This report is Issue No. 3 of International Alert Uganda’s Investing in Peace briefing paper series. It also forms part of a wider comparative study on women’s political participation in countries emerging from conflict undertaken in the Great Lakes region by International Alert, together with the East African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).
Relative peace in Northern Uganda has enabled the majority of former Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to return to their home areas and begin rebuilding their lives. After the long war, women have emerged as critical economic actors, taking advantage of economic opportunities to secure their families’ livelihood, security and advancement. Based on a survey in Gulu and Lira districts, the report charts the new economic activities in which women are engaged. They are now farming and selling a range of agricultural produce. They comprise the majority of market stallholders and vendors, selling cereals, vegetables, fish, other foodstuffs and second-hand clothes, as well as brewing alcohol. They are also engaged in other formal and informal cash-generating activities. In contrast with the pre-war period, a high number of woman-headed households are now found in the two districts and, even in marriages, women are often the primary source of family income. In this sense, they are at the forefront of the region’s economic recovery.
This can largely be attributed to conditions in the displacement camps where the majority of people from rebel-affected areas lived for a decade and more. The camps concentrated vast numbers of people in quasi-urban conditions, largely dependent on humanitarian relief. This phenomenon, in turn, generated new patterns of supply and demand that women were able to exploit, since many men had either been directly caught up in the conflict or displaced from their traditional activities. At the same time, development-partner and NGO programmes targeted women as the beneficiaries of training and livelihood support during the years of conflict, responding to egregious levels of sexual and gender-based violence, a women’s empowerment agenda and the development maxim that women were more likely to share their earnings with their families than men. Along with women-led community peacebuilding initiatives, such interventions propelled women to the foreground of family survival strategies, and increased their skills and confidence. As a result of these factors, gender relations in Northern Uganda are in a significant period of flux.
This report finds that women are more prominent in decision making in many aspects of domestic life. Beyond the home, survey respondents report increased mobility and influence in different fora at a community level, including farmers’ groups, Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (SACCOs) and other savings groups, with women increasingly taking leadership positions. The report also notes the high readiness of women to vote in local and national elections.
While these gains are important, very few women hold positions in the region’s local government beyond mandatory positions set aside in local councils under the Local Government Act 1997. Some women are preparing to contest the 2011 elections (e.g. for the positions of mayor and the chair of the local council in Gulu district), however the overall picture shows women severely lagging behind in terms of political representation. Women were poorly represented in the negotiating team at the Juba Peace Talks, despite the high-profile peace initiative led by Betty Bigombe in the 1990s and other women-led examples of community-level peace activism throughout the conflict. There are also clear limits to the scale of most women’s entrepreneurial activity which, while significant in terms of the livelihood economy, does not compete above a certain level. Only 18 percent of those surveyed reported incomes of more than Shs 300,000 per month (US$135).
These limitations can be explained by the constraints facing women, such as basic needs, an overwhelming domestic workload, lack of capital, exclusion from land ownership, and male dominance, frequently expressed through violence. Specific interventions are needed to leverage opportunities for women’s further economic empowerment and political participation, the promotion of gender equality and the establishment of harmony in gender relations as necessary pre-conditions for a real peace economy to flourish. Such initiatives are all the more critical given the lessons from earlier phases of Northern Uganda’s conflict and other post-conflict contexts. While war often leads to social, economic and political dynamics that provide opportunities for positive social change to take place, it is also common that such gains may be lost as societies revert to pre-conflict norms.
The report explores the extent to which current initiatives by the government of Uganda and development partners to contribute to recovery are sensitive to these gender dynamics, or factoring into their programmes the important role of women in the peace economy. It concludes that the government’s Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) has failed to take these issues into proper account. Despite some interesting initiatives, development-partner interventions also lag behind. Whereas a large number of programmes prioritised women as beneficiaries during the emergency period, and some continue to do so to facilitate the return process, the role played by women as economic actors in the peace economy is largely overlooked. Many initiatives that relate to women are limited by defining women as “vulnerable”. This labelling risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, as opportunities to support women’s entrepreneurial skills are overlooked in the rush to design longer-term development initiatives mainly dominated by men. In the wider context, the ways that gender relations affect economic recovery, and vice versa, are factored into very few interventions, despite most agencies’ policy commitments to gender equality and gender mainstreaming.
