ARMED CONFLICT AND MINORITY AND INDIGENOUS CHILDREN IN THE HORN AND GREAT LAKES REGIONS OF AFRICA

23-24 April 1998, Kampala, Uganda

Workshop background and aims

The Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa have in recent decades been devastated by internal wars, and their civilian populations have suffered enormously. The UN (Machel) Report on The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children (1996) recognizes that the human cost of war is paid disproportionately by children. With most of today’s wars taking place within rather than between states, involving different communities and ethnic groups, minority and indigenous children are especially likely to experience the adverse consequences, including separation from family, breakdown of health and education services, destruction of communities, displacement and exile as refugees, forced recruitment and experience of torture, gender-based violence and extrajudicial killings. Exclusion from humanitarian relief and during post-conflict reconstruction also particularly affects such children.

Through the UN Declaration on Minorities and other international instruments, the international community has emphasised the need to protect vulnerable communities, and through the UN (Machel) Report it has expressed grave concern about the impact of armed conflict on children. Recognizing that the welfare of minority and indigenous children is doubly jeopardized in armed conflict, the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Minority Rights Group International (MRG), London, UK, jointly organized the Workshop on Armed Conflict and Minority and Indigenous Children in the Horn and Great Lakes Regions of Africa, held in Kampala on 23-24 April 1998.

Child abductions in northern Uganda

Aims and objectives

The broad aim of the workshop was to address the special problems affecting minority and indigenous children in seven strife-torn countries in the Horn and Great Lakes regions: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The specific objectives were:

Definitions

In Africa numerical minorities often hold power; politics and identities are often fluid; and states may have no dominant majority; hence the term `minority’ can be highly problematic. Lacking a universally accepted definition, the workshop applied the formulation by F. Capotorti, Special Rapporteur for the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, in his Study on the Rights of Persons belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1979): a minority is a `non-dominant' group, whose members `possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population' and `show, if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity, directed towards preserving their culture, traditions, religion or language'. The question of who is a numerical minority or majority was considered unimportant.

Participants, programme and opening remarks

Participants came from the seven focus countries, from intergovernmental agencies (UNICEF, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] and the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict), from governments and embassies (Rwanda, Sweden, Uganda), from international non-governmental organizations ([I]NGOs) and from a range of in-country NGOs and academic institutions. The Ugandan Human Rights Commission and Parliament were represented, as were international and Ugandan media. Organizers and participants were especially pleased to welcome Hon. George Kanyeihamba, Justice of the Ugandan Supreme Court, at the final session.

On the first day, three plenary papers were presented, each with a response from an invited discussant and then followed by general discussion. The second day began with a fourth plenary presentation, followed by three simultaneous working. The agenda was completed by working-group reports to the plenary and a final discussion of the workshop’s overall recommendations.

Plenary sessions were co-chaired by Dr Joe Oloka-Onyango, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, and Alan Phillips, Director of MRG. Joe Oloka-Onyango began by welcoming participants and emphasizing the importance of the theme of the workshop. He observed that the question of minorities is not generally discussed in Africa, and concern for disempowered groups is discouraged on the grounds that all African ethnic groups are minorities. With women and children so much the prime victims of the war in northern Uganda, as elsewhere, regional responses were urgently needed that acknowledged the special vulnerabilities of marginalized communities and especially their children. He urged the workshop to aim for practical and regionally applicable recommendations to help promote such children’s immediate and longer-term protection.

MRG Director Alan Phillips expressed appreciation for the political climate in Uganda that allowed the workshop to take place there. He described the event as part of a process of partnership involving in-country, regional and international organizations, scholars and practitioners, with the goal of developing a concerted approach to the crisis affecting children generally, and minority and indigenous children in particular. During peace processes `self-censorship’ often arose because raising questions of minority rights may be misconstrued as support for insurgency. He commended the role of UNICEF in championing the rights of conflict-affected children.

