A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
The Impact of Service
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Network – Uganda
During 2008, project staff met with scores of community based advocates working with survivors in Northern Uganda. The principal partner that has emerged is the Gulu Disabled Persons Union. Below are some brief profiles of the advocacy groups in Uganda.
Gulu District Disabled Persons's Union
The Gulu District Disabled Persons's Union is a network of survivor groups that seek to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. The network has 23 members – all disability groups – working in sub-counties in Gulu; and four district-level groups that focus on landmine survivors, disabled women, deaf women, and blind people. The association hopes to empower disabled conflict survivors to tell their stories, as well as ensure that their accessibility needs are not ignored as northern Uganda rebuilds. By creating their own narrative, the association believes survivors can dispel the myth that disabled people “had it coming” and eliminate some of the stigma they face. The association works to increase the political participation of survivors, as well as empower them economically.
Friends of Orphans
Founded by former child soldier Anywar Ricky Richard in 1999, Friends of Orphans (FRO) seeks to help child soldiers and abductees reintegrate into communities in Northern Uganda. The group provides counseling, free education, HIV/AIDS care, and training in conflict resolution techniques and human rights. Almost all staff members of the organization are former child soldiers themselves, and they use this shared experience to help the kids they serve to open up about their pasts and deal with the trauma.
Friends of Orphans has also organized the former child soldier community in order to get their voices and input heard at the Juba peace talks.
Contact: Anywar Ricky Richard
ISIS-Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange (ISIS-WICCE )
ISIS-WICCE is a Swiss organization that works with women in conflict and post-conflict societies.
The organization is named after the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis who symbolizes wisdom, creativity and knowledge. ISIS-WICCE started working in Uganda in 1995 on documenting the voices of women, building their skills, advocating for their rights, and networking among various women’s groups. In 1996, the organization visited Luwero to study how sexuality was used during the war, document the trauma, and provide and advocate for better mental health care. ISIS-WICCE runs an international exchange program where it trains women from conflict countries on human rights and conflict resolution and provides seed money for them to work on an issue in their communities.
Contact: Prossy Nakaye at +256 414 543 953
Platform for Labor Action
Platform for Labor Action (PLA) works with marginalized and undocumented workers, who make up more than 80 percent of the workforce in Uganda. It works mainly in the informal labor market with internally displaced persons, women working as street vendors, and child laborers. PLA uses a peer to peer educator program to reach out to child domestic workers – who comprise more than half of all child laborers in the country. PLA's work is concentrated in Lira, a town which was heavily affected by the conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army. With its help, 365 girls in the town have entered primary and secondary schools.
Contact: Lillian Keene-Mugerwa at +256 712 484 797
Refugee Law Project
The Refugee Law Project (RLP) is a legal clinic that has been working with refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Uganda since 1999. The RLP combines direct legal services for refugees and asylum seekers with research and advocacy of human rights issues and education and trainings for other refugee groups. Through its work, the RLP has gained an international reputation as a critical and independent voice on matters relating to refugees and IDPs, as well as issues of conflict and transitional justice in Uganda. RLP is affiliated with Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
Contact: Moses Okello at +256 752 986 931
Spinal Injury Association
Founded in 2001, the Spinal Injury Association (SIA) provides psychosocial support to survivors of spinal cord injuries and their families, and raises awareness about the injuries and their effects.
The group also gives lessons in wheelchair usage for survivors and lobbies for construction standards in the country to include mandatory wheelchair ramps. SIA has also successfully lobbied for the creation of a spinal care unit at a hospital in Kampala. In Northern Uganda, the most common cause of spinal injury and paralysis is tuberculosis. Spinal injuries can also occur through vehicle accidents, construction accidents and harvesting accidents -- such as children falling out of mango and banana trees.
Contact: Angela Balaba at +256 312 263 918
Human Rights Network (HURINET)
HURINET is a network of 32 human rights organizations that conducts research and provides opportunities for collaboration among its members in Uganda as well as with human rights groups in other African countries. A Human Rights Fund established by HURINET has funded 78 human rights groups in Uganda, most of which are not members of the network.
Contact: Attn: Ndifuna Mohammed, National Coordinator
Plot 94, Old Kiira Road, Ntinda
P.O. Box 21265
Kampala, Uganda
+256 414 286 923
African Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims
The Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims(ACTV) provides medical services – including extensive psychological counseling – to more than a thousand torture victims each year. Eighty-four percent of the victims they work with are Ugandan, while the remainder come from neighboring countries. The majority of ACTV's clients were tortured by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army and are treated in the center's facility in Gulu. ACTV also does advocacy work, using testimonials and referrals to the Human Rights Commission to hold perpetrators of torture accountable.
Contact: Email ACTV or +256 312 263 918
Human Rights Focus (HURIFO)
HURIFO was formed in 1994 in response to rampant human rights violations in Gulu, where local people were forced to watch public executions by firing squad. HUROFO succeeded in curbing that practice five years later, and continued working to increase awareness of human rights in Uganda.
HURIFO trains local people to become volunteer paralegals, and investigates reports of human rights violations in the 53 refugee camps in the Gulu district. The volunteers document human rights abuses, provide mediation at the community level, refer serious cases to the appropriate agencies, and help survivors to access psychosocial counseling services.
Contact: James Otto or +256 471 322 59
Gulu Amuru Landmine Survivors' Group
The Gulu Amuru Landmine Survivors’ Group serves the needs of survivors of landmine injuries in the Gulu district of Uganda. The association has identified more than 800 such survivors in the Gulu and Amuru districts. Founded in 2005, the group developed a brick-making workshop that employs 18 survivors. The money is used to provide salaries to the 18 employees, as well as cover the group's administrative costs and develop new programs.
Contact: Stephen Okello