(Excerpt)
I'm going to quickly say something about Uganda and Sudan. Uganda was more post-conflict situation, de facto post-conflict starting in 2006 with the start of the Juba peace talks and, effectively, the LRA raids in Northern Uganda and Eastern Uganda stopped. I'm not saying that it's a complete blanket statement. By and large, they stopped, and the IDP camps, which have ranged from between 1.5 and 2 million Acholi, primarily, in Uganda, started to -- I don't know where they got the word: "decongest;" it's probably a formal term for somebody that I don't understand -- people started moving home. And the kinds of violence that started to be shown was more related to land disputes. You know, it used to be that, 'Our plot was by that tree. Unfortunately, the UPDF cut those trees down for lumbering purposes, and that tree's not there; now, whose land is it?' And, there was also considerable testimony from people we interviewed about domestic violence and sexual violence.
And so, the peacekeeping activities of World Vision and others focus again on peace committees, but also training to sensitization, and providing a range of services, including psycho-social support for LRA returnees. We heard at one point that World Vision, over a period of time, helped to readjust, through their transition camps, over 12,000 LRA returnees. It's a phenomenal contribution to the peace process.
In Sudan, again in Warrap state, we were talking to people who were engaged in cattle-raiding, pastoralist violence. And, here, I cannot tell you a story similar to the Marakwet-Pokot story, of where a functional peace had been gained, although peace had been negotiated at a local level, referred to as a "Child of [Wunlet]," which Bill Lowrey was directly involved in, in 1998, that brought together the Dinka-Nuer during the middle of the -- during the civil war in Sudan. This Child of [Wunlet], a more localized peace agreement, was facilitated by the Sudan Council of Churches and World Vision Sudan. The agreements were made and were signed off by elders on various sides; it broke down within a month. And part of our learning in this -- what we heard from people as we talked to them was that all of the other supports, like development supports that are necessary -- infrastructure improvements, the benefits of the peace dividend of the CPA -- just weren't getting to these very remote places. We saw only evidence of one other NGO active besides World Vision in this particular county that we were in, and people weren't going, because it was unsafe.
Unfortunately, since the research was done in September of 2008, particularly in 2009, the cattle-raiding-related violence has escalated phenomenally in these areas, and throughout southern Sudan, to the point where it's estimated the UN -- the last figures I read -- over 2000 people have been killed just in 2009. And this is actually a larger death rate than the annualized deaths from conflict in Darfur, currently. So, it's a very serious problem going on. Observations and then some conclusions, and then I'll finish.
In the people we spoke to, the relationship between development / peace-building activities were twinned in their minds. They talked to us about them at the same time. They talked to us as if one couldn't be done without the other, and that they were both extremely valuable. People naturally wanted more, particularly in Sudan, where the development inputs are so small. Sudan was the one place among the three that we visited where World Vision was not involved directly in area development programs, or their long-term community development inputs, which can be from 12 to 15 years in a particular location. It was humanitarian assistance, transitional, some areas that were developmental in nature, but the inputs were much smaller, and clearly, other NGOs weren't engaged in the same way, yet.
We found a paucity of data. There's a press, and I understand it; I'm a researcher. I'm in favor of evidence-based research, but there are not uniform data collection processes in any of these places, to start with baselines. So, there's a lot of work to do in terms of helping us understand how this coming together of peace-building and development actually plays out in terms of data. We were told in each country that violence had been lessened over the last three years -- we just chose an arbitrary three-year period -- because of World Vision's presence and peace-building development programming.
Can we prove it? We don't have baseline, and we don't have ongoing data to show it. So, there is something there for the research community. We also saw that disarmament processes, in at least two instances -- this was very forcefully spoken about -- disarmament processes can be very, very harmful. In effect, the 'do no harm' analysis hasn't been done in some of these processes, so that one community is disarmed, and another community that has seen that goes in and steals all their cattle and kills people. And, disarmament -- the guns are taken out of the community -- are immediately put back in either through trade or through theft or what have you, so disarmament processes have to pay attention to that.
We have a number of recommendations in the front of the report under the joint statement -- we have a joint statement, we have an executive summary, we have an introduction. If you're not asleep by the time you read those three, [laughter] I'll see if we can get a prescription for you. But, for policymakers, and the kind of people who are sitting here today -- donors are increasingly taking notice of these things. The Geneva declaration process is providing a framework about which to talk about this for coordination among donors, and also the international, inter-governmental systems -- the UN systems.
We also need NGO community-based organizations, civil society organizations, engaged in these processes. It's not enough. The kind of sensitization work can't necessarily be done by governments, and we have -- we track some of that kind of interaction by talking to people at the community level, where World Vision was cited as providing the base on which people had the confidence, then, to speak directly with their own government officials about increasing security, looking at alternative livelihoods, and those sorts of things.
The Secretary-General's report that will be tabled next week says, "Just as there is no single cause of armed violence, there is no single solution." From my vantage point, we're very much at the front end of understanding these dynamics, how development programming and armed violence, peace building, disarmament twin come together, we need everybody involved. We particularly need the non-government side to be supported and bolstered in this process. I am grateful for the opportunity to have traveled with World Vision, and I think they are discovering some of the solutions. We hope some of those are tracked in the report, and we're grateful for their leadership.
And, thank you.