The chairs observed that the workshop offered an opportunity to share experience and concerns, to discuss examples of good and bad practice, to identify means of strengthening intercommunity understanding, to promote children’s role as actors rather than passive victims/beneficiaries, and to identify ways to influence the debate on the rights of the child in situations of armed conflict and the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples.

Protection in international law

The first plenary paper, `International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law and the Protection of Minority and Indigenous Children in Armed Conflict’, was presented by Sam Tindifa of HURIPEC and focused on the persistence of violent conflicts in the Horn and Great Lakes, resulting from the colonial legacy, economic stagnation, malgovernance, socio-economic inequalities and intercommunity tensions. Most of Africa’s internal wars are struggles between dominant and marginalized communities differentiated along ethnic, religious, cultural or social lines., Dominant groups tend to regard minorities as the enemy, and minorities bear the brunt more than the general population. However, the effects of war on Africa’s minorities are poorly documented, and conflicts are perceived simplistically as `tribal wars’. In Africa it is often asserted that all or most ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural groups are minorities and indigenous. The Ugandan constitution, for example, categorizes all ethnic communities recorded before 1926 as indigenous.

Three case studies were analysed . In Sudan since 1989 Omar al Bashir's military junta has used terror and repression to undermine and dismantle institutions of the minority Nuba and Copts and to eradicate their cultural and political identity. Attempts have been made to Islamicize southern Sudan and to take control of its resources. In Somalia the war that began as a revolt against the oppressive Siad Barre regime became a struggle between warring factions in a collapsed state. In this conflict, minority communities such as Bravanese and Bantu/Wa Gosha - considered `non-Somali’ by the main clan families - have suffered disproportionately. The third case, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, was clearly ethnic in form and consisted overwhelmingly of attacks against civilians, with the exploitation of ethnic identities and allegiances degenerating into hate-filled propaganda.

In these intra-state wars, `military strategy’ has included manipulation of food supplies, rape of teenage girls to attack ethnic identity, and mass displacement. Little or no distinction has

been made by combatants between civilians and belligerents, and minority civilians have been attacked for supposedly sympathizing with the enemy. Children have been obliged to join warring parties to avoid starvation, for protection or under pressure from adults. Humanitarian agencies, moreover, have in some cases failed to respond to the plight of smaller and more marginalized minorities in their relief programmes.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, articles 2, 3, 5, 14, 20, 29 , 30

UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities 1992

Geneva Conventions of 1949 [Humanitarian Law], article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination 1965, article 2

African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights 1981, article 18

Draft African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child [not yet entered into force], article 3 (Non-discrimination)

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948

It was therefore recommended that new approaches be developed in applying international law to armed conflicts in Africa. The Banjul Charter called upon states to incorporate human rights standards into domestic law, and this should be pursued. Peace education, with an emphasis on human rights fulfilment, should be developed, and mechanisms for crisis intervention were urgently needed.

The discussant, Hans Thoolen of UNHCR, also emphasized the distinction between law and mechanisms for its implementation. Observing that the rules were not in dispute, but the implementation was lacking, he referred to poor levels of funding for UN treaty bodies and their consequent limited capacity. Because states generally intervene only if they consider their interests at risk, too much is left to the discretion of governments. A crucial question is therefore by whom and not for what purpose intervention might be made in armed conflict to protect minorities and children.

Plenary discussion

In the plenary discussion, participants agreed that states and civil society had a responsibility to sensitize warring parties regarding their responsibilities during armed conflict. In practice, The ineffectiveness of intervention by African states was considered to arise through lack of a clear position on the part of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on the need for ad hoc intervention. Regional initiatives are needed to enforce implementation of humanitarian protection and minority rights. The peace-keeping initiative undertaken in Bosnia, despite its manifest weaknesses, might offer a partial model. Internationally, aid conditionality could be enforced to ensure compliance with international standards with respect to minorities, indigenous peoples and children.

