The Equator Peace Academy (EPA) is an annual international Academy (Summer School) designed to confront thematic issues in selected countries of the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This is a call to all interested parties to participate in the first Academy from 12th to 26th August 2012. The Academy is organised in Uganda and Rwanda under the theme Whose Community? Memory, Conflict and Tradition, with the aim of confronting the problems of intolerance to diversity, divisive governance and the turbulent past.  This annual event employs an open, dialogic, experiential, and reflective methodology together with pragmatic solution-based learning to analyze contemporary conflicts in the region (and world over). Our goal is to understand and overcome the type of social segregation and violence that have so often characterized relations between different communities in this region.

The EPA is based in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. The region has witnessed shocking horrors in the past and conflicts continue to today. Within the past two decades alone, the region has seen hundreds of thousands of murdered people floating down the rivers of Rwanda, innocent civilians driven from their homes and massacred in Burundi and Uganda, hundreds of thousands killed in ethnic violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, tens of thousands killed or exiled in racial and religious conflicts in Southern Sudan, thousands of people crammed into Internally Displaced Persons camps in Kenya and refugees faced with forced repatriation in Tanzania. It is a region that has failed to learn from its past experiences as people of a particular ethnic, religious, political affiliation and race have often meted out violence on those who appear different and are regarded as “others” and so beyond the “borders” of any  relationship. In this region, the boundaries of a moral universe are limited borders of tribe, language, religion or nation and beyond these are people seen to threaten group survival. The logic of these moral borders is among the prime causes of civil wars and conflicts in the region.

In Uganda, the EPA will focus on the North and Central regions.  In the North, fellows will confront the aftermath of the two decades of war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and the Government of Uganda.  Specifically, fellows will  interact with parents of the abducted children, and the former abducted school girls  of St Mary’s, Aboke Girls Secondary School in Kole District who have become the international and media face of the thousands of children abducted during the LRA war.  Fellows will also meet with the survivors of the Barlonyo massacre in Lira District as well as the former LRA commanders and Uganda Peoples Defence (UPDF, the national army) commanders involved in the war.  In addition, fellows will interact with the cultural, religious and civic leaders who attempt to provide leadership in addressing post conflict issues in the aftermath of the war.  Fellows will also visit mass graves in the region.  They will attempt to answer the questions: whose community was the LRA fighting for? Whose community was the Government of Uganda fighting for? Whose community are the cultural, religious and civic leaders governing?  What role did which traditions have in the LRA war? How are memories of the war to be processed? What memories are being held and promoted? Whose communities are being advancing?

In Central Uganda, fellows will meet with the officials of Buganda Kingdom. Buganda Kingdom is central to the history of Uganda.  The very name Uganda is derived from Buganda.  During the colonisation of Uganda, Buganda collaborated with the colonisers, the British.  Consequently, Buganda enjoyed some favours from the British Imperialists.  In 1997, the government of Uganda removed the favours that Buganda enjoyed during the colonial period.  This created a rift between the government and the Buganda establishment.  To date, any government that comes to power has to deal with this issue.  The questions that the fellows will have to confront in Buganda will turn on this special status of the Kingdom of Buganda within the Ugandan state and its meaning for different notions of community and of historical identities; in Buganda, Uganda and indeed the Great Lakes Region as a whole.

In Rwanda, fellows will come face to face with the aftermath of the 1994 Tutsi genocide and Hutu massacres.  Fellows will visit the National Genocide Memorial cites and the churches where the genocides took place as well as mass graves.  While in Rwanda, some of the questions the fellows will attempt to answer include: whose community were the Hutu and Tutsi fighting for?  Which tradition resulted into the massacres and genocide?  Which memory is Rwandan government promoting?   In what ways can a ‘Rwandan’ memory be constructed? How best can a Rwandan community be built? What is the past to the Rwanda community?

Fellows will have an opportunity to compare and contrast the identified sites in the context of Ugandan and Rwandan experiences as well as in the light of the experiences beyond the Great Lakes Region.  It is hoped that our unique mode of inquiry will result into openings for durable solutions to inform policy makers in Uganda and Rwanda as well as influence the academic conversations in dealing with the human condition in Great Lakes Region and beyond.

We look forward to selecting a small, but critical group of interested fellows which may include academics and practitioners from governments, civil society and the private sector, from the Great Lakes Region and beyond.  Join us by filling the application form on http://www.fiuc.org/umu

The deadline for receiving applications is 25 March 2012.

The EPA works as a consortium together with the International Summer School on Religion and Public Life whose program will be held in Indonesia from 3-17th July 2012. http://www.issrpl.org/programs/application.html