Building an Ecology of Resilience through Religious Practice and Community in Northern Uganda

Resilience, Adaptive Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice

“…Most of these groups unite survivors of the LRA conflict and assist victims in advocating for their demands and pursuing their quests for justice, but they also provide more practical assistance -including peer support, incomegenerating activities or shared finance schemes, such as Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA). While smaller groups at the community level primarily engage in these forms of immediate practical support for survivors, 5 Also focused on northern Uganda, Williams (2021) has examined how small religious groups can foster an ecology of resilience, which is indeed similar to the argumentation we offer here. quests for justice and reparations have mostly been taken up by larger claimants' associations, such as the Acholi War Debt Claimants' Association (AWDCA) (see Figure 5.1), thereby creating hierarchies between different types of groups.…”

“…Focusing on gender, some groups -such as the Women's Advocacy Network (WAN) or Watye ki Gen -provide a platform for conflict-affected women who have returned from LRA captivity with children born as a result of rape (Amony, 2015;Stewart, 2015), in addition to several groups of female and male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (Apiyo and McClain Opiyo, 2015: 9; Edstro ¨m and Dolan, 2018: 178). These survivors' support groups exist alongside numerous small Christian churches in rural northern Uganda that similarly offer 'a variety of social practices' (Williams, 2021).…”

“…It is primarily the aforementioned types of activities and social practicesoffering mutual support and counselling, as well as collective economic activities -and their ensuing effects that fundamentally assist survivors in their contemporary post-conflict situations. In this way, they constitute an effective resource for survivors to engage with conflict-related harms, thereby contributing towards facilitating a local ecology of resilience Williams, 2021). Elsewhere, one of us has previously examined how groups facilitate spaces for survivors to exercise agency (Touquet and Schulz, 2020: 12-14) and thereby serve as a conduit for these individuals to attain a sense of justice on their own terms (Schulz, 2019: 178).…”

“…In this reading, the groups combine multiple systemic factors -including gender identities, and in particular masculinities constructions, social relationalities and socio-economic components -which contribute towards facilitating survivors' resilient capacities within group settings and at the micro level. Hence, the type of resilience that can be fostered through survivors' groups should not be understood as a set of static character traits that are inherent in individuals or in groups, but, rather, as 'an adaptive process inculcated through specific practices' (Williams, 2021).…”

“…Survivors' groups thus combine multiple systemic factors -including gender relations, sociality, communality and a shared lived reality, as well as financial stability -which facilitate local communities' resilient capacities. This, in turn, can create what we think of as a local 'ecology of resilience' (Kirmayer et al, 2012; among members of these groups on an individual and communal level (see Williams, 2021).…”