The issue of the participation of children in war was recognized as especially problematic. On one hand, it might in some cases be appropriate for adolescents to volunteer to help fighters of their community against oppression - as had happened in Europe during the Nazi occupation. On the other hand, participants denounced the forced recruitment of children as abhorrent . Demobilized children suffer a lasting legacy of psychological fear and insecurity, and in Rwanda many had applied to be re-recruited into the army. Warring factions, for their part, may hesitate to demobilise children, lest the armed struggle should continue.

It was agreed that African-appropriate responses need to be generated from within the countries affected. There were no ready-made solutions although the international community has a crucial facilitating role. Participants recognized the necessity to work at all levels for improved protection of conflict-affected children and disempowered communities.

Gender questions

The second plenary paper, `Armed Conflict in the Horn and the Great Lakes: Gender Perspectives on the Impact on Minority and Indigenous Communities and their Children’, was presented by Dr Deborah Kasente of Makerere University. This paper argued that one cannot adequately consider children who experience such conflicts without reference to their parents, to the wider community and to the perpetrators of abuse against them. In armed conflict, women are not just the `victims’ commonly depicted ; many are actively involved as combatants and in support roles. Women play a key role in helping communities survive conflict and in conflict transformation.

Emergencies are times of disempowerment for all . But while warring factors are predominantly composed of men, 65-80% of displaced populations are typically women and children. Deprived of material and emotional sustenance, traumatized by fear, insecurity and loss of loved ones, children are also endangered by land mines, which they sometimes mistake for toys. Women and girls in addition suffer from trauma caused by the humiliating experiences of gender-based violence, and many endure the consequences in silence because of cultural taboos. Girls who have been raped in front of their parents find reintegration into society particularly difficult.

Children are increasingly targets rather than incidental victims of war , preferred as soldiers to adults in many cases because they are more obedient and unquestioning of orders. Minority children may be compelled to present themselves for military service for economic reasons or for protection from the enemy. Some are lured through extremist ideology into becoming fighters. In Rwanda and Burundi the indoctrination of youth contributed to the genocide of 1994. Boys are recruited or kidnapped, as in northern Uganda and Ethiopia, to serve as porters, messengers, spies and distributors of ammunition, while girls are taken as `wives’. In the Hutu refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the interahamwe reportedly sought to make all girls pregnant as a means of increasing Hutu numbers.

During times of crisis, girls are also pressured into prostitution to raise family income, and girls’ school participation declines because school is considered unsafe for them. In refugee and displaced person camps, more girls than boys usually die due to the higher value placed on the life of boys. The suffering of minority and indigenous children has been tolerated in Africa as an unfortunate but inevitable effect of war. Such children face particularly high incidences of malnutrition and starvation, due to the dispossession of their communities’ land and assets, and the communities’ geographic inaccessibility .

The discussant, Hirut Tefferi of Rädda Barnen, drew on examples of humanitarian responses to emergencies in southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Young girls are often married off on behalf of dead relatives, or asked to care for young babies and infants because of pressure on their mother to bear many children to make up for those killed in conflict. Both customs impact negatively on girls’ education and health. Likewise, while boys travel to areas where they can access education, such as refugee camps, girls are discouraged from taking up even meagre local educational provision. NGOs should promote the education of girls and women and raise awareness at community level of the importance of this. Dissemination of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has stimulated dialogue on the rights of boys and girls in refugee camps.

Why gender equity is needed: an example

Plenary discussion

In the discussion, participants strongly advocated the enhancement of the role of women in peace negotiations, food distribution and security in refugee and displaced person camps. It was agreed that relief and peace-building programmes should target women and children far more than currently. A concerted effort, involving NGOs, media, relief agencies and others, was needed to advocate for the rights of the girl child, and to promote peace education, implementation of the CRC and the Declaration on Minorities, with greater attention to awareness raising and dialogue among combatants on the provisions of humanitarian law.

