Towards sustainable peace in Uganda?

Sammanfattning: This study was performed during the period March – May of 2007 in Kampala and Gulu district, Uganda, and it was made possible due to a scholarship from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The main focus of the study is to examine and analyse the peace process taking place in Juba (the Juba talks), southern Sudan, with the goal to solve the 20 year old conflict in northern Uganda between the government of Uganda and the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army. I am doing this by, first; identify the actors involved by using John Paul Lederach’s pyramid which includes three levels of actors, second; study different methods for peacebuilding and thereafter identify which methods have been used in the Ugandan case and third; discover to what extent the civil society and more specifically women’s organisations have contributed to this process. The data collected consist of qualitative literature studies, analyses of articles dealing with the peace talks and interviews with representatives from different levels of the Ugandan society. The analyse of the material shows that all levels of the society have been involved to some extent, but that the peace process is mainly characterized by the top-down approach to peacebuilding, with the top level leaders as the main actors. I also found that women’s organisations in Uganda want to engender the peace talks, for example by bringing women to the negotiation table and let them participate in high level decision-making. Finally, the civil society has in general contributed to a large extent to the negotiations in order to bring peace, yet with different results.