Supporting women’s changing fortunes and gender-sensitive recovery in Northern Uganda: Recommendations to government and development partners
Interventions by government and development partners should be nuanced to add weight to, and sustain, the new position of women as key actors in the livelihoods economy and as communitylevel decision makers. They should assist women to build on and expand beyond current levels, and move towards actual gender parity. Moreover, steps should be taken to mitigate the domesticlevel conflicts associated with changing gender roles and relationships triggered by the war, through the design and implementation of improved recovery initiatives.
The report highlights priorities and recommendations for the constructive support of women as key drivers of Northern Uganda’s peace economy – promoting the goal of a healthy adjustment of gender roles and relations, encompassing women’s changing fortunes.
1. Make gender a core element in the design and implementation of recovery interventions
Government and development partners must scale-up efforts to respond to the gender dynamics playing out in Northern Uganda’s recovery in order to maximise positive changes and minimise the possibility that current domestic tensions become endemic. Uganda has a strong, gender-policy framework, but the capacity of the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Affairs, and Community Development Officers and Gender Officers (who play a critical role in promoting the social transformation necessary for women’s economic advancement and increased political participation) needs to be greatly increased. The financial capacity of these departments has a major bearing on challenges currently faced by women.
The PRDP results monitoring framework needs to incorporate gender in its indicators, as recommended by the Women’s Task Force (WTF) for a Gender Responsive PRDP, and all PRDP interventions should be preceded by gender analysis that explores specific opportunities and risks in the communities concerned. The turbulence and rapid change affecting gender relations in the region, as highlighted in this report, presents both opportunities for and risks to recovery. These issues need to be analysed and factored into programme design and implementation.
Definitions of women that emphasise their vulnerability need to evolve so as to incorporate diverse experiences now that the emergency period is over. Certainly there are categories of vulnerable women, including the elderly and infirm, and it is critical that their needs continue to be addressed, even as interventions shift to prioritise long-term development. Yet there are many women whose entrepreneurial activity is the major source of support for their families and communities. While they face huge obstacles and challenges, including persistent domestic violence and unequal land rights, the description of “vulnerable” does not quite fit. There is a danger that interventions that seek to enhance the region’s overall economic performance will focus on the larger-scale actors, who are mainly men, and thereby miss opportunities to harness the economic potential of such women.
All recovery programming in Northern Uganda should: • Reconceptualise the role of women in Northern Uganda’s peace economy – moving beyond “vulnerability” to recognise women as economic actors and agents of social change
- Acknowledge, analyse and reflect in programme design the critical role played by women in the livelihood economy
- Ensure efforts to promote recovery and development of Northern Uganda are based on gender-sensitive context analysis
- Train local authorities and officials at district and sub-county levels in gender-sensitive planning and budgeting
- Create and fill posts for gender officers within local government where this has not been done
- Increase space for women on the planning structures at all levels of local government, as well as consultation with women at the grassroots
- Develop planning and monitoring tools for both conflict and gender impacts of interventions.
Support economic empowerment of women as part of building a peace economy
Taking into account emerging best practice on conflict-sensitivity and gender programming, and as part of a holistic effort to support the overall peace economy in the region, it is important that government and development partners make concerted efforts to harness the potential of women as key actors in economic recovery through more effective support of their activities. Where women are targeted as beneficiaries, it is important that this is not solely on the basis of vulnerability, but that more entrepreneurial, empowered and productive women also benefit. Recovery interventions should emphasise increasing women’s agricultural production and productivity, given the high number of women-headed households in the region and the gains made to date.
Initiatives are required to address the numerous constraints faced by women in scaling-up their economic activity. Central to the problem is the overburdening of women as they add new economic activities to a heavy domestic workload. Improving access to water, fuel, health centres and schools have clear benefits in terms of increasing available time for investment in productive activity. Such interventions should be based on consultation with women about their needs, rather than top-down approaches.
A priority programming area is the provision of training and support to women to expand the scale of their businesses. Business development services that target women will help them to benefit from the available, post-war opportunities.
At the same time there is a pressing need to harmonise interventions. One challenge raised by the research is the common requirement of programmes targeting women that the beneficiaries should form new groups, a process that entails an excessive degree of administrative procedure. The emphasis should be on coordinating existing groups, rather than forming new ones for each Changing Fortunes: Women’s Economic Opportunities in Post-War Northern Uganda intervention. Support and training should target existing groupings as far as is possible. The potential for tensions to emerge within and between groups should be taken into account when designing interventions.
