Africa: Post-conflict Stabilisation

Baroness Cox Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cox]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on initiating this timely debate on such an extremely significant subject. I shall focus on northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, together with the Nuba mountains, as my small NGO, HART, is privileged to be working with partners in those areas.

Having visited them in recent months, I can convey some of the concerns, fears and hopes of the people there, where the aftermath of conflict has left a legacy of widespread devastation of infrastructure, an acute shortage of essential services including healthcare and education, and many vulnerable people and decimated families, scarred by indescribably traumatic experiences. Security is a prerequisite for the rehabilitation of societies and individuals. Without some degree of stabilisation, developments essential for the restoration of communities and the healing of individuals cannot effectively be implemented.

We began our work in northern Uganda while the LRA was active and we witnessed the horrors that it created, terrorising the area for 20 years, displacing more than 1.6 million people, killing and maiming innocent civilians, and abducting at least 25,000 children, brutalising them and forcing them to become soldiers. I shall focus on the importance of education in this context, for post-conflict stability and personal healing.

Disturbingly, DfID’s 2009 annual report claims that Uganda is off track in relation to achieving millennium development goal 2. It is a matter of special concern that, despite some significant improvements in primary school enrolment and gender parity nationally, northern Uganda is still lagging far behind the rest of the country. For example, there is still a shortage of schools: 76 schools in Pader District were destroyed during the conflict; those that do exist are in poor condition; 47 of the 238 primary schools there are still “under trees”. There is also a significant lack of teachers in the north, especially female teachers. A 2008 government report identified a shortfall of more than 19,000 teachers in the northern region based on a target student-to-teacher ratio of 50:1, with a debilitating student-to-teacher ratio in Pader of 91:1 and a pupil-to-classroom ratio of 126:1. These difficult working conditions, lower salaries than elsewhere, poor facilities, high pupil-to-teacher ratios and lack of teacher accommodation all make recruitment and retention of teachers even more difficult. Despite the Ugandan Government’s assurance of prioritising the northern region, it still receives less funding per capita than the rest of the country.

I wish briefly to give two examples of the ordeals suffered by children abducted by the LRA to highlight the urgent need for good education for these young people who have suffered so much. First, I relate an all-too-typical story of a teenager whom I met. I shall call him John. He was abducted by the LRA when he was in his early teens. He was beaten, force-marched, kept hungry for days, trained to use weapons and had to use other children as target practice. One of his friends who tried to escape was recaptured and staked out on the ground. John and other teenagers had to trample their friend to death. Eventually, John managed to escape and the LRA killed his father as a punishment, so he goes around feeling guilty for the death of his “Dad”. Secondly, a young teenage girl told of how she had been forced to kill another child with a panga knife and drink his blood. She said that she still has nightmares, but asked me, crying, “What else could I do? It was either him or me”.

These young people and so many like them, who have suffered indescribable horrors at the hands of the LRA, desperately yearn for education in order to try to build a future for themselves and put the past behind them. Many cannot afford it and are left in desperation and despair. Such a situation is not only a tragedy for them but prevents the development of the region and may create a situation of potential instability, with young people left unemployed, psychologically traumatised and vulnerable, in desperation, to re-recruitment to militias who could bring renewed violence and instability to the region. Will Her Majesty's Government urge the Ugandan Government to ensure that all such young people have access to education? Also, will they consider other ways in which they could further assist the Ugandan Government to improve teacher training, and particularly train more women teachers?

This time last week I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker in a conference in Abuja on the empowerment of African women. A recurring theme throughout the whole of that conference was the urgent need for more education of girls and for teachers in many African countries. Returning briefly to Uganda, will Her Majesty’s Government also, in accordance with DfID’s 2009-14 country plan, urge the Ugandan Government to manage their resources more effectively and invest more public funding in the north?

Finally, in response to the fact that the LRA and other rebel groups are apparently mushrooming in the DRC and across the region and are a threat to regional stability, as the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey has already emphasised, will Her Majesty’s Government ask the UN/UPDF to increase military pressure and presence to protect civilians in LRA-affected areas?

I turn now to Sudan, declaring an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan. This is a critical time, with many threats to the comprehensive peace agreement. The National Congress Party is widely believed to be deeply opposed to the referendum as it does not wish the south to secede. There is widespread belief that the south will vote for independence. Serious concerns have been expressed over the lack of progress in post-conflict reconstruction in the south, but it is important to appreciate the extent of destruction and the low baseline from which the Government of Southern Sudan have had to start to rebuild all aspects of infrastructure and civil society. Despite the enduring problems facing the people of Southern Sudan, most of the population continue to put their faith in the Government in Juba rather than in Khartoum. The latter have lost all credibility there.

