the Halkum Kaira region. Several hundred guerrillas were killed or captured. The Islamic terrorist threat still exists. The strength of the Tabliqs is estimated at about 400 men. In 1995, a new branch of the Tabliqs appeared under the name of the Liberation Tigers of Uganda. It is reported to be supported by influential circles in Arab countries. In 1995, Muslim deserters from the army established the Uganda Muslims Salvation Front (UMSF). Following the bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the summer of 1998, Ugandan authorities have stepped up efforts to monitor the activities of Muslims, who in total constitute some ten per cent of the population.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), active in the south-western districts of the country, is held responsible for hundreds of deaths every year since 1997. The ADF, an alliance of Muslim extremists and remnants of defunct rebel groups, has been fighting to destabilise president Yoweri Museveni since 1996. The group has accused Museveni of trying to establish an empire of ethnic Tutsis in the Great Lakes region and of stifling multi-party democracy. Relief agencies working among an estimated 100,000 people displaced by regional insurgency have reduced their activities since the beginning of 2000, citing the violence and direct threats against their organisations by the ADF rebels. The Ugandan State Minister of Defence complained that the rebels appeared to have received new arms from an unknown source. In the meantime a new dynamic of conflict emerged in the DRC, due to a split in the rebel movement in the east, with Uganda and its former ally Rwanda backing different sides.
A major battle took place in July 2000 between the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), resulting in the death of over six hundred troops and civilians. The underlying cause of the conflict that erupted was persistent and serious differences over the objectives and strategies of the war in the DRC. Uganda's strategy has been to mobilise the Congolese people to fight Kabila and empower them to develop an alternative leadership. Rwanda, on the other hand, is under more pressure to overthrow Kabila, who is arming its enemy. The immediate crisis was managed, with the leaders of both countries agreeing on a cease-fire, removing their commanders from the battle ground in Kisangani, reaffirming their commitment to the Lusaka peace agreement. However, the relationship between the two countries has not much improved since.
Uganda recently launched a third rebel movement in the DRC, the MLC in northern Congo, training its soldiers, supplying fuel, ammunition and weapons, and manning the heavy artillery. As a result the MLC has had considerable success, pushing southwards and westwards towards the capital. It claims to be retaking territory lost to Mr Kabila 's forces since the peace agreement was signed in Lusaka in 1999.

Official Conflict Management

Uganda's growth is highly dependent on foreign donor funding. Despite its political weakness, Uganda is a favoured recipient of Western donors. In the past year, foreign investors and donors have begun to worry about the growing level of corruption and Uganda's involvement in the war in the DRC.
As a sign of the growing corruption, Salim Saleh, Museveni's brother and the second most powerful man in the country, resigned. Salim and other Ugandans have financial interests in the exploitation of gold in Congo DR, which is probably one reason for Uganda's support of the rebel movement. Western donors demanded the government show a stronger political commitment to fight corruption. The demand was made by the World Bank, the IMF, UN agencies, the EU-countries and a number of banks, non-governmental organisations and Asian countries.
A report published in 1997, drawn up by Robert Gersony, an expert in civil conflict, for the US Embassy and USAID, marks the first time a foreign government has endorsed peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA. The US government in particular sees Uganda as an important ally in preventing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Africa, as well as in extending the US sphere of influence. Uganda therefore has received substantial amounts of military aid.
Since 1997 the fact of conflict in northern Uganda, and especially the brutalisation of children by the LRA, has become more widely recognised at the international level. In April 1998 the UN Commission on Human Rights took the unprecedented step of passing a resolution dealing specifically with child abduction by the LRA. The Sudan government has come under pressure from governments and UN officials to take action against human rights abuses by the LRA by stopping the provision of arms supplies and bases for the armed group as long as it continues to abuse human rights. International observers say there is little sign of really significant action by the Sudanese.
The emergence of a de facto military stalemate in the north has resulted in both the government and the rebels taking the first tentative steps towards finding a political solution to the impasse. In February 1998 the LRA proposed a negotiated settlement of the conflict. In July, president Museveni also proposed peace talks. At the end of that year, the Ugandan minister of state for Defence said, during a visit to Kitgum, that the government would help facilitate initiatives by 'anyone' who wanted to talk about peace with the LRA. In May 1999 Museveni offered amnesty to LRA's leader Joseph Kony and his followers, 'if they come out peacefully' and settle in the Ugandan community. In December 1999 parliament finally approved legislation, granting amnesty to rebels operating in the country.
Although these initiatives show some softening of the government in its long-standing position that negotiations with the LRA are out of question, there is still little sign that the government is itself prepared to take the lead in setting-up such a negotiated peace process. There is equally little sign that the LRA would be prepared to respond if it did. The road to peace has proven to be a rocky one and there are hawks on both sides of the divide who are opposed to a negotiated solution. In a surprising move, the governments of Uganda and Sudan signed an agreement in Nairobi on December 8 1999, to stop supporting each other's rebels. However, results of these promises are still not very much visible. In the east the Lusaka Agreement may well be the only unifying factor between the Rwandan and Ugandan leadership at this moment.
The commitment of both countries to the new cease-fire in the DRC, which came into effect on 14 April 2000, and their call for rapid deployment of the UN peacekeeping force, are signs that they are both aware that they cannot win the war unilaterally with an alliance that remains so fragile. If 'Lusaka' is implemented, the military competition may well be transformed into a political struggle between Presidents Museveni and Kagema, to determine the political approach that should prevail in the ultimate resolution of the DRC problem. Political differences, while they carry their risks, are much to be preferred though to trials of military strength.