The UNICEF experience

In the third paper, `Protecting Children from Conflict: The UNICEF Agenda’, Everett Ressler of UNICEF offered a historical perspective, citing a range of crises during which UNICEF had developed its capacity to protect children. In many cases, however, there has been little or no documentation of the experiences of children in armed conflict. Actors that might have been expected to speak out on the issue - religious leaders, humanitarian and human rights organizations and the international community generally - have failed to do so. Humanitarian assistance is still not sufficiently child focused, and children’s priorities such as for immunization, health education and nutrition are not yet sufficiently prioritized as emergency needs. Consequently, many children in zones of conflict are diseased, malnourished and without schooling, due largely to a failure of political will.

Nevertheless, the protection of children is a global concern and a traditional one. Every community and culture has its traditional mechanisms for protecting children, not least in African cultures. UNICEF tries wherever possible to draw on such codes, grounded in local experience, to enhance local commitment to child protection. It can therefore be invaluable for both children and adults to understand the CRC in culturally appropriate terms rather than as legal jargon, and UNICEF seeks to promote consensus among warring parties regarding the CRC’s provisions.

Drawing on the assertion that humanitarian aid is not sufficiently child-focused, the discussant, Miles Litvinoff of MRG, noted MRG’s finding that aid is also insufficiently minority-focused. In Somalia, humanitarian relief failed to reach smaller minority groups because distribution was controlled by majority clans and warlords; sometimes minority communities were terrorized by armed groups intent on stealing the aid they had been given. As a response to this and related problems, MRG’s work in several regions offered a range approaches that could help transform ethnic tensions and foster cooperation between communities in the longer term MRG’s work focuses on the promotion of dialogue at all levels, and on assisting minority and indigenous organizations and their advocates in building their own capacity to promote respect for their group rights.

Plenary discussion

During the discussion, the severe marginalization and vulnerability of Somali minorities was emphasized by Somali participants from personal experience. Representatives of the Pygmies of Congo (DRC) and the Batwa of Rwanda remarked on how similar their experience was, for example their exclusion during the provision of emergency relief in the Rwanda crisis. More broadly, participants acknowledged that, while conflict was part of human society, the issue was to transform conflict and prevent its most violent manifestations. Education in its widest sense was recognized as having a key role - to promote respect for different cultures, for the principle of plurality in society, for gender difference and for the rights of the child.

Office of the Special Representative

In the fourth presentation, Moncef Khane, on behalf of Olara A. Otunnu, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, outlined the strategy of the Special Representative to promote the rights, protection and welfare of children affected by armed conflict. He also presented the Report to the UN Security-Council of the Secretary-General on the Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa, advocating a progressive, democratic and unitary political discourse around citizen's rights, on the grounds that minority or ethnic rationales were often subverted for divisive political purposes and ethnicity has been used to perpetuate conflict in the region.

By endorsing the Machel Report in Resolution 51/77 (1996), the General Assembly had taken stock with great concern of the brutalisation and abuse of children during armed conflict. In virtually all armed conflict today, children are brutalised, sexually abused, abducted, used as combatants and ultimately killed by cynical commanders. In the last decade it is estimated that two million children have been killed in war, one million orphaned, six million disabled or seriously injured, and 12 million left homeless. An estimated 300.000 child-soldiers are fighting in armed conflict around the world.

The priority of the Special Representative is to prompt adherence to international human rights and humanitarian standards and the revival of local value systems regarding the protection and welfare of children in times of armed strife. Mr Otunnu's role is essentially that of 'cheerleader' and political catalyst for the UN system, governments, NGOs, the media and civil society with respect to the plight of children affected by armed conflict. His aim is to raise awareness of the plight of such children and to trigger public outrage, with a view to raising the political and legal price for abusing children as a war strategy.

The international community should adopt a consistent and uncompromising stance against abusers of children in the conduct of warfare. Political and diplomatic recognition, and control of the trade in small arms - used by increasingly younger child-soldiers - and of financial flows and commerce sustaining armed conflicts, are points of pressure that the international community should use to exact belligerents’ respect for children. Moreover, concerted action should be taken to end the impunity characterizing crimes against children. The Special Representative will also promote the psychosocial reintegration of children post-conflict.

At the end of the presentation, copies of the Interim Report of the Special Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4/1998/119) were distributed.

