Guns have fallen silent in northern Uganda since the signing of a permanent ceasefire. Yet, church leaders are worried about the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) delaying the signature of the final peace agreement, they told an international ecumenical delegation visiting the country.
The eight member delegation sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) is visiting Uganda from 27 October to 2 November to express solidarity with local churches in the country, where relative stability has returned after decades of military dictatorship and civil war.
The "Living Letters" - as the teams travelling to different countries in the context of the WCC's Decade to Overcome Violence are known - are meeting representatives of churches, state and civil society to discuss the plight of the displaced people in the northern Uganda civil war.
"The visit brings a sense of solidarity between Christians. It also strengthens networking," said Canon Grace Kaiso, executive secretary of the Uganda Joint Christian Council. "We need to appreciate that some of the issues that have impacted on the communities negatively in terms of injustice or conflict have an international dimension."
He said the Living Letters had come to Uganda at a time when the country was beginning the process of rehabilitation and resettlement.
"It is an enormous task: we have one million people to resettle and to help them recover from social and psychological effects of the war," Kaiso said. "For that we need to strengthen the capacities of communities to take care of each other."
Conflict resolution through dialogue
Kaiso explained to the group how the churches had struggled to get the government and the LRA to the negotiating table, despite President Yoweri Museveni believing in a military solution and feeling that the peace talks were "a sign of weakness".
"But there is no conflict that cannot be solved through dialogue," Kaiso said.
In July 2006, the government and the LRA began peace negotiations in the southern Sudanese city of Juba. In August the same year, the talks produced a truce. In February 2008, a permanent ceasefire was in place. Since then, relative peace and stability have returned to the north of the country, where the two parties had fought a protracted war for 20 years.
