Churches and Peace-Building in Eastern DR Congo and Northern Uganda

Abstract

By using church networks as a platform, different actors have tried to involve in peace-building processes in Northern Uganda and Eastern DR Congo. This church-led peace-building approach is legitimised in part with reference to the unique position the church holds locally in these societies, and in part because their leaders are held in high esteem nationally and transnationally. In this article, we examine and compare church-led peace involvement in these two regions of the Great Lakes region from the local to the transnational, by asking how these two cases differ and what they have in common.

Keywords:

• peace-building
• churches
• DR Congo
• Uganda
• civil society

Acknowledgements

The research has been conducted with funding from the Peace and Reconciliation Section (PRS) at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The authors extend their gratitude to the joint research team at Université Evangélique en Afrique and Université Officielle de Bukavu (UOB), and to Dr Fredrick Kisekka-Ntale at Makerere University for data collection and analytical discussions. The authors also thank the editor, two anonymous researchers, and Berit Aasen at the NIBR for valuable comments on draft versions of this text. The analysis presented here, however, remains the authors’ sole responsibility.

Notes

^† Current Address: Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

¹ E.g. the Great Lakes Ecumenical Forum (GLEF), initiated by the FECCLAHA.

² See for example: Nyabera and Montgomery (2007).

³ Dr Fredrick Kisekka-Ntale, Senior Research Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University.

⁴ A Bukavu team consisting of members from Universite Evangelique en Afrique and Universite Officielle de Bukavu has been led by Dr Abekyamwale Ebuela Abi (DR Congo) and has cooperated with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (Oslo) and Centre for Intercultural Communication (Stavanger) in Norway on the development and implementation of the research design.

⁵ Leadership Magazine, accessed from http://leadershipmagazine.org/july2010/comboni.html

⁶ Fred Nyabera, Executive Director, FECCLAHA, Nairobi (pers. comm. 16 September 2009).