Women’s Empowerment and Community Organizing Leads to Peace
Even in the face of continuing suffering throughout the world from COVID and climate catastrophes, and news of resulting conflicts, I am happy to report that the refugees in Olua and Mungula settlements, where SSLCD has been working, continue to live and work together in peace with their Ugandan neighbors.
On the other hand, the news from South Sudan could not be more devastating. Floods, starvation and ethnic strife continue unabated, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Just today the UN released a report indicating that both government soldiers and rebel groups have deliberately caused starvation among the population as a tactic of war, a crime against humanity. In recent months, violence has also occurred between South Sudanese refugees and Ugandans in Northern Uganda. Fighting and numerous deaths have been reported among both refugees and local Ugandans. This is occurring against a backdrop of COVID and typhoid, both of which have the potential for increasing conflict and violence.
Even in the midst of these multiple catastrophes, the refugees of Mungula and Olua settlements, where SSLCD is working, continue harvesting crops, storing them for dry-season use, raising animals for sale and consumption, ministering to those suffering trauma due to loss of loved ones in South Sudan, and finding creative ways to protect their communities from typhoid. Typhoid has become prevalent as a result of flooding.
How have these communities remained stable and accomplished so much? These dire circumstances have led to disaster in so many other places. The answer seems to be two things: community organizing and women’s empowerment. Both are fundamental to the SSLCD model which has been the basis for all of our work.
From the very beginning, whenever confronted with a need, our response has always been to ask the refugees: what do you have and how can you use what you have to get what you need? Shortly after arriving from South Sudan, hundreds of the refugees (mostly women) were suffering from severe, debilitating trauma. Our response was to train over 200 women and a few men in trauma healing techniques useful for both themselves and others. They in turn started doing home visits with trauma victims. When the need was cash for school fees, the response was to help the women set up co-ops. When the need was safer birthing, the response was to train women as birth attendants and doulas. When the need was food in the face of dwindling provisions from the UN, the response was agricultural co-ops to plant crops and distribute the food to those most in need, beginning with pregnant and lactating women. When the need was a way for men to support their families and communities, the response was to provide them with animals for meat consumption and sale.
Perhaps the most urgent need at present is to figure out how to continue living in peace with neighboring Ugandans in light of increasing competition for basic resources, which often results in violence. Because the refugees have been working with their neighbors in meeting mutual needs, and because women and men of both communities have worked together to meet their own needs, they are able to develop peace building teams to seek solutions to common needs. The peace building teams are also able to dissolve rumors and minor conflicts before they result in violence. In the long term, it is likely the skills these refugees are learning will enable them to contribute significantly to building peace when they finally return to their home country.
Our donors who have supported the work of SSLCD among the refugees from the very beginning have made all of this possible.