UGANDA TODAY
Since Invisible Children: Rough Cut was filmed in 2003, night commuting has ended for the children of northern Uganda. In recent years peace was seemingly within reach, largely due to the Juba Peace Talks. From June 2006 to March 2008 in Juba, Sudan, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) engaged in a series of peace talks in order to end the conflict. These peace talks, supported by special envoys from the United States and other nations, allowed for the longest period of peace in northern Uganda’s 23-year war.
The Juba Peace Talks developed with hope for a lasting resolution, and concluded in March of 2008 with the Final Peace Agreement (FPA) ready for the signature of Joseph Kony and President Museveni. However, in April of 2008, Kony twice failed to appear and sign the FPA and officially ended the Juba talks mediated by the Southern Sudanese government. Joseph Kony’s stated reasons for not signing the FPA were a vague understanding of the treaty’s systems regarding post-conflict justice and an apprehension toward ICC warrants for him and four other LRA leaders. Since the collapse of the peace talks, the LRA has been active in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and southern Sudan, drawing widespread disapproval from the international community and igniting a new urgency to end what has become a complex regional conflict.
In the last two years, an estimated 900,000 of the 1.8 million displaced have returned to their homes. But that leaves one million people currently living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. While the majority desires to return home, the issues surrounding their return are complex. Some have been displaced for more than a decade, and their former way of life is all but gone. Access to clean water, economic opportunities, health centers, and education are a pressing concern for all, and even more so for the many who contemplate returning to resource-barren villages.
Tenshi-Eclipse · Thu Sep 24, 2009 @ 09:41pm · 0 Comments |