There are widespread fears that the Government of National Unity may be instigating inter-tribal fighting in parts of Southern Sudan. While skirmishes, with traditional weapons, for scarce resources such as land, water and cattle have been historically commonplace, recent conflicts have been exacerbated by the use of militias with more sophisticated weapons, such as AK47s, which local leaders believe may have been provided from Khartoum in order to create terror and destabilise the south.

There is also concern that the donor community has not fulfilled its 2005 commitments. Only a small fraction of the $4.8 billion assistance that was pledged has reached essential infrastructure projects, as humanitarian aid for Darfur has absorbed most of the money. Consequently, many parts of Southern Sudan and the marginalised areas have been off the radar screen for many major aid organisations and the international media, resulting in largely unreported humanitarian crises of enormous proportions and some of the worst health statistics in the world—one in seven children dies before their fifth birthday and one in seven mothers dies in pregnancy and childbirth. Less than 20 per cent of the population are protected by immunisation leaving 83 per cent vulnerable to preventable diseases such as polio, tetanus, measles and TB. Four years ago, we discovered unidentified leprosy in the eastern Upper Nile.

There has also been a lost generation of children unable to receive schooling because of constant bombardment and other effects of the war. Even now, less than half the children in Southern Sudan receive even a five-year basic primary education and 85 per cent of adults are illiterate, with an even higher figure of 92 per cent for women—an appalling figure. With an infrastructure devastated by war, there is a desperate need for rebuilding roads, without which people cannot move freely, especially in the rainy season, to reach towns for healthcare and education.

Other marginalised peoples continue to suffer from humanitarian crises. For example, the plight of the Beja people in eastern Sudan remains so serious that the southern Sudanese, whose own predicament is dire, undertook an investigation and claimed that the Beja people’s plight was even worse than their own. I ask the Minister whether EU and DfID funding could include an appropriate weighting to provide essential assistance to these all too often forgotten people in the marginalised areas.

The Government of Southern Sudan remain concerned over the erratic transfer of resources due from Khartoum and by the continuing refusal of the Government of National Unity to provide information on oil revenues. Especial concerns have been identified in SPLM-administered areas of southern Kordofan, or the Nuba mountains—I use that phrase because the people prefer it. Here people claim that they have received no peace dividends from the comprehensive peace agreement and say that they are,

“worse off since the CPA than we were during the war”.

Another cause for concern is the lack of any clear interpretation of the content of the consultation provided for the people of the Nuba mountains and other marginalised areas by the CPA instead of a referendum. Many leaders have emphasised that they would never wish for another war, but they may be driven to it, as they are worse off since the CPA and fear that its provisions will not provide them with protection from Khartoum’s perceived agenda to force them into a political and cultural assimilation designed to destroy their African history and identity. Will Her Majesty’s Government, in co-operation with the Joint Donor Team, other donor agencies and NGOs, do more to ensure the provision of essential supplies of water, land and food to these communities to reduce competition and conflict for those scarce resources and to promote more effective distribution of healthcare and education throughout all regions of Sudan?

Finally, I turn to problems of violence and insecurity in Southern Sudan, which claimed 2,500 lives last year and displaced 350,000 people. The notorious LRA has been responsible for many deaths, injuries and abductions; inter-tribal fighting has been responsible for the rest. There is widespread dismay and anger over the role of UNMIS—the United Nations Mission to Sudan. Requests and representations referred by local leaders have not even been acknowledged. Will Her Majesty’s Government support a reconsideration of the role of UNMIS to undertake a more proactive civilian protection role, in accordance with its mandate, and to define more clearly the circumstances under which it will provide protection, with appropriate intervention, rather than mere observation? Another civil war would be devastating for the Sudanese people as well as for neighbouring countries and, indeed, the entire horn of Africa.

The people of Sudan, both north and south, still look to the UK for support as they believe we have a special understanding of their situation and, to some extent, responsibility for their current predicament. I believe that this debate can reassure them and the people in the region that we in this country care and will do all we can to support them in endeavours to promote and maintain the post-conflict stability that is essential for reconstruction, development of civil society and peace between and within these nations in this volatile and vulnerable part of the great continent of Africa.