Beyond this, it is important that women are provided with affordable, women-friendly financial services in terms of repayment conditions, interest rates and accessibility. Women need better access to value-adding agricultural technology, as well as markets. There is a critical need to initiate more equitable, land-ownership arrangements that give access to women, both as a source of collateral for scaling-up their economic activity, and as a source of security and parity. Lastly, local governments should consider affirmative action for women in tenders for public works, supplies and services.
- Scale-up community infrastructure programmes, reducing obstacles to women’s economic participation
- Improve women’s access to markets and agricultural technology
- Provide women-friendly financial services
- Prioritise efforts to secure women’s rights to housing and land
- Offer business development services and skills transfer opportunities for women
- Harmonise use of group formation as a prerequisite for assistance for women
- Promote affirmative action for women in awarding of local government contracts.
3. Support women’s political advancement
Although women are taking increasingly prominent positions in household and communitylevel decision making, this has not permeated the political sphere beyond the mandatory quotas for women in public office. One opportunity is to strengthen the empowerment component of existing initiatives, for example within groups. Where group formation is a dominant element of development assistance to women, it is often administered in a political void, without maximising their potential for developing women’s political activism. Groups should be open to women working on activities that involve others, and offer training on political participation. Support should continue to be directed to women’s civil society organisations (CSOs) and peacebuilding initiatives, particularly those promoting women’s voice in political life and in monitoring recovery programme implementation. Training programmes that provide women with the skills needed to engage in public life should be made available. There is also a need for leadership schemes that encourage women to stand for office, encourage women and men to vote for women candidates and mobilise women who are already in office to use their positions in the interests of gender parity and voicing women’s concerns.
Recognising that fear of violence in the electoral system emerged from the research as a barrier to women’s participation, all actors should work together to maintain a free and fair electoral process in 2011, and to sustain peace in Northern Uganda thereafter. Government should implement its action plan on women in peacebuilding, ensuring that they take their proper place in ongoing and future peacebuilding initiatives.
- Encourage political confidence and engagement on local political issues within women’s groups
- Train women on assertiveness, campaign skills, public speaking, negotiation, lobbying, advocacy, fundraising and gender budgeting
- Fund CSOs providing support to women to engage in political life and monitoring of recovery programmes
- Mobilise women and men to vote for women, and work with women MPs to promote women-focused politics
- Implement a government action plan on women in peacebuilding.
4. Invest in constructive social transformation
For women to fulfil their economic and political potential in the peace economy it is essential that gender relations are normalised and the goal of gender parity becomes socially acceptable. Northern Ugandan society requires targeted programmes to recover from the traumas of war and the challenges of rapid social change.
Existing initiatives on violence against women (VAW) led by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other actors, should be scaled-up to ensure the sensitisation of men, the enhancement of community vigilance and the effectiveness of protection agencies. The recently enacted Domestic Violence Act should be implemented.
Programmes related to economic recovery, whether agricultural inputs and skills, voucher, cash or food-for-work schemes, infrastructure projects, and employment or business development, should actively explore gender dynamics with beneficiary groups, identifying obstacles and perceptions, and factoring these into design so that opportunities for sensitisation and resolution are maximised through programme delivery.
There is an urgent need to bring men back into household provisioning as an obligation, rather than a choice. A focus on men is beneficial for both women and men, and above all for children, who will benefit from an environment characterised by mutually-supportive gender role models. Positive masculine identities will reduce the heavy physical and emotional burden that many women shoulder by encouraging a more equitable distribution of labour. Mobilisation and support to men would be part of the healing process, enabling them to participate in the reconstruction of society. The mobilisation of men should present clear messages about how men stand to gain from a cooperative, productive and violence-free community.
- Build opportunities to explore the transformation of gender roles and relations and incorporate them into the planning and implementation of all economic recovery interventions across the spectrum of programming
- Increase community training on gender relations in order for men to better appreciate the role of women and see them as partners, rather than a threat to their masculinity
- Scale-up the availability, inclusivity and impact of psycho-social recovery programmes across all groups
- Scale-up sensitisation programmes on VAW and increase the effectiveness of community policing
- Implement the 2010 Domestic Violence Act.
