Religion, Conflict, and Uganda

This week I am writing from Kampala, where I have spent the past week assessing potential opportunities for IREX programming in Uganda. As I read about Uganda in preparation for my trip, one theme that kept arising was the overarching importance of religion. Uganda has large Catholic and Protestant populations as well as a significant Muslim population, and I was interested to learn more about the impact of religion and faith-based organizations on the conflicts in northern Uganda and other regions of the country.

The central role of religion in Ugandan life became evident when I arrived in Kampala on a Sunday and set out to see some of the city. Several of the major sites are religious – from the first Catholic cathedral and Protestant church in Uganda to the new mosque and the Baha’i house of worship – and it seemed like everyone in the city was heading to services dressed in their Sunday best. I became accustomed to passing signs with religious slogans on billboards and walls throughout the city and listening to Christian rock while sitting in Kampala traffic between meetings.

Given that religious leaders are authority figures with the opportunity to influence their communities through their teachings, they can use their power and position to perpetuate or mitigate conflict. In many of the conflict situations I am familiar with, religion has served as a driver of conflict. I was pleased to discover that this is not the case in Uganda. While there have been tensions among various religious groups at different points in Uganda’s history, faith has generally mitigated rather than exacerbated Uganda’s conflicts.

From the grassroots to the national level, Uganda has strong religious institutions that have been instrumental in providing humanitarian assistance and facilitating reconciliation in communities devastated by conflict. I was particularly impressed by their willingness to work together across religious lines. For example, the Uganda Joint Christian Council has played a key role in negotiations between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, while the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda recently announced a task force of prominent leaders to ensure that the upcoming elections are free and fair. Their efforts illustrate the potential for religion to mitigate conflict in Uganda and elsewhere.