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"Ododo Wa" Community Dialogues YouTube: "Advocating for Justice and Reparations in Uganda" Video: This is an annotated YouTube video documenting a discussion panel in which Evelyn Amony, Grace Acan, and Isabelle Masson discuss the exhibit and advocating for justice and reparations in Uganda. The panel was held 24 October 2019 at the Moot Courtroom of Robson Hall, Faculty of Law building at the University of Manitoba

Isabelle Masson presenting the Ododo Wa traveling exhibit at the Uganda National Museum

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Affected Communities 40 Page: beginning of the Path through perspectives of Affected Communities plain 2022-04-30T16:55:27-04:00 Zhi Ming Sim; Sarah York-Bertram
The impacts of conjugal slavery in war are intersectional, intergenerational and international. Grace Acan’s and Evelyn Amony’s stories resonate across communities impacted by war. The exhibit and Acan's and Amony's storytelling open up spaces for dialogues among survivors and their impacted communities. Audience members of the traveling exhibit are also survivors of war and come from communities affected by armed conflict and abduction.

In Canada survivors of war and refugees also make up the exhibit's audience. At the University of Manitoba, audience members from Nigeria discussed the Chibok girls abducted from school in northern Nigeria. “I am actually Nigerian, and I quite relate with everything you ladies have said today,” one person said. They went on to make a comparison between the Lord's Resistance Army and Boko Haram. Though the audience member was not “in the centre of” Boko Haram’s abduction of hundreds of girls in 2014, they reflect that “when I heard that story I was scared [...] I was scared” and it was “out of fear” that the they “actually moved out of Nigeria with my kids.” That audience member also reflected on the continued silence surrounding abducted girls in Nigeria, stating: "I quite appreciate the fact that you are telling your stories, it is so important that this story be told...for me, seeing you talking about your stories, even making something positive our of the negativity, it encourages me..."

Affected communities who see the exhibit, hear Acan and Amony’s stories, and participate in community dialogues, show a vast capacity for solidarity. As Gilbert Nuwagira from the Refugee Law Project reflects, “stories like these allow communities to collectively reflect on the past, to discuss present situations, and to be energized to face the future.”
“It has been a very good exhibition, and I wish you should continue to encourage these affected war victims so that they forget the past and look forward for new development and change in their lives.” - Consy Ogwal, Grace Acan's mother, at the Uganda National Museum, 2019.

Spaces for intergenerational healing expand as Acan's and Amony’s stories travel. Consy Ogwal, Acan’s mother, worked with the C oncerned Parents Association for the release of children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Ogwal also helped her daughter with childcare when she returned from captivity. Her mother's support gave Acan the time to complete her studies, engage with formal reconciliation processes, and write her memoir.
Consy Ogwal reflects that:
“As parents, when our children tell their stories during captivity it settles our hearts and we are sure our children are healing. It is also an encouragement for others to disclose." (6 December 2019, Uganda National Museum)

Evelyn Amony’s grandmother also supports her storytelling and is an important part of the development of the exhibit. She lent the Canadian Museum for Human Rights the featured green skirt.

The traveling exhibit and community dialogues support families to share how war has impacted them. In Kampala, at the Uganda National Museum, Evelyn Amony’s father Ohobo Marcelino reflected that:
“I suffered terribly and even my child suffered in the bush and experienced several challenges. I thank God the Almighty for once again giving her the chance to re-unite with us.”

Amony's father also expressed appreciation for organizations and individuals who have supported his daughter's efforts to care for children whose parents did not survive the war in northern Uganda.

Community dialogues show the ongoing intergenerational impacts of conflict. Relationships between parents, children and their families are important sites for repair and healing. CSiW partner Juliet Adoch facilitated community dialogues in Uganda. She writes about the difficulties women-returnees and their children face in the Ugandan context:
When they return from captivity, mothers and children born in war deal with rejection from their families. [...] One’s paternity comes with one being able to identify with a clan, family, as well as inheritance in terms of land, which is the main source of livelihood. When one doesn’t know their paternal identity, they struggle with belonging. That is why strong relationships between mothers and children [...] is so important. [...] For most formerly abducted persons, marriage and acceptance is a huge challenge that they face daily. This includes having to deal with the unequal treatment of their children born in marriage following their return and the children born in war that they returned with. Children notice preferential treatment and it impacts how they view themselves. The exhibition created a space for a dialogue beyond the visual that was on display[.] [...] It also brought recognition to issues beyond the exhibit, like parenting children born in war.
Read more of Adoch's reflection here.

Due to the stigma survivors face and the trauma they endure, memorializing the impacts of war is challenging. However, the gap in the historical record obscures the reality survivors, their children, families, and communities face. During a community dialogue in Kitgum, northern Uganda, Evelyn Amony expressed her view that:
“Our children should learn this history, not from afar but from close-by”, from us. (National Memory and Peace Documentation Center, 2019. As quoted by Dr. Annie Bunting, "'Ododo Wa' African Launch, Uganda")

Grace Acan also noted the importance of telling young people about the impacts of war:
“We cannot die with these stories.” The younger generation “must know the problems and avoid violence. The guns are silent but the impacts are still very present.” (National Memory and Peace Documentation Center, 2019. As quoted by Dr. Annie Bunting, "'Ododo Wa' African Launch, Uganda")
These intergenerational and transnational conversations show the ongoing impacts of conflict and forced marriage.

Sources:
Quotes featured on this page are drawn from:
- A YouTube video titled “Advocating for Justice and Reparations in Uganda” posted by Robson Hall at the University of Manitoba. For transcripts of this video, please send your request to csiwproj@yorku.ca.
- Gilbert Nuwagira’s 10 April 2020 Active History post titled “Resuscitating Stories: Some reflection on the ‘Ododo Wa’ exhibit and experience.”
- Written guestbook comments by Grace Acan’s mother Consy Ogwul and Evelyn Amony’s father Ohobo Marcelino from the Uganda National Museum event of 6 December 2019. Thank you to Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony for securing their parents’ permission to reproduce the comments for this project. And thank