The second in a series of reports from Tanja Bergen.
“As individuals, our voices won’t be heard. So, we come together as advocates to amplify our voices”
Why is it that those who are most impacted by human rights abuses are so often absent from the advocacy and media campaigns that are supposed to help them?
In Northern Uganda there are hundreds of individuals and communities who are impacted by the conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (national armed forces) and who have mobilized to see their circumstances improved.
One glowing example is the Women’s Advocacy Network that is active throughout Northern Uganda. In January I visited each of the nine affiliate groups that compose the network. Each group has a specific mandate and reason for forming. Several have welcomed male members. Despite their differences, some common threads unite these groups and explain why they formed – here is just a sampling of what they had to say:*
“Each one of us experienced some sort of problems during the war so we came together as a group to forget our problems.”
“It is important to form a group because when we are together we can forget our past problems and help each other.”
Each of WAN’s affiliate groups are composed of members who are struggling to overcome the legacies of the conflict between the LRA and UPDF.
“Our group initially joined together while we were together in the campus. While we were in the camps or while others in our group were returning from the bush, many of us were raped and became pregnant. Some of us contracted HIV/AIDS.”
Many of the women were abducted and forced to stay ‘in the bush’ (captivity). During this time, they were forced to marry and bear children to commanders of the LRA. When they escaped captivity, were captured by the UPDF, or were released by the LRA they returned home with battle-scars: literal and emotional. They returned to communities and families that were reeling from the suffering they experienced at the hands of the LRA – often with children that they bore with LRA commanders. Other women avoided abduction but were forced by the Ugandan government to live in squalid and insecure Internally Displaced Person camps. During this time, societal safety nets disintegrated and many women were raped (exposing them to unwanted pregnancies and HIV/AIDS). The members of WAN cope with the legacies of conflict like trauma, stigma from their communities, and limited livelihood options that are caused in part by the education that they were prevented from accessing.
“Each member of our group faced challenges during the war and now that we are in town, we have new challenges. Without God’s mercy, we would not survive.”
“Our group came together because the majority of us have survived battles. We stay together, share our troubles and look forward to see how our lives can change.”
“Our group started because we suffered in the bush and felt that we should unite to work as a team.”
“Our group came together for solidarity: to come together and share our problems. We also want to teach and help each other to bring our children up in the best way.”
“As a group we want to strengthen ourselves so that we can stay comfortably with others in our community.”
“If we lived alone it would be harder to fend for ourselves. When we are together we can seek support as a group.”
“By uniting we hope to encourage each other to stay strong. We feel okay and relieved when we are together.”
“As a result of the war we had problems. Now that we have peace, we sat down together as women to organize ourselves and advocate to see if we could get help with our problems.”
Themes of voice, strength, unity and community echo throughout these responses. What’s more, the statements above illustrate just who the WAN and its members hope to reach: the members of their communities who stigmatize them and shun their children. Throughout my discussions with the different groups, other audiences and issues also emerged, particularly in relation to international NGOs working in the region:
“Our local leaders do not support us because of their corruption. This prevents us from developing and from paying our children’s school fees. Many NGOs come to offer support by our officials are corrupt and swindle them.”
“The members of our group hate how the NGOs hate us. Some of the smaller NGOs that started out small with our group have been picked to be supported by donors and they have grown. When this happened, these organizations ran away from us at the grassroots and stopped partnering with us. They see us as stupid and ignorant and write about us as such. However, we survived the bush! We are not dumb!”
These quotes offer deeper perspectives into the question of why women and men across Northern Uganda have come together to advocate. They want to be heard by all the players who shape the process of conflict-recovery in Northern Uganda: communities, government officials, and NGOs. They want their perspectives on the issues that matter to them to be heard.
What can we take away from the thoughts that WAN shared? We can start by acknowledging that the women and men who are impacted by the conflict in Northern Uganda as legitimate stakeholders in the conflict-recovery process. We will need to be open to hearing their ideas when they don’t align with ours. It will take patience to learn how to share our capacities and knowledge in an accessible manner and it will also take patience to learn how to hear experiences that are radically different from ours and to connect these experiences to the insights and perspectives that they offer on ways of moving forward.
Advocacy is often discussed in terms being a voice for the voiceless. Yet as a member of one of WAN’s affiliate organizations pointed out:
“As individuals, our voices won’t be heard. So, we come together as advocates to amplify our voices”
What would happen if we altered our advocacy paradigm to include a responsibility for ensuring that ALL voices are heard – especially those that are the easiest to silence or exclude? Members of WAN join together to amplify their individual voices. What possibilities would open for sustainable and meaningful partnerships with local-led initiatives if we committed ourselves as advocates to listening, echoing and amplifying rather than speaking, directing, and leading?
For more thoughts from the Women’s Advocacy Network, see this recent piece in the Daily Monitor, a Ugandan publication.
*For security reasons, individuals’ names and the names of their specific member groups have been removed.