In a world where Man fights Man, Betty Bigombe has assumed the role of a true Woman.
She has made her way as a peace negotiator through the vicious battle of two powerful men. And she has been successful, at least to some extent. Uganda’s hopes for peace are based on her endeavors.
At 53, Betty Bigombe is now a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. As a Minister of State, she has laid the foundation for the end of hostilities in Uganda.
It has been a journey of two decades for Betty across the war-torn northern Uganda, in search of peace. She had been the woman behind the process of ending one of Africa’s most elaborate and devastating insurgencies, for which she had to negotiate with the infamous Joseph Kony, the commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army or LRA, and the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
The peace process in Uganda has received a renewed boost in April 2007, when representatives of Museveni and an Acholi delegation chosen by Kony recommenced discussions in Juba, Sudan, to conclude the 21-year-old war. The chief of the LRA delegation confirmed last month that the three sections of the five-phase agreement had been signed. The constantly fluctuating peace process in Uganda had gained concrete momentum since July 2006, but had collapsed again after several months.
The entire credit for the fact that the discussions resumed again goes to Betty Bigombe and her personal efforts.
She had started off on reading a report of a mass butchery at a dislocation camp in Barloonyo on February 21, 2004. Taking some time off from her World Bank position in Washington, she had flown to Uganda to immediately initiate peacemaking. In the process she had to empty her personal bank accounts, delay her daughter’s education for a year, and spend almost down to her last penny.
She went to Sudan and met with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was providing refuge to Kony and his people in the southern part of the country. Bigombe succeeded in resuming contacts with one of Kony’s chief deputies after seven weeks.
Bigombe brought councils of the government and the LRA to confront each other in a discussion in 2004. This was the first time that the Ugandan government had come face to face with Kony’s generals in the bush heartland of Uganda. The process cost her dearly both in terms of money and time.
It was her feminine fostering qualities, her diplomacy and her altruistic sacrifices that has made it possible for Bigombe to achieve what perhaps was almost impossible for a man.
The magic that makes Bigombe the perfect negotiator is the fact that she is never psychologically disconnected from the grass root problems and conflicts of northern Uganda, even when she is far-off physically. And also because she masters her art, - the ‘craft of conflict mediation’.
Richard. H. Solomon, the president of the U.S. Institute of peace, said about Bigombe -
In our development of best practices of conflict management and mediation, her knowledge adds something. It is real experience. She is an experienced academic. How does one negotiate in difficult international ethnic and religious conflicts? Betty enriches our understanding as a very respected practitioner.
The activists who have accompanied Bigombe in her missions in Northern Uganda speak about her charm and popularity among the masses. Actor Ryan Gosling said about her that she was one of his ‘heroes’.
When she speaks, everybody listens. She walks into the bush, puts her life on the line and travels even to southern Sudan’s no man’s land to keep lines of communications open.
- he said.
Betty Bigombe’s journey had started with a carefree childhood, then a sudden experience of violence with the rule of Idi Amin, and finally her marriage to an ambassador in Tokyo. Museveni assigned one of her first projects as a peace negotiator. She had to travel to northern and eastern Uganda in an unconventional and untried mission to head into remote regions and live among discontented communities that she had been asked to convince, but that she wanted to save.
Her friends had tried to persuade her not to go into the mission, fearing the worse. They had said -
He wants to kill you. Why else would he send a woman with no military experience?
What does Betty herself feel about her work? What were her thoughts when she was asked to take up the mission?
I thought of the 2 million people who wanted to go home. They had nothing. I told myself my children would be safe. Not everyone saw it that way. It was a choice to put a smile on these poor souls’ faces or give them hope for another day, but it was not risk-free.
- she said in an interview with the Washington Post.
During the mission she had to mingle with the tribe communities, win their trust and listen to them, in order to get a better understanding of the situation. She has had to travel through perilous areas and meet with dangerous people, like Kony himself, who she had to convince. No doubt she is good at her job. After a few meetings with Kony, he had started calling her ‘Mummy Bigombe’.
Bigombe said about her work -
This work took over my life. It cost me personally. I did things, yes, but I also lost opportunities.
However, at the end of the day, Bigombe is happy to have made her contributions, as she mentions herself. People like her symbolize Hope.
Bigombe deserves admiration as a peacemaker, for the strength and courage it takes to be one. She is definitely stronger than the men out there piercing each other with bullets.
Via : Washington Post
