2019–20 Uganda highlights

Though largely a stable country, Uganda’s history has been characterised by turbulence. People continue to deal with the aftermath of violent conflicts as well as emerging conflict drivers such as competition over natural resources, an influx of refugees, scramble for land and resources in the north, and the active closure of civil society space.

We work in northern Uganda with our partners – the Rural Initiative for Community Empowerment (in West Nile) and the Center for Conflict Resolution (in Karamoja). In all locations, we apply conflict-sensitive approaches to natural resource management and private sector agriculture investment. We bring communities, investors and governments together to analyse potential conflict issues and to facilitate mitigation plans. In all cases, the community remains at the core of our interventions. This year, to inform our advocacy strategy, we mapped local and international investors in both regions, tracking their investment and ways in which they acquire land. In Karamoja, we supported the formation of mining associations, and we proposed recommendations for national advocacy in support of mining communities. 
 
We also worked with communities, including rural pastoralist groups, to question traditional gender roles, and as a result women have been leading community groups and challenging authorities. In Karamoja, women have become part of peace processes in the district. Awareness-raising work on gender has contributed to communities prioritising gender concerns, especially education for girls. Because of our advocacy, the districts we operate in have committed to including gender in every aspect of development planning and community engagement.

We continue to work with activists in communities through music, dance, drama and radio talk shows, to share knowledge on major issues of conflict. We also trained 60 ‘peace champions’ as part of community support structures in five districts, in order to monitor conflict dynamics and assist communities in finding peaceful solutions to conflicts.