Refugee Rights News
Volume 4, Issue 7
December 2008
Beyond Juba Project Hosts Peace Film Festival
On 30 and 31 October, the Beyond Juba Project – a transitional justice project of the Refugee Law Project, the Human Rights and Peace Centre and Makerere University’s Faculty of Law – hosted a peace film festival at Kampala’s National Theatre titled Images of Conflict; Imaginings of Peace. On both days, the theatre was packed with students, members of civil society, representatives of government and international organisations and ordinary citizens anxious to see peace come to Uganda, a country whose post-colonial history has been characterised by multiple conflicts, including the protracted war between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that has plagued northern Uganda for over 20 years.
Beyond Juba
According to the Project’s mission statement, Beyond Juba seeks to foster sustainable peace in Uganda by generating “support for national reconciliation … by demonstrating the extent to which conflicts and their legacies are a national problem and by assisting in the development of appropriate transitional justice mechanisms with which to address these legacies.” It is important to note that Beyond Juba does not focus solely on northern Uganda. Indeed, that conflict has, especially in international media, sometimes overshadowed other obstacles to peace in Uganda. Beyond Juba focuses on all regions of the country that have experienced conflict, namely Karamoja, West Nile and the western, west central, central and eastern regions.
The two-day film festival featured documentaries about conflict and peace building in Uganda and other countries (where the experiences of such countries could offer Uganda lessons on the transition from conflict to reconciliation and sustainable peace). Some films were followed by panel discussions, which included question and answer sessions.
Northern Uganda and Karamoja
The first day of the festival began with a screening of Trapped in Anguish, an account of the war in northern Uganda, its humanitarian implications and the process of return and reintegration of former combatants, many of whom were abducted as children. This was followed by Ekisil, a docu-drama on the culture and values of the Karamojong and their struggle to find a lasting peace.
Having generated much food for thought, the two films set up a panel discussion featuring David Pulkol of the African Leadership Institute; Giovanni Dall’Oglio, the filmmaker behind Ekisil; the Honourable Paul Lomanio, a government official from Kotido district in Karamoja; and Fiona and Andrew, students of peace and conflict studies at Makerere University. Panellists and audience members alike expressed their shock at the images depicted in Ekisil. Fiona remarked that she could not believe that Karamoja – a region populated by pastoralists and plagued by drought, extreme poverty and inter-ethnic violence – was a part of Uganda. Discussions centred on what the government and national and international civil society organisations have done to improve conditions in Karamoja, and what remains to be done. Dall’Oglio explained that Ekisil was filmed in 2000, and since then, the Ugandan government has undertaken an extensive disarmament programme that has seen the Karamojong surrender most of the weapons that had fuelled conflict there; he argued that as a result the situation was somewhat better than what was depicted in the film. Of course, others have criticised the process as leading to an increase in government abuses (see, for example, Human Rights Watch’s September 2007 report, “Get the Gun!”: Human Rights Violations by Uganda’s National Army in Law Enforcement Operations in Karamoja Region).
After the panel discussion was a screening of Uganda Rising, a multiple award-winning Canadian film that gives an account of the war in Northern Uganda. The film features interviews with, among others, Betty Bigombe, who spearheaded the failed first round of peace talks with the LRA; Samantha Power of Harvard University; President Museveni; and Mahmood Mamdani of Colombia University, who is an authority on post-colonial theory and African history, politics and international relations.
Urban IDPs
The second day of the festival centred on the much overlooked issue of urban internally displaced people (IDPs) in Uganda. The majority of people displaced by the war in northern Uganda live in IDP camps in the north, ostensibly established by the government to protect civilians. Conditions in the camps, however, are squalid and inhabitants are entirely dependent on aid organisations for basic necessities. A significant number of individuals, seeking to avoid such conditions, fled to the cities of Entebbe, Jinja and Kampala, searching for lives marginally better than what was on offer up north. These urban IDPs have fallen through the cracks in the network of government, United Nations and civil society organisations that assist victims of the war.
Seeking to draw attention to the plight of urban IDPs, Beyond Juba produced a documentary on the issue, titled What About Us?, which will also air on the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation and at an International Refugee Rights Initiative event in New York in January 2009. Thirty urban IDPs from Entebbe, Jinja and Kampala who assisted in the making of and were featured in the film were at the National Theatre for its premiere. Also on hand to view the film and speak on a panel addressing the issue of urban IDPs were Stephano Severe, the Uganda country director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – an agency that is mandated to protect IDPs, in addition to refugees – and representatives of the government of Uganda. Reacting to testimony from urban IDPs who joined them on the panel and reflected on their hardships – most urban IDPs do not even have the means for a trip home to assess the possibility of return, let alone to finance the move – the officials said they would consider how to include urban IDPs within their assistance structures for victims of the war in the north.
The second day also featured a screening of We Didn’t Know, a documentary unravelling the process of truth telling on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. A truth and reconciliation committee has been mooted among the range of options proposed to foster reconciliation in Uganda in the context of the LRA war.
Overall, the Beyond Juba Project’s peace film festival was a great success. It succeeded in highlighting previously obfuscated issues, in particular the situations of the Karamojong and urban IDPs, and the medium of film engaged a wide range of stakeholders – from students, to activists, to policy makers, to engaged citizens, to affected communities – all of whose views must be taken into account in the process of building sustainable peace in Uganda.
