Niwano Peace Prize Awarded to Ugandan Interfaith Organization
July 15th, 2004 by sfuqua
Regular InterfaithNews.Net readers will recognize this year's winner of
the Niwano Peace Prize: the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative of
Uganda, a United Religions Initiative Cooperation Circle working to end
armed conflict.
The Niwano Peace
Foundation has awarded their twenty-first Peace Price for 2004 to
Acholi
Religious Leaders Peace Iniziative (ARLPI), a
multi-faith peace group which for the last seven years has been seeking a
peaceful resolution to the 18-year old war that affects Northern Uganda.
The award ceremony will be held in Tokyo on May 11. It will be attended
by ARLPI
representatives of its four religious denominations: Archbishop John
Baptist Odama, of Gulu Catholic Diocese and current chairman of the
group; Anglican Bishop Nelson Onono-Onweng, of Northern Uganda, the
Acholi Khadi Shiek Musa Khalil and the head of the Orthodox Church in
Acholi Fr. Julius Orach.
It is the first time that this price has been awarded to an African
organisation by the Niwano Foundation. The institute, based in Japan, was
established in 1978 by a lay Buddish Association, “to honour and
encourage those who are devoting themselves to interreligious
co-operation in the cause of peace”. Previous recipients include:
Archbishop Helder Camara and Cardinal Paulo Arns of Brazil, the
Corrymeela Community of Northern Ireland, the Community of
Sant-Egidio, Rev. Elias Chacour of Israel and Bishop Samuel Ruiz of
Chiapas, Mexico. The prize includes 20 million yen, which ARLPI has already
decided it will use to build a Peace Centre in Gulu.
Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative's origins can be
traced to July 1997, when Christians from the two main denominations and
Muslims in Kitgum came together to pray and advocate for peace in
Northern Uganda. Similar initiatives started in Gulu at around the same
time. From these experiences, ARLPI was formally
inaugurated in February 1998. Its first chairman was Bishop Nelson
Onono-Onweng. Ever since, ARLPI has
established a network of peace committees in the main centres throughout
the Acholi sub-region. It has also mediated in violent conflict between
the Acholi and their Jie neighbours, and also between Teso and Karimojong
rural communities.
Throughout its existence ARLPI has
consistently documented facts about the war and advocated for peace and
human rights in national and international fora. In 2001 it published a
detailed report where it called for the dismantling of the displaced
camps in Acholi and the following year it assessed the mixed success of
the Amnesty Law. This advocacy effort has not been made only in writing
documents, but also in actions in clear support of the most vulnerable
victims of the conflict, as it happened at the end of June 2003 when the
religious leaders spent four nights sleeping in the cold streets of Gulu
together with the thousands of child night-commuters who every night seek
safety in the town. Also, every year at the end of December
ARLPI organises
peace rallies and prayers in the main towns affected by the war, helping
people to express their deep desires for an end to the violence. In 2002
it also started the Acholi Education Initiative, a bursary foundation to
help several hundred student orphans in secondary schools.
But it is its effort to mediate between the Government of Uganda and the
rebel group Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) that has won
ARLPI international
recognition as the voice of the suffering people of Northern Uganda. Some
discreet contacts with LRA officers during 2001 led to some of them
laying down their arms and taking advantage of the current Government
Amnesty. In 2002, soon after the launching by the Ugandan Army of the
“Operation Iron Fist” inside Sudan — a move publicly
opposed by ARLPI — some of the
main religious leaders together with some traditional cultural leaders,
after getting the Government's consent, started meeting with the
LRA top commanders in the bush in an effort to be a bridge between them
and the Government of Uganda so that peace conversations could take
place. Twenty-one of meetings of this kind have taken place, often amid
high risks, misunderstandings and threats. Despite all these trials,
ARLPI's
position about a peaceful end to the conflict has remained firm.
