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Mr. Pius Bigirimana speaks during the report launch while Ms. Mary Symmonds (Country Director) and Mr. Theophane Nikyema (Resident Representative) listen

The international community and the state have a major role to play in ensuring that local ingenuity is at the forefront of support for communities such as Northern Uganda that are emerging from conflict.

This was said by Mr. Pius Bigirimana the Permanent Secretary for the Office of the Prime Minister, while launching the UNDP Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Recovery report titled, Post Conflict Economic Recovery: Enabling Local Ingenuity.

The report is a comprehensive analysis focusing on three critical factors: the importance of local ingenuity to guide recovery in the affected communities; the role of the state in promoting this ingenuity, and the policies needed to rebuild economies battered by conflict and reduce the risk of conflict recurrence.

The report also provides a fresh look at the challenges facing countries emerging from conflict, it emphasises that recovery programming must be based on sound understanding of local dynamics. Without such a foundation, policies aimed to help may inadvertently exacerbate tensions.

Mr. Bigirimana said that government had already taken to applying local knowledge and ideas in new programmes and frameworks for Northern Uganda which has been in conflict for the past twenty years.

“As noted in the report, local ingenuity is much better than imported ideas because it is more likely to be understood by the local people hence more effective in encouraging them to move on economically and otherwise after a conflict,” he said.

He said that programmes such as Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) II and the Peace Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) are all designed to support the local people in Northern Uganda to work for money instead of getting hand outs which encourage dependence. Mr. Bigirimana advised that international aid should follow the same path to avoid creating long term dependence.

Also speaking at the launch, UNDP’s Resident Representative, Mr. Theophane Nikyema said that the report rightly observes that the only sustainable way to address economic development challenges of post conflict areas and responding to the needs of people in this situation is to grow interventions from within, namely; using available local insights, resourcefulness, skills, culture, and practises to change the situation.

Mr. Nikyema also added that the report on the other hand advises us to be cautious in designing and implementing our programmes in post conflict societies. It informs us that sustainability of post conflict interventions must understand, build on, and work with the local, social and institutional dynamics as they are on the ground in a specific situation.

Also echoing his words was Gulu district’s L.C V chairman, Mr. Norbert Mao, who advised all those working in Northern Uganda particularly the NGOs and International agencies to work with the local governments there. He said that the local governments were very important because they are the ones that live and work on-ground with the afflicted people hence know their needs.

“To avoid a relapse into conflict, education should be at the forefront, because it will remove such things as low incomes, unemployment that are mentioned in the report and hence empower people to take care of themselves after conflict,” Mr. Mao said.

Apart from education, discussants during the launch emphasised the need to boost agriculture as another way to revive the economic fortunes of the Northern region after the long conflict. They argued that the supply of agricultural inputs such as ox ploughs and oxen would go a long way in revitalizing the region’s economy.

Professor Nyeko Pen-Mogi, Gulu University’s vice chancellor noted that the university was already gearing to support the local community in these initiatives through training and demonstration.

The report which was launched on the 17th of April 2009 was attended by various people from UNDP Uganda, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Recovery, leaders from Northern Uganda, academics and from the Government of Uganda.

Mr. Nikyema thanked BCPR for choosing to launch the report in Uganda, adding that it would be a big help to UNDP’s work in Northern Uganda which is currently going through a post conflict phase.

For the full text of the report and more information on UNDP's work on crisis prevention and recovery, please visit http://www.undp.org/cpr/