A follow-up meeting took place in Gulu, Uganda on October 11, 2012 to share a report on the regional peace-building and reconciliation consultative meeting held in Bangui, Central African Repubilic the previous month. The meeting was organized by the Gulu District Reconciliation and Peace Team (GDRPT), in partnership with Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI) and Invisible Children (IC), and attended by political, opinion and cultural leaders, representatives from non-governmental organizations in northern Uganda, the Uganda Peoples Defense Force (UPDF) and two ex-combatants who escaped from the LRA in DR Congo.

One of the combatants, now 22 years old, was abducted from Teso sub-region in Eastern Uganda at the age of 5. He began the meeting detailing the difficulty of escaping from the LRA due to the brain washing tactics used by Joseph Kony to scare them. Combatants are told that when one escapes, they are killed by the community members or authorities, he explained. He also noted that combatants do receive defection fliers and are often able to listen to FM radios while in the jungle, both of which have encouraged some members to escape.

The meeting focused on encouraging safe defection of combatants and protecting the civilians currently affected by the LRA. Agreements were made that: 1. A team representative of all stakeholders will meet with his Excellency the President of the Republic of Uganda to discuss the restoration of a blanket amnesty to encourage LRA defection, 2. There will be continued peace-building and reconciliation meetings involving all of northern Uganda, 3. Information sharing will take place regularly between representatives from Uganda and the currently affected regions in central Africa through documentaries, photos and narratives, 4. Defection messaging on both radios and fliers will continue to be strengthened by including messages from formerly abducted, and 5. The public needs to be educated on how to relate with formerly abducted individuals in order to eliminate the stigma that they currently suffer.

The meeting concluded with participants strongly agreeing on needing to remain committed to ending the LRA conflict at the national, regional, and international levels.