Plenary discussion

Participants commended the position of the UN Secretary-General and his Special Representative in condemning armed conflict and denouncing its impacts on children. They observed the importance of dialogue between the UN and NGOs, so that both sectors can learn from and enhance each other’s work. Strong support was expressed for the future establishment of an International Criminal Court, independent of states and governments, with the power to declare the recruitment of children under 15 a crime of. The proposal by the Commission on the Rights of the Child to raise the minimum voluntary recruitment age to 18 was endorsed. It was felt that all people, from political elites to the grass-roots community, need to internalize international norms to secure their observance.

Working groups

Participants separated into three working groups, each of which considered issues arising from the plenaries in relation to a particular set of actors. The three groups then reported back and made sector-specific recommendations.

Working group on minorities, indigenous communities and civil society in the region

The group on minorities, indigenous communities and civil society fully supported the emerging consensus that human rights violations are not an issue under the exclusive sovereignty of the state but an international concern, and that civil society should promote this thinking. Civil actors should encourage governments to incorporate international standards into municipal law, so that individuals and communities can seek redress directly within the domestic legal system. It was considered that both minority and majority communities need to understand international standards on minority and indigenous rights better, and should accept a responsibility to monitor and expose injustice. Participants thought that civil society should be more vociferous in requiring belligerents to abide by humanitarian and human rights law, and should pressure governments to secure international recognition of rape and the forced recruitment and abduction of children as war crimes.

The group argued that a strong and dynamic civil society - including both traditional social institutions and NGOs - has an important role in promoting the best interests of the child (the founding principle of the CRC). It can help provide - and press state agencies and donors for - facilities and programmes for the rehabilitation and reintegration of traumatized children. Minority-based organizations are especially appropriate to coordinate traditional healing activities and ceremonies for children who have undergone rape and other trauma.

Traditional institutions

A major role was envisaged for minority-based and indigenous organizations and other in-country NGOs in the distribution of emergency relief and planning post-conflict rehabilitation, especially by involving women as coordinators. Local organizations are well placed to advise intergovernmental agencies and INGOs on local circumstances and the needs of marginalized groups. Similarly, displaced and refugee communities should be supported in taking primary responsibility for safeguarding their physical and cultural survival.

Working group on governments and state-related agencies

The group on governments and state-related agencies expanded its terms of reference to include opposition movements, arguing that the latter should be judged by the same criteria as governments and state agencies in their commitment to human rights and humanitarian principles. For this group, a prime responsibility of states, state-related agencies and opposition movements was to protect civilians, including for non-combatants, in times of conflict, and all warring parties had equal responsibilities to adhere to the Geneva Conventions. There is an onus on governments to identify gaps in municipal law and enact appropriate legislation, and to integrate international and regional treaties on children, minorities and discrimination into national legislation. State-level actors should put in place practical measures to ensure implementation of international standards for the protection of vulnerable groups, as well as monitoring, reporting and just punishment of abuses and violations, with compensation paid to victims.

Conflict prevention, resolution and transformation were seen as the province of this level of actors. The group urged states and dominant groups to investigate the historical, sociological and ethnic background to conflict, to develop approaches to conflict prevention, and to foster dialogue with in-country and regional actors , including NGOs and the grass roots. Power-sharing would be an important strategy to transcend the ethnic-based politics that has so often led to intra-state conflict in Africa. Governments, state agencies and opposition movements were seen also to have a duty to promote training and sensitisation of their personnel with respect to minority and indigenous cultures and rights, the rights of the child and gender awareness.

State and opposition actors had a further obligation to provide and ensure the availability of appropriate services to non-combatant minorities and indigenous communities, and especially children, in zones affected by armed conflict. Such services include physical protection, shelter and nutrition, water and sanitation, health and education, in the longer term income-earning opportunities and secure livelihoods, and for individuals and communities that have suffered trauma adequate counselling and rehabilitation.

