Lord’s Resistance Army

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, the Kony T-shirt makes me shudder. I agree with my noble friend that the viral video may have made some important mistakes, notably the assumption that its principal actor is still in Uganda. However, as the noble Baroness has just said, it has alerted millions to the glaring fact that this arch-criminal, after years of being hunted, has still not been caught. The video focuses on Uganda because that is where the atrocities have mainly taken place, and where there are still terrible memories of thousands of mutilated or tortured children and bereaved families. I have met President Museveni and his wife Janet several times here and in Kampala, and I have been a UK patron of her trust to help orphans and AIDS victims in Uganda. I have great respect for what they have achieved, mainly the growing stability and increased prosperity of a country that was ravaged by previous rulers, but there is a legacy of neglect of the north and of the Acholi people for which the Ugandan Government carry a heavy responsibility. It was in those conditions that Kony and his fellow torturers were able to flourish, giving Kampala the pretext to clamp down everywhere. Opposition has been regularly suppressed by the President to the point of even frequently arresting his own former doctor and his allies.

The area concerned is immense. The Anglican Diocese of Northern Uganda is located within the districts of Gulu and Amuru and covers an area of over 11,000 square kilometres. Most of its population of about 450,000 people were internally displaced and confined to as many as 51 IDP camps. Even now that the area has returned to relative peace, about 20 per cent of those displaced have still not returned to their villages. According to the UNHCR, 90 per cent have gone home and about 125,000 remain in need of assistance. This mass resettlement has put pressure on already weakened family support systems, social services supplied by churches and charities, and natural resources. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said, many victims will always bear the scars of the brutality of Kony’s irregulars.

I believe that the Ugandan army has done a lot to pursue the LRA over many years and, as we have heard, it is now being assisted by the US. Leaflets are regularly distributed to encourage defections, and children occasionally escape. I suggest that it is largely because Kampala has failed to develop and control the north that Kony has been able to evade the Ugandan army for so long.

In this country and within this Parliament, we have had strongly links with Uganda, not least because of the presence of several Peers and Members of Parliament who were born in Uganda and bring direct knowledge to our debates. I suggest that we do more than we are doing at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Popat, is travelling to Uganda today to visit the Parliament in Kampala and will also visit the business community. Our economy has benefited from many Ugandan Asians who were the victims of past tyrannies and we must encourage and have encouraged their safe return home. We have had frequent exchanges through the Commonwealth in order to share methods and technology, and may they long continue. However, much work still needs to be done to strengthen institutions concerned with the rule of law, democratic government and human rights in Uganda. I hope the Minister will reassure us that the UK energetically supports this work as well as the development projects in the north with which we were concerned a few years ago. I do not know whether we still are. Oil discoveries on Lake Albert are good news, but they do not always solve problems. They can aggravate them.