May 15, 2021 – In recent weeks, Youth Peacemakers trained by the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) successfully held a series of Community Dialogues in Uganda’s Karamoja Sub-Region. The dialogues aimed to resolve a longstanding violent conflict between two local ethnic tribes located in the sub-region’s Moroto District. In total, the Youth Peacemakers were able to bring together 195 members of both tribes, mediate their differences, and broker a peace agreement. To our youths, this result was all the more satisfying as this dialogue served as one of the first occasions they had to apply the skills they learned with us during their intensive training to become Youth Peacemakers.

WPDI hosting a successful Community Dialogue in Uganda

Conducting Community Dialogues to mediate conflicts and foster peace is core to the work of our Youth Peacemakers. As community members themselves, they are insiders who have grassroots knowledge of local situations and can gain the trust of stakeholders in a way that external stakeholders simply cannot. To ensure that they can successfully mediate conflicts and become agents for peace, we empower them with skills and tools in areas including conflict resolution and mediation so that they can concretely address issues that have sometimes plagued communities for years.

The dialogues our Youth Peacemakers conducted in the Moroto District are reflective of exactly this approach. After hearing from leaders in several villages that local youths from two different ethnic tribes, the Turkana and the Dodooth, were increasingly engaging in violent cattle raids, our Youth Peacemakers worked together with government officials and other key stakeholders to organize meetings and bring together members of both tribes as well as others in the community. In the first gathering, the two sides were invited to share their perspectives and motivations behind the longstanding conflict, and our Youth Peacemakers were able to show them that they had more in common than they perhaps previously thought. Subsequent meetings focused on analyzing the conflict at a deeper level and helping both tribes realize that they could gain more by living together in peace.

WPDI holding a Community Dialogue in Uganda

After conducting several meetings, both tribes came together and agreed to a peace agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, elders in both tribes will encourage youths to give up their weapons, WPDI and its partners will continue to work with young people from both tribes to teach them about peace and peacebuilding, and the Uganda Peoples Defense Force and the Uganda Police Force will provide security in the district and monitor the overall situation. All parties further denounced violence and agreed to come together to resolve any future differences through dialogue to ensure peaceful coexistence within the broader community.

Ultimately, participants expressed their satisfaction with the outcome. Luka, a local official in the Moroto District, told us that “In my opinion, this dialogue was long overdue. Thanks to the Youth Peacemakers, we were able to reach out to community members and resolve insecurity in the sub-region. So many people have lost animals, property, and even family members due to this conflict, but now the conflict has been resolved.” Teko, a community member from the Atedoi village, mentioned how “As a mother, I have hope thanks to this dialogue, because I want my sons to live in peace and not think of other sons from regions in Karamoja as enemies.”

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