Working group on intergovernmental organizations and international emergency, relief and development agencies

The group on intergovernmental organizations and international emergency, relief and development agencies saw the intervention of such actors as a key source of vision, leadership, technical assistance and financial support to those working at state and community levels. Existing good practice was identified. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNHCR had cooperated with the Uganda Human Rights Commission in providing training for law enforcement agencies, and this model could be extended to other sectors, such as members of armed forces . UNICEF had produced the Sara series of education packs that provided a valuable international tool for enhancing girl child education and gender awareness

Action for the Rights of Children (ARC): a UNHCR-NGO partnership

The mandate of international peacekeeping forces under intergovernmental control should include the protection of children, minority and indigenous non-combatants, and all other vulnerable and unarmed groups. They should monitor and report abuses of humanitarian principles and human rights and have access to mechanisms to bring alleged perpetrators to justice. The group believed that monitoring and reporting are often most effective when undertaken by two or more like-minded organizations, since passing on information to another organization located at a distance from the events can help safeguard organizations and individuals working in the field against exposure and retaliation.

Intergovernmental and international actors were encouraged to cooperate to draw attention to, and strengthen international support for, traditional African structures and mechanisms for the protection of non-combatants and for peace building. They should support minority-based NGOs with resources, so that communities can develop their own programmes and better defend their rights.

Emergency and relief organizations have a special responsibility for children. This work can be both proactive - building a pluralist and inclusive `belongingness’ among children of different communities, founded on respect for diversity - and reactive, involving the provision of culturally appropriate relief, support and rehabilitation for children traumatized by war. The group drew particular attention to the marginalization or exclusion of ethnic-minority children from aid programmes and humanitarian assistance, and highlighted the need for greater awareness and sensitivity from field organizations and donors.

Concluding session and workshop recommendations

Participants sought in the final session to consolidate the wide range of issues and concerns discussed into practical proposals for positive change. Although the subject of the workshop had emerged as beset with dilemmas , all agreed on the urgent need for responses to tackle both more immediate questions of relief and rehabilitation and the longer-term peace-building agenda. A key challenge was to apply internationally agreed norms and standards effectively in the regional and local context, a need that cut across borders, since, in the words of one participant: `We are all potential minorities, capable of being marginalized and disenfranchised.’

To conclude, participants agreed on eight broad recommendations:

Actors at all levels should prioritize sensitization on minority and indigenous rights and the rights of the minority or indigenous child.

Locally appropriate forms of multicultural and intercultural education and education for peace should be promoted, drawing on the best existing models.

International standards should be effectively incorporated into domestic law, with state-level actors and others undertaking monitoring and reporting, promoting best practice, and seeking just punishment for perpetrators of abuses.

Traditional approaches to conflict-prevention and peace-building in Africa should be far more widely recognized and supported.

The marginalization of ethnic minorities should be addressed at all levels, including their empowerment at state and local level through political power-sharing and more inclusive politics.

The international community, states, opposition movements and civil society should sharpen their concern for the rights and best interests of the child, with special attention to the girl child.

Donors, relief organizations, state agencies and others should urgently address the exclusion of ethnic-minority children and their communities from aid programmes and humanitarian relief.

Links and cooperation between local, regional and international bodies, especially NGOs, require strengthening to help build the impetus for constructive change.

Justice Kanyeihamba closed the workshop. He commended its proposals and said that he was delighted that Uganda was able to host what was in his view a ground-breaking event.

Follow-up activities

The organizers hope that the workshop will be part of a process that enhances recognition of the rights and circumstances of minority and indigenous children and their communities in Africa and beyond. Contacts made at the workshop are being maintained, and follow-up activities are under discussion. MRG’s case study on the impact of armed conflict on Somali minority children is being translated into Somali for publication in Somalia and Kenya during 1998.

[note 1] MRG (ed.), War: The Impact on Minority and Indigenous Children, London, 1997, © UNICEF and MRG.

