Events
The Lord’s Resistance Army: In Search for a New Approach, Monday 17 May 2010
On Monday 17 May, The Clingendael Conflict Research Unit (CRU) organizes an expert meeting on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), entitled The Lord’s Resistance Army: In Search for a New Approach.
The LRA developed out of several rebel movements that emerged in the wake of the events that brought Uganda’s incumbent president Yoweri Museveni to power in 1987. Northern Uganda initially suffered the greatest burden of LRA activity and the movement’s warfare with the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). But gradually, Joseph Kony’s small yet resilient guerrilla army has turned into a regional menace. Today, Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) are its key operational bases.
Despite various attempts to address the LRA conflict, both through peaceful and military means, the movement is still active and poses a serious security threat to the communities inhabiting the Southern Sudan-DRC-CAR border area, as recent atrocities in the Haute Uele district in northeastern DRC demonstrate. Hence there is a desperate need to recapture the complexity of the multifaceted problem the LRA poses, and to think about new and innovative approaches to contribute to a durable solution.
To this end, CRU organizes a closed meeting which brings together a divergent group of leading experts and experienced practitioners, ranging from researchers and policy makers to military officials and NGO representatives, to discuss current challenges and identify ways forward.