Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Who is Betty?

from w
One of the names suggested (leaked to the media) for an invitation to be part of the proposed Forum, is Betty Bigombe from Uganda - which does sound very very far away. Though she doesn't seem to have any connection with Fiji, my word, she is some fine woman. So I wonder if she might be the kind of outsider (without any tags connecting her with Oz or Kiwi-land) who could come into Fiji and make some sense of the situation?

from wikipedia:
Betty Oyella Bigombe is a former Uganda government minister and consultant to the World Bank. She is an ethnic Acholi and has been involved in peace negotiations to end the insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of Uganda since 1994. As of 2005 she was acting as chief mediator between the LRA and government of Uganda. She has a masters degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. As well as English and Acholi, she speaks Swahili and Japanese. Bigombe is currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which recently produced a video about her latest work in Uganda.

And... also from the internet:
Betty Bigombe has been involved in peace negotiations in Uganda to end the Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) insurgency since the early 1990s. Prior to taking on these negotiation initiatives, she was appointed minister in Yoweri Museveni’s government and minister of state for pacification of North and Northeastern Uganda, and Office of the Prime Minister, resident in the North. She also was tasked with seeking a peaceful means to end the war in north and northeastern Uganda. Following the failure of a military solution, Bigombe initiated contact with rebel leader Joseph Kony. This initiative gave birth to what would become known as "Bigombe talks."
In 1994 Bigombe was named "Uganda’s Woman of the Year" for her efforts to end the violence. She spent time providing technical support to the Carter Center in the peace efforts between the governments of Uganda and Sudan. She then held a fellowship at Harvard University’s Institute for International Development in Public Policy in 1997. Bigombe joined the World Bank in 1997 as a senior social scientist at the Bank’s newly created Post-Conflict Unit and also worked with the Social Protection and Human Development Units.

1 comment:

MoralHeroes said...

Thank you for sharing Betty's story and her efforts towards peace in Uganda.

You might be interested to know that Betty is featured as hero of the week over at MoralHeroes.org

You can access the page directly at
http://moralheroes.org/betty-bigombe