Opening Remarks by MS Uganda Director Ulla Strobech

Honourable Members of Parliament, Representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, Guests from Abroad, and Colleagues from the Civil Society Organisations

MS and civil society organisations are proud to welcome you to the Civil Society Forum on Conflict Resolution and Development. The forum will bring about the opportunity for organisations, institutions and individuals to strategize for future action and for influencing the peace agendas.

First a little about MS. We are a Danish NGO, which was formed as a peace organisation during the Second World War. Since then it has also become a development in the South. One of our aims is intercultural co-operation for peaceful co-existence and an equitable distribution of the resources in the world.

Global Action

We have programmes in ten countries mostly Africa. Every two years we chose a topic for Global Action in all the countries. The topic now is Peace; Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation and MS Uganda partners suggested it. Activities related to peace and conflict resolution have taken place in Nepal where a marginalisation of bonded labour, has taken place, in Lesotho where CSO have worked for peaceful relations between the political parties after serious conflicts following their previous elections and in Uganda where the war in Northern Uganda has been on the agenda for peace building.

The Forum marks the end of the Global Action on Peace and Conflict Resolution in Uganda. Many MS Partners had already or have taken up the challenge of working for peace and many activities have taken place over the last two years, like youth camps, training of trainers, public dialogue etc. The task force of organisers hope that the Forum will end up with a paper of recommendation for programmes that will help direct the work of MS and the participating organisations in the future.

The Situation in Uganda

One of the most critical issues facing Africa today is armed conflict, internal and between states. The nature of armed conflict has changed during the twentieth century and has had devastating effect on civilian populations. Ninety percent of causalities are civilians-women, children and the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable.

Within Uganda, conflicts in the northern and western part of the country have forced people to flee their homes and live as Internally Displaced Persons.

Government is tackling these situations by:

- Passing the Amnesty law
- Fighting to defeat the rebels
- Disarming the Karamojong
- Negotiating with the rebels

A study of the "The Net Economic Cost of the Conflict in the Acholiland Sub-region of Uganda" which was commissioned by Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, estimates that $ 100 million is lost every single year on or because of the war. The human consequences as well as the economic will be presented in the one of the workshops today.

Other Types of Conflicts

But we also have conflicts within communities and districts, which make people poor, and poverty itself can cause conflicts between people. Development programmes can cause conflicts. On the other hand if there is development and economic conditions improve it is more likely that local conflicts will be resolved. Conflicts can have a good effect, we should not forget that

Who is Civil Society, what is their role in peace building, and why a Forum?

Civil Society is a common label for those forces, individuals and organisations/structures, in society that are non-governmental and are working to try to improve the livelihood of people, without a profit motive.

Role

The work of government had Civil Society complement each other. This also goes for both the state and Civil Society has a role. Civil Society should interact with government and contribute towards development of new ideas.

Civil Society also lobby/challenge government for openness and information especially in their peace building and conflict resolutions methods.

The Forum

MS invited partners and other organisations to look at conflicts in Uganda and we are privileged by having so many organisations participating from Uganda as guests. There are also representatives from other MS Programmes from Zimbabwe, from the Balkans from former Yugoslavia, Lesotho, Tanzania, Mozambique, Kenya and Denmark. They are conflict resolution practitioners and I hope we can learn from their experiences. The opportunity to learn how other groups have handled conflicts can give inspiration to underrating your own and also give ideas for how to help solve them. Example of Bosnia’s meeting ex-rebels from Nicaragua

The Forum will create a platform for sharing ideas, experiences and good practices on issues of peace building.

We will not be looking only at one conflict. Several types of conflicts will be discussed in the various presentations and workshops over the three days. We are looking for commonalties of root causes of conflicts, are there ways of handling them that we can learn from each other? What are the right strategies for appropriate and effective conflict resolutions?

MS believes that good governance and democratic mechanisms help solve the conflicts of interest and power in a society.

We think that it is a unique that we are more than 10 organisations who have organised the Forum. It is important that you come from different conflict areas, for Ugandans it is an opportunity to understand the problems that are affecting "them" and not "us" as Bishop Onono from the Diocese of Northern Uganda said on Andrew Mwenda live last night. We are one nation, and the problems of the north need to be solved by all the people of Uganda. The conflict in one part of the country is dragging down the development and economy of the country. It is not only a problem of Acholi’s, Karamajong’s what is taking place there, it is the whole population of Uganda to find solutions.

We hope that the participants will be active during the workshops and try to come up with suggestions for recommendations: to promote Good Governance as a prerequisite for conflict resolution, opportunity to explore if there are common causes and features of conflicts and to see if there are lessons to be learnt on how conflicts have been resolved.

Lastly I would like to take the opportunity to thank the IRC/USAID and the EU Human Rights Programme for supporting this Forum.