Pearl of Africa foundation, an organisation for Ugandans living in Netherlands was responsible for organising the Den Haag Gulu Walk in The Hague. It started with around 40 people but by the end of the programme, 50 people had registered.
Most of the walkers attired in orange T-shirts and caps walked while singing, blowing the trumpet and whistling. Some people in the areas we passed through joined the walk. A walk document given to bystanders and delivered in mailboxes along the route. The walk document was colourful and was in both English and Dutch. It briefly explained the walk.
The Gulu walk of 2007 was part of the Global effort to raise awareness and funds for the emergency humanitarian support for the parentless, helpless, homeless and hopeless children who had been walking tens of miles every day in search of safety, food and shelter between the jungles and towns in Northern Uganda for the last twenty years. The children remained caught up between the government, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and other rebellions between the people of Northern Uganda and the Government for the last twenty years.
The Walk of 2008 however, the emphasis was on support for the ongoing peace talks and resettlement.
The Den Haag Gulu Walk had Ugandans of different tribes and political affiliations from the Netherlands and Belgium. Unlike last year we did not have representatives from Uganda. The walk took about 2 hours going through densely populated areas of the Hague shopping centre.
Unlike previous year where we were supported by 2 police officers, this time we were escorted by the many police who later described our walk as very peaceful and orderly compared to other such-like demonstrations involving immigrants!
At the corner café near ISS where we assembled after the walk, a keynote address was given by WSO Akwero. He explained the Gulu walk history as an event that started with just two people in July 2005 and has now grown into a worldwide peace movement. GuluWalk continues to have global reach and has been featured in media outlets all over the world, with GuluWalk co-founders Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward being recognized in 2005 as Newsmakers of the Year by Maclean's magazine
He gave a background of the Gulu conflict history outlining how Uganda has been at war for the last 20 years. Approximately 2 million people were living in camps in Northern and Eastern Uganda. They suffered quietly until Jan Engeland, then U.N. under-secretary general of Humanitarian Affairs, exposed the catastrophe as the worst humanitarian crisis, the forgotten war worse than Darfur and Iraq...! 2 decades of armed conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government in the Northern Uganda caused some nearly two million civilians to be displaced from their homes. Ordered into so-called protected camps, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face heightened insecurity, appalling living conditions and the lack of means of subsistence. Abuses against these communities are rampant; the LRA has committed war crimes and gross violations of human rights including the abduction of over twenty thousand children, widespread maiming, rape and murder against the civilian population. These attacks have led to secondary displacement in which up to forty thousand children commuted nightly from the camps to sleep in the relative safety of town centres.
While the LRA have been perpetrators of these crimes, the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF), the national army, has also committed human rights violations against civilians that include arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, torture and rape. The UPDF, whose mandate is to protect civilians, has not only failed to prevent attacks and abductions by the LRA, but has also perpetrated grave abuses against civilians in a climate of impunity
In 2006, Halima Namakula graced the Amsterdam Gulu walk, Youths from Youth Service Initiative in Utrecht, Ugandans from Sweden and Germany and some few Ugandans from the Netherlands. There were more non-Ugandans who participated in the walk than Ugandans!
The peace talks have brought the belligerents on table to discuss peace. A cessation of hostilities agreement was signed last year and there has been some semblance of Peace in Gulu. Some people have returned to their homes from the internally displaced camps. However, the victims seem not to be represented.
Pearl of Africa the organizers of this walk joined Gulu Walk Canada in order to contribute in its small way to support the peace talks and fundraise for the returnees. Pearl of Africa also has a project in Gulu to build a day care centre for the children of former abducted girls to enable them return to school or seek employment.
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