Multi Track Diplomacy

Domestic
The pro-peace lobby in Uganda is mainly oriented toward the conflict in the north and has gained considerably in strength recently. Local leaders in the north, the churches, NGOs and many others have been making calls in recent years for a negotiated resolution to the war. Students and universities have sponsored wide-ranging political debates in open forums, including an interdisciplinary conference on human rights in the Great Lakes Region at Makarere University in December 1997. In October that year, over 5,000 students marched in the streets of Kampala, urging the government to talk with the rebel groups and end the bloodshed. At the Kacoke Madit in London in July 1998 many exiles strongly opposed to the government spoke out in favour of a negotiated peace. Kacoke Madit strives to be a forum of all Acholi people to develop strategies, exchange views and implement the most practical and effective means of ending the armed conflict in northern Uganda.
Ugandan church leaders have also urged the government to stop seeking a military solution to the conflict and talk with the guerrillas instead. The call was made during a 'Peace March and Prayer' in October 1998, which was attended by 10,000 people. The event was organised by the Interfaith Peace Initiative (IPPI), including the Catholic Church's Peace and Justice Commission and the Uganda Joint Christian Council. Earlier in the year, the Church leaders had bowed to pressure from Museveni to postpone the demonstration, because it was too close to a parliamentary resolution which called for stepped up military operations. The October demonstration was explicitly organised as a non-political event. Politicians who attended the peace march and prayer explained that they did so in their individual capacities. The government chose to stay away and was charged by some participants with indifference.
The Church of Uganda conducts a Peace and Human Rights Programme, which started in the north and north-east but has been extended to west-Uganda. Several peace and human rights training sessions to raise the consciousness of civil society have been conducted. The Planning, Development and Rehabilitation Department of the CoU is associated with Responding To Conflict, based in Birmingham, UK, and works closely with Action by Churches Together (ACT) in Geneva.
A community peace-building programme in the Gulu district in northern Uganda is run by the NGO People's Voice for Peace. Here, trainers in conflict resolution help victims to cope with conflict and to build peace. Support for income-generating activities is part of the programme. The coordination of the community peace-building activities is being done through its Peace and Oral Research and Testimony Documentation Centre. Networking and collaboration with other peace actors within the civil society (local groups, churches, social movements, and traditional institutions) is seen by PVP as essential. Presently the Gulu-based organisation is expanding its activities to neighbouring districts, due to the high demand especially in the area of support to women victims of war.
Under its Popular Human Rights Education project, the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) has made several interventions aimed at the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the country. In July 1997 it organised a three-day conference at the Gulu District Council Hall on the conflict in northern Uganda.
Yamii Ya Kupatanisha (JYAK) is the Ugandan branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR). It has set up the Gulu Vocational Community Centre for boys and girls. Many of the pupils are returnees from Sudan who had been abducted by LRA rebels. At the Gulu Centre, they are offered vocational training and peace education is also part of the programme. JYAK is also preparing trainers for peace initiatives at the individual and community level. The organisation emphasises the role of youth and women as peacekeepers.
A number of NGOs have begun trauma counselling programmes for the children caught up in the conflict. The Concerned Parents of Abducted Children (CPAC), for example, have worked with UNICEF and the church in Uganda to get their children back. The CPAC campaigns nationally and internationally for the release of the children and draws attention to the plight of all children in Uganda caught up in war. In December 1998 Angelina Acheng Atyem, a member of the organisation, won the UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights.
The Centre for Conflict Prevention is an Uganda-based NGO seeking alternative and creative means of preventing, managing and resolving conflicts. The Centre trains key figures and professionals in conflict prevention and resolution skills, besides other skills like community development, office management and decision-making. The trainees are encouraged to transmit the same skills to people in the community and workplace in turn. Many of the trainers are women who held influential positions in society. The Centre also provides counselling services to traumatised children and young people.
ACORD Uganda has been running extensive programs in the north for at least a decade. In March 1997 it organised a two-day conference in Kampala on conflict resolution in the north, with a host of national and regional invitees. Uganda has a wide variety of NGOs operating in the country. They are obliged to register with the Nongovernmental Organisations Board. NGOs thought to be opposed to the government have sometimes had difficulties in obtaining their registration.
Numerous human rights groups are active in Uganda, including the FHI, the Uganda chapter of FIDA; the UPAF, which monitors prison conditions; the national Organisation for Civic Education and Election Monitoring, which deals with problems related to civil society and political rights; Human Rights Focus; the National Association of Women's Organisations of Uganda (NAWOU); the Human Rights and Peace Centre, HURINET, Ugandan Human Rights Education and Documentation Centre (UHEDOC), Amnesty International and the National Association of Women Judges of Uganda (NAWJ).
The Uganda Human Rights Commission, a permanent independent body established by the Constitution, has begun a number of investigations of human rights abuses and has participated in NGO conferences and seminars. In Amnesty International's view the UHRC has an important and potentially powerful role to play in respect of human rights in the northern area. 'It could fulfil the need for a vigorous, independent body with the capacity to follow up reports of human rights abuses in order to ensure that action is taken.' AI recommended the opening of UHRC offices in the northern area.