Participants

Simia Ahmadi-Thoolen International Federation of Human Rights FIDH), Kampala, Uganda

Richard Akankwasa School of Education, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Maricela Daniel UNHCR, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

G. William Ekukwai The Monitor, Kampala, Uganda

Captain Eugene Haguma Ministry of Defence, Kigali, Rwanda

Bengt Herring Swedish Embassy, Nairobi, Kenya

Simon Peter Kabala-Kasirye Kkaluba Multi-Racial Family (International Tribe), Kampala, Uganda

Reginald Kambale Kavingulwa Kampala, Uganda

Hon. George Kanyeihamba Justice of the Supreme Court, Kampala, Uganda

Deborah Kasente Department of Gender and Women Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Joan Kayaga HURIPEC, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Moncef Khane Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, United Nations, New York, USA

Isma Kibowa Kampala, Uganda

Catherine Kigozi Njuba Times, Kampala, Uganda

David Klassen Mennonite Central Committee, Kampala, Uganda

Miles Litvinoff MRG, London, UK

Norah Matovu HURINET, Kampala, Uganda

Charlotte L. M'Doe Kampala, Uganda

Kapupu Diwa Mutimanwa Programme d'Intégration et de Développement du Peuple Pygmée au Kivu, Bukavu, République Démocratique du Congo

Maria Nassali Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Kampala, Uganda

Anicet Ndemeye Association pour la Promotion des Batwa, Kigali, Rwanda

Betty Akech Okullen Parliament of Uganda, Kampala, Uganda

Joe Oloka-Onyango Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Kampala Uganda

George Omona Gulu Support the Children Organisation, Gulu, Uganda

James Otto Human Rights Focus, Gulu, Uganda

Dr Nyeko Peap-Mogi Parliament of Uganda, Kampala, Uganda

Alan Phillips MRG, London, UK

Everett M. Ressler UNICEF, Nairobi, Kenya

Aniku Hudson Rogers Uganda Human Rights Commission, Kampala, Uganda

Yusuf Abdi Salah Somali Human Rights Action Group, Nairobi, Kenya

Mohamed Abdel Rhman Salih Sudan Human Rights Association, Kampala, Uganda

Hassan Shire Sheikh Dr Ismail Juma'le Centre for Human Rights, Mogadishu, Somalia

Ruhinda Silver Kampala, Uganda

Alfred Logune Taban BBC and Reuters correspondent, Khartoum, Sudan

Per Tamm Rädda Barnen (Save the Children, Sweden), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Hirut Tefferi Rädda Barnen (Save the Children, Sweden), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Johannes Thoolen UNHCR, Kampala, Uganda

Sam Tindifa HURIPEC, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Patrice Vahard Amnesty International, Kampala, Uganda

Kalimba Zephyrin CAURWA, Kigali, Rwanda

Students present from Makerere University: Emmanuel Kasimbazi, Judy Obntr-Gama, Sunday Peter (Faculty of Law); Grace Akello, Joy Edith Angulo, Winnie Babirye, Susan Bakesha, Clare Migioha, Mary Mugyenyi, Frances Nyachwo (Department of Gender and Women Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences).

Acknowledgements

HURIPEC and MRG gratefully acknowledge support from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), both of which gave financial assistance for the workshop and this report. The organizers would also like to thank Maria Nassali, who acted as workshop rapporteur and drafted this report.

The views expressed in this workshop report represent a summary of the views of the participants and do not necessarily reflect in every respect those of HURIPEC and MRG.

HURIPEC

[HURIPEC To insert standard copy + contacts details]

MRG International

Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non-governmental organization working to secure rights for ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities worldwide, and to promote cooperation between communities. MRG publishes reports, books, education and training materials, and the 850-page World Directory of Minorities. MRG works with the United Nations, among other international bodies, to increase awareness of minority rights, coordinates training on minority rights internationally and collaborates with different communities to counter racism and prejudice. MRG is funded by contributions from individuals and institutional donors, and from the sales of its publications.

Minority Rights Group International

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Tel: +44 (0)171 978 9498

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Website: www.minorityrights.org

Published [month] 1998 by HURIPEC

(c) Human Rights and Peace Centre and Minority Rights Group 1998

Further copies of this workshop report are available from HURIPEC [if you want this] and MRG.