Bringing God's justice to northern Uganda

|PIC1|Northern Uganda is a place that has known much heartache. Dogged by more than 20 years of on and off fighting between government forces and rebel armies, its scarred people are only now making the difficult return to their homes and villages after spending years in Internally Displaced Peoples’ camps.

The fragile peace that exists now has made it possible to begin the arduous task of rebuilding homes and livelihoods but there is a deeper yearning that is harder to satisfy and that is the yearning for justice. It’s not that there are no lawyers in Uganda, but the lawyers are primarily interested in commercial law because that’s where the money is, says Steve Sanderson, a BMS missionary working on justice development.

That leaves very few to help deal with the growing number of disputes over land ownership – brought on by the return of the IDPs (internally displaced people) – or the thousands of victims of physical, sexual or domestic abuse. Not only that, but there are currently 27,000 people in Uganda’s overcrowded prisons, many of them awaiting a trial that can take five or six years to come because the country’s legal system is so inefficient.

“There is injustice everywhere in the world but particularly here in the Great Lakes region of Africa there have just been so many obvious abuses of people’s human rights, whether it as a result of the Rwandan genocide, or the war in southern Sudan, or in Congo, or here in northern Uganda,” says Steve.

It is this desperate longing for justice that compelled him and his wife Caroline, a qualified solicitor, to make the permanent move to Gulu in northern Uganda a few years ago with their toddler daughter Hannah. That and their firm conviction that justice and peace is what God also wants for the people of northern Uganda.

“For us both, God’s heart for justice was really at the centre of what led us to Africa,” he says.

“When you are here and see justice not being done, a sense of call lingers - and lingers very strongly - and it says you need to stand up and be a voice and be these people’s advocate.

“We were just so convicted by the notion that God isn’t passive about the things that happen here and he doesn’t just say ‘Oh well, humans fight and abuse each other, that’s that’.

“There is a God of righteousness and a God that does care and who sends his church into the world to do something about it.”

When Steve and Caroline offered themselves to BMS for long-term mission, they were sent to work alongside the Baptist Church in Uganda and the Uganda Christian Lawyers’ Fraternity (UCLF).

Together they’ve spent the past few years training up grassroots pastors in the law so that they can become human rights advocates for their communities and create a context where people are more effectively protected from abuse. The programme involves teaching the pastors and other local leaders how to understand the law, how to gather evidence, identify different kinds of abuse and how to connect their communities to the institutions that will supply justice.

“We train pastors at the grassroots to be paralegals and the success of that lies in decentralising justice and empowering the local community to be able to access justice. That’s just way more efficient and effective than all the court based approaches,” he says.

The concept is simple but it works. When Steve first joined the UCLF four years ago, they were able to handle around 200 cases a year. Now thanks to the pastor education programme and other innovative approaches to community based justice, UCLF has recorded over 37,000 beneficiaries of their programmes.

Their nine to five legal work in Gulu may not appear to cut the traditional missionary mould, but for Steve it goes back to Acts 1 and Jesus’ command to His disciples to be witnesses in Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.

“It’s very, very hard to find anybody here who has not had their dignity stolen by war, political marginalisation or abject poverty,” reflects Steve, who with Caroline is fully involved in the life of the church, supporting pastors and taking part in Word-based discipleship programmes.

“That’s where mission comes in because you’re saying ‘Lord, if I’m going to be your witness then I’ve got to go to the people who you would most have gone to’ and that’s where God has led us.”

That strong desire to be part of God’s answer to the hurt in northern Uganda is also behind the couple’s decision to stay there for the long run. The whole economy of northern Uganda is based on humanitarian relief so there are plenty of big aid agencies around, but many of the staff just come on a six month contract and leave again.

He says: “We’d been backwards and forwards to Africa doing justice work for a few years and it became apparent that to have more of a lasting impact, more of an understanding of people’s circumstances, of the processes, the culture, of resonating with people, they really didn’t care how much you knew or how good your project was. What they cared about was that you cared about them and that’s very hard to express unless you share your life together, live in the same place, eat the same food and get burnt by the same sun! All of that really matters.”

Moving wholesale to Uganda has come at the cost of relationships with friends and family back home, Steve admits, and there are the odd shameful cravings for some of the things that can only be bought back home in the UK - he laughs as he recalls the first time he and Caroline returned on a home visit and headed straight to the nearest Burger King where they blew their money on junk food.

Steve doesn’t dwell on the things he’s left behind, however, or the “pretty much anything goes” approach that can make life in Uganda seem nothing short of bizarre at times – a motorcyclist going the wrong way around the roundabout to save petrol or children having fun with a live electrical wire, for instance.
“It is different here on so many levels that you would go crazy if you were going to compare it with the UK. You just adapt to the situation.”

He remembers one time he and Caroline were having a meeting with some village elders and Hannah went off to play with some pig dung.

“Then we had some local beans for lunch and by the end of it she was covered in the mess from the pig dung and the mess from the beans. For Hannah, that was a pretty fun morning but in the UK that would just be an intolerable situation!”

Whatever the differences, though, they pale into insignificance when compared to the greater task at hand.

“To even be in a place like Gulu and play a part in reconstructing a country, a society after two decades of horrible civil war is such an amazing thing.”

And while troubled northern Uganda may not seem the obvious place to set up home for some, Steve says he and Caroline are more worried about Hannah catching malaria than being abducted by the LRA. That and the fact that she’s so different – for some of the older people there, she is the first white baby they have ever seen.

That’s why it’s all best left in the hands of God, Steve believes.

“You’ve got to trust God because the stakes are much higher. We’ve definitely had to grow as a result of the circumstances.”

Steve knows he and Caroline will never be rich in this line of work but they also know that’s not why they’re there and that there is a reward far greater than money that makes all the hard toil, the sacrifices, and the moments of despair worthwhile.

“I want to be able to look back when I’m 65 and say ‘I didn’t waste my time earning a lot of money!” he laughs.

He sums up: “Where’s the reward? It’s the widow who gets her land and now has a sustainable future. It’s the guy locked in a prison cell for six years without trial, who finally gets a trial and is acquitted and can go back to his family. It’s the pastor in a war-ravaged community who opens his eyes to the fact that he can be its legal advocate. It’s seeing people come to Christ because they see that the church is not just an institution or building but a home and a life for people. Those are the things that are priceless.”