International
Between 1996-1997 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conducted its Action programme on Skills and Entrepreneurship Training for Countries Emerging from Armed Conflict in Uganda. Several re-integration activities for ex-combatants and their families were sponsored. All of them included young people affected by conflict. Several programmes combined economic activities with peace education, based on the conviction that when young people have alternative sources of income they are less likely to be recruited into the army or join rebel forces as an occupation. Specific programmes were run by the Volunteers in Overseas Activities (VOCA), the Mennonite Central Committee, DANIDA, USAID, World Vision Uganda, World Learning Incorporated and Heifer Project International. Amongst the Ugandan counterparts were the Ugandan government, the Uganda Veterans Assistance Board (UVAB), CECORE, and the Gulu Vocational and Community Centre.
Since the international recognition of the northern Uganda conflict, and specifically the brutalisation of children by the LRA, several organisations have intervened. In particular, trauma counselling programmes for the children caught up in the conflict have been set up. Donors find these kind of programmes attractive because they do not require expensive infrastructure costs, have a limited running time, are easy to set up and use a language that the Western audiences are familiar with. Consequently it is easy to attract funding.
Recently, representatives of some Ugandan NGOs have questioned the effectiveness of these programmes. They claim that responding to an African conflict with Western psychiatric care is inappropriate. Programmes should, in their opinion, concentrate on enabling people to leave behind the past and get on with their life, and should therefore concentrate on rebuilding houses, and getting markets and trading going again.
The Nairobi Peace Initiative, the all-African peace resolution group, is helping to set up networks of peace advocates in the Great Lakes region. There is one such network in Uganda.

