Walking the path to peace in northern Uganda

As the present stage of the QPSW project in Uganda winds down over the coming months, careful thought is going into the shape of the next stage of the work. Marigold Bentley, Assistant General Secretary of QPSW, relects on how the context for the work is changing.

The Quaker Peace & Social Witness programme in northern Uganda has undergone many changes over the years.

It began its life as a project under the auspices of Quaker Peace & Service in 1998. Then, as now, it was a brave attempt by a small religious body (UK Quakers) to walk the long walk to peace with people in the region who were suffering.

Quaker Peace & Service had a range of overseas projects that attempted to learn from both ongoing war and post-war situations. In the 1990s this included staffed projects in Colombo (Sri Lanka), Sarajevo, Belfast and Beirut.

QPSW – and QPS before it – used to good effect the access Friends have to Quaker Offices at the UN in both Geneva and New York.

Times have moved on, however. During the past ten years the requirements of running overseas projects have changed immeasurably. Employment legislation is now far more complex and demanding on employers than it was in the last century. The costs of running overseas offices – insurance for work in high-risk areas, good personnel support for locally employed and expatriate staff and the administration required from the London-based offices – is now demanding changes to the way in which QPSW works.

We have remarkable connections with groups and peace activists from all the regions we have been involved in. We need to learn how to “walk the walk” with them in new ways, ways which will not tie precious QPSW resources to the administrative structures required to run offices overseas.

There are internal reasons to change as well. In order to incorporate BYM’s new ways of working – as set out in the Long Term Framework – the QPSW Overseas Peacebuilding Group is considering how our international work should develop, both in Uganda and elsewhere. What does it mean to stand by our commitment to local people and local peace processes, utilise our links with the UN, make the best use of our resources and respond to the ways in which Friends want to work? QPSW is seeking to respond to these demands in a fresh way.

In 1998, the war in northern Uganda was “the forgotten war”. QPS was one of the few outside organisations with a presence there. While this context has changed as there are now 57 organisations working on peace projects in northern Uganda, our partners in Uganda, particularly Empowering Hands (EH), have a long way to go in establishing a peace that will be real and sustained. QPSW has agreed to continue to work with EH and a number of other local groups.

Contact:
Marigold Bentley
marigoldb@quaker.org.uk
020 7663 1060