What needs to be done to support families of the missing in Uganda?

Let's speak about the disappeared/missing persons in post-conflict Uganda

By Francis Nono

World over, August 30 every year, has been designated as the International Day of the Disappeared or International Day of the Missing. It is that time of raising awareness on issues of forced disappearance and a time when the world stands together and commiserate with families of the missing.

 And this to some extent is a healing therapy for the families and other persons close to the disappeared loved ones.

Uganda has experienced various conflicts right from independence to about 2006 after the Juba peace talks. While the issue of the missing remains less pronounced in public fora, parents and other close relatives of the missing continue to struggle to come to terms with their ambiguous and unclear losses.

The exact number of the Missing Persons in Uganda following nearly three decades of conflict remains unknown. The lack of attention to this issue and limited platforms from which to speak up have left the families of the missing silenced and disempowered. Some of the families have had to persevere with the painful thoughts of not knowing exactly what happened to their missing children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and or relatives for nearly three decades.

Coupled with uncertainty about their future in this context, they can't tell whether they are still alive or have died. This is the dilemma of the people with missing loved ones since in most cases they have not been able to have a ‘closure' of their painful experiences.

Various agencies such as International Committee of the Red Cross and The Refugee Law Project, have tried to break the silence about the issues of the missing in Uganda and specifically in the context of post-war northern Uganda, where thousands of people went missing, both during and after the conflict.

There has been no clear account of their whereabouts; whether they are still alive or have since died. At the moment, there is no clear, documentation on the number of people who are missing.

In the context of northern Uganda, both men and women whose wives or husbands, respectively, have been missing, have dared and gone ahead to re-marry after years of uncertainties. In the unlikely, yet possible event that their former partners turn up alive one day, such a situation would breed unmentionable fresh problems for such families to again cope with.

"I will still be happy to welcome my husband back home, much as  I am now married. I will explain to him my current situation," says a woman with a missing husband.

With all this going on, there are situations where women are being forced to re-marry against their will and attention should be drawn to such forceful events. What needs to be done to support families of the missing in Uganda?

Firstly, let's break the silence about issues of the missing persons

in Uganda, especially in conflict-affected areas, by raising awareness

through mass communication.

There is need to document all missing or unaccounted for persons, as a result of abduction or otherwise, during the wars. 

They should be registered and a database for the missing persons be established with the relevant authorities in Uganda.

There is need for increased provision of mental health and psychosocial treatment for the wellbeing of the families of the missing to come to terms with uncertainties regarding the fate of their loved ones.

There is also need to support economic wellbeing of most families in providing remedial Social Welfare Programmes that will help promote the welfare of such parents and relatives with missing persons.

Children, in most contexts, are our social security, hence most of them  with missing parents need to be supported in terms of education as a special priority for the families of the missing.

There is also need for various authorities to recognise that this group of people does exist in the communities and there is need to support them through various social programmess right at the grassroots level.

There is need to advocate for land rights usage for women with missing husbands. In most cases, majority of such women have had challenges accessing land for food production at the grass roots.

As Uganda joins the rest of the world in commemorating the International Day of the Disappeared on Thursday, my prayer is that the day should serve to remind us of the plights around the Missing Persons.

Hopefully, the commemorations re-energises our resolves to address the numerous problems and challenges these groups of people in our societies are facing on a day to today basis.

The writer is a transitional justice practitioner and community outreach officer of the Refugee Law Project.