Prospects

Rising inequality and a growing urban-rural gap combined with continuing high levels of insecurity in many parts of the country are an explosive mix that could re-ignite a civil war. Museveni's government has been explaining that the fighting in the north is about to finish for so long that few people believe this any more. According to the Relief and Rehabilitation Network (Nov. 1997), 'Privately, government officials admit that the Ugandan people's Defence Forces profit from the war, that corruption has removed much of the donor money given for the north and the merchants there benefit too'. 'It looks like another case of the phenomenon identified by David Keen in the 'Benefits of Famine' - enough people do well out of the war that it continues until there is nothing left.'
There are no signs that the military has the capacity or commitment to bring the war to a conclusion through military means. The government has not shown itself very willing to initiate peace talks. It has assured its critics that talks are under way with the LRA, despite its commitment to a military solution in the north. Neither has it reacted to foreign endorsements of peace talks. The violence has yet to reach a level which endangers the survival of the government. Worsening relations with neighbouring countries may further destabilise the region.
How the situation in the south-west will develop depends largely on whether peace will be restored in the neighbouring DRC. If so, it should be possible to control the activities of the relatively small groups operating in the border area. A clear sign of Uganda's eagerness to find a solution for the Congo crisis was the April '99 agreement in Libya, in which it agreed to pull out its troops.
The outcome of the attempt to create a greater degree of democracy without allowing political parties on a national level, is difficult to predict. There is much speculation inside Uganda as to whether president Museveni will allow the referendum to go ahead in 2000. However, the president has repeatedly said that he intends to push ahead with the referendum, adding that he might leave political life afterwards. This in turn raises the question of his successor. What are the prospects for conflict resolution in Uganda in the absence of such a flawed but also larger than life character who has dominated the political scene in Uganda and the immediate region for so long?

Recommendations

Robert Gersony, the American researcher who wrote an extensive report about the situation in the north in 1997, formulated some recommendations. He argued that the moment was opportune for a resumption of negotiations. In earlier stages of the conflict direct talks had been possible with the involvement of the parties which contributed to a mitigation of the violence. New talks should therefore again be arranged without intermediaries. Gersony expected that negotiations between the two sides would enjoy a great degree of support among the Acholi people because it is a conflict without a constituency or a beneficial purpose.
Gersony argued further that there are several Ugandan organisations that are well placed and in some cases eager to support the peace and reconciliation process. Within the leadership of both parties there will be elements who will oppose such a process. This will remain a significant obstacle. The international community should actively encourage the resumption of the negotiations. A greater degree of attention to the conflict and the negotiation process could have a positive effect.
To overcome another obstacle to the peace process, Gersony recommended the establishment of an independent, impartial, authoritative international Panel of Inquiry. This panel would investigate incidents of large-scale human rights violations in order to end the confusion over the identity of the party responsible for these incidents. Once the obstacles to the negotiations have been removed and the peace process gets under way, international donors should be prepared to provide rapid economic assistance specifically designed and targeted to accelerate post-conflict rehabilitation, reconstruction and economic reactivation in the north. Gersony recommended that donors should consider at an early stage what type of assistance they might provide to support the consolidation of peace should talks succeed, and described a series of options.

Hussein Solomon, working with the South African based NGO ACCORD has argued ('Prospects for Peace in Northern Uganda', in the organisation's magazine Conflict Trends, Oct. 1998) for a three step approach to facilitate a peaceful settlement to the conflict in the north. In the first instance, he wonders if there is a chance to transform the LRA into a political entity: 'This would give the LRA a stake in any new political dispensation, and if that dispensation also incorporated an element of federalism for the Acholi people of northern Uganda, all the better.'
'Second, both sides need to utilise the positive energies of civil society, both inside and outside Uganda, to assist the process of dialogue and reconciliation. For instance, the Acholi elders have expressed their preparedness to peacefully reintegrate LRA combatants into their communities.' This suggestion is in line with previous Ugandan experience, which suggests the importance of involving civil society at many levels, including traditional leaders, business and exiles (as in the Kacoke Madit).
Finally, Solomon agrees with Gersony, 'the success of the peace process is also dependent upon the support of the international community at the level of post-conflict reconstruction. Peace, after all, is a meaningless concept, in the context of socio-economic deprivation, which in many instances is the root cause of the conflict.' The International Crisis Group has analysed the dangerous split between former allies Uganda and Rwanda and recommended the two parties to analyse the clashes in Kisangani, conduct a summit between both presidents, and institutionalise better channels of communication between political leaders, organisations and institutions in both countries, and technical co-operation between ministries.

Service Information

NEWSLETTERS AND PERIODICALS:	The Human Rights Dateline - A Newsletter of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative; The Defender - A Bi-Annual Human Rights Journal of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative;
REPORTS:	Amnesty International: Uganda: Breaking the Circle - Protecting human rights in the northern war zone. March, 1999; Human Rights Watch: Children Abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Sept. 1997; International Labour Organisation: A Study on the situation of conflict-affected youth in Uganda and their reintegration into society through training, employment and life skills programmes. Geneva, 1997.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:	The Elusive Promise of NGOs in Africa - Lessons from Uganda, by S. Dicklitz. Macmillan, 1998; The Anguish of Northern Uganda - Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda, by Robert Gersony. Submitted to the United States Embassy, Kampala; USAID Mission, Kampala, August 1997; The Torment of Northern Uganda: A Legacy of Missed Opportunities. By David Westbrook. In: The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution. Issue 3-2, June 2000.
SELECTED INTERNETSITES:	http://www.imul.com/muk (Makerere University (Uganda); http://www.imul.com/vision (The New Vision); http://www.uganda.co.ug (Kampala Newsupdate); http://www.africaonline.com.ug (AfricaOnline); http://www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar/ugacholi (Minorities at Risk project from the University of Maryland, US offers a complete chronology of the conflict in the North).
RESOURCE CONTACTS:	Rosalba Oywa - Director People's Voice for Peace; Hussein Solomon - ACCORD, South Africa. E-mail hussein@accord.co.za; Frank Rwakabwohe - Church of Uganda, Head of Programmes; Livingstone Sewanyana - Executive Director Foundation for Human Rights Initiative; Buyondo M. Abu - country representative IARA Uganda. E-mail: iara@swiftuganda.com
ORGANISATIONS:	Mennonite Central Committee, Contact: Mrs. Ron and Pam Ferguson, Plot 37 Acacia Av., Kololo, P.O. Box 6051, Kampala, Uganda, Tel. +256 41 258 597, Email: MCC@mcc.uu.Imul.com; World Vision Uganda: Contact: Kofi Hagan, 15B Nakasero Road, P.O. Box 5319, Kampala, Uganda, Tel. +256 41 345 758/251 641, Fax +256 41 258 587, Email: Hagan_Kofi@wvi.org; Gulu Vocational and Community Centre, Contact: Michael Ocan Ongom, director, P.O. Box 927 Gulu, Uganda; Uganda Joint Christian Council, Contact: Ms. Jenny Ottewel, ;P.O. Box 30154, Kampala, Uganda, Tel. +256 41 270927, Fax +256 41 251927, Email: counet-tr@mukla.gn.apc.org; ACORD Uganda, Contact: Sam Aisu, Gaba Road, Kampala;Uganda, Tel/fax +256 41 267 668, Email: ngoforum@starcom.co.ug; Ugandan Human Rights Education and Documentation Centre, Contact: Regina Mutyaba, Plot 25 Lumumba Avenue, P.O. Box 7183, Kampala;Uganda, Tel. +256 41 255 899, Email: UHEDOC@imul.com, Kacoke Madit, London Secretariat, E-mail: km@c-r.org; Data on the following organisations can be found in the Directory section: Peace Initiative and Research Centre - PIRC; People's Voice for Peace; FHRI; JYAK; RTC; CECORE; Amnesty International; NPI.

About the author

Hans van de Veen studied Political Science at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands. He is a senior Dutch freelance journalist, specialising in international political affairs, development issues and the environment, with a focus on Africa. He has travelled the continent many times. He is the author of several studies on tropical forestry and edited the European Platform's Directory. Presently he is coordinating and editing the Conflict Prevention Surveys on Africa.