“I Forgive to Forget”: Implications for Community Restoration and Unity in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Northern Uganda has experienced over ten years of relative peace since the beginning of the peace talks and cessation of hostilities between the incumbent government and the Lord’s Resistance Army in 2006. Although a final peace agreement has not been signed, the internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps were decommissioned and people told to return home. The war in northern Uganda has been well documented – its causes and the actors (see Allen 2006; Allen & Vlassenroot 2010; Atkinson 2009; Finnstrom 2008), as well as the untold suffering that unarmed civilians, men, women and children have gone through as a result (see de Temmerman 2001; Dolan 2009; Eichsraedt 2009; Green 2008; Ovuga, Oyok & Moro 2008).