Interview with WFP Deputy Executive Director, Sheila Sisulu

Sheila Sisulu, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), visited Uganda’s war-torn northern region this week. She toured a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs), chatted with local leaders, heard harrowing tales from former abductees of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and met the 'night commuters' - children who trek into swollen urban centres each night to avoid the risk of being attacked by LRA fighters out in the villages. In an interview, she talked to IRIN about her visit. QUESTION: How would you sum up your feelings about what you’ve seen in northern Uganda? ANSWER: It is beyond comprehension. I find it unbelievable, quite frankly, that there could be a crisis of this magnitude that has gone on now for so long and the world is almost completely unaware. Q: What shocked you most about it? A: The atrocities in this war – like the massacres reported last month – are one thing, but it’s so much worse than that. I can’t believe there are children born and growing up in encampments, living in permanent fear, and those even less fortunate ending up in LRA captivity and possibly giving birth to other children in those conditions, and then the world has just let this go on. Q: So do you think the problem is that people have just become inured to the suffering in the north? A: The conflict has become a routine. Like the night commuters – kids streaming into town on a daily basis to avoid being killed or abducted. Even calling them night commuters makes it sound normal. It obscures that fact that their actual daily existence is something horrific. If this was happening in some other places in the world, I get the feeling we would have stopped it by now. Q: Could this be down to lack of high profile media coverage? A: The problem for the media is that we have a crisis, much of which does not offer the opportunity for footage. In such cases, it isn’t recognised as a crisis. Battlefields and killings are good footage. Tens of thousands of children streaming into town to sleep on the verandas maybe doesn’t give such good footage. We need to look at this crisis as something which deeply affects families and communities, because it has created such an abnormal society. Q: On your trip you talked a lot about education. Could education perhaps play a role in repairing such an abnormal society? A: Absolutely. Education is a vital tool for survival in the 21st century. In the north, despite the difficulties and the trauma of war, education is giving these children the capacity to know there is a different world, not marked by death and suffering. It gives them something to aspire to – another perspective on what life can be. With education, they can be empowered to wish for the peace that they’ve never had. The success of education here says a lot for their communities. It shows an absence of bitterness. Q: You had a meeting with the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative, who are the main lobby group in the north campaigning for a peaceful end to the war. What were their concerns as expressed to you? A: Above everything else they want peace, but they also want an improvement in the quality of life of people in the north – better health care, infrastructure. Q: What did they ask of you as a representative of the United Nations? Did they ask you to mediate in the conflict? A: They didn’t specify, but they wanted the international community to put pressure on both sides to work towards peace. Of course, they are already trying to mediate, and what they want is support in this from the international community. The actual mediation process has to be done by Ugandans – it can only be supported, not supplanted. They also said they felt an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe could endanger the peace process. Q: Might an ICC probe endanger the peace process? Couldn’t your experience as a South African who fought the injustices of the apartheid regime be brought to bear here? Perhaps something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as you had in South Africa, to heal northern Uganda’s wounds? A: I supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It was about South Africans finding our own way to resolve our difficulties and move forward. We are talking about victims and perpetrators sharing a country with nowhere else to go. It would require a scorched earth policy if a justice system were to start hunting for war criminals. We’d still be locked in the same blame games. Q: Can’t similar concerns be raised about northern Uganda, then? A: Insofar as it is an application of those principles to a different situation, it isn’t my place to comment. But I will just mention that this conflict is not about foreign armies. This is about Ugandans fighting Ugandans. I personally do not believe that a military solution can be achieved by itself from what I’ve seen. In the end, neither the LRA nor their victims have anywhere else to go – they can’t retreat. At some stage there has to be a process of reconciliation. Q: And an ICC probe would jeopardise that reconciliation? A: Ugandans have to determine for themselves whether or not to have an ICC probe. But I have certainly heard some say it could obscure the path to a broader peace. If you want a negotiated settlement, you can’t revert to trials, because then you negotiate in bad faith. Q: What was the outcome of your discussions with government ministers back in [the capital] Kampala? A: We agreed that a better use of WFP resources would be to channel some of our emergency relief into education. If the US $10 million we spend every month was used in school feeding, it could have a tremendous impact on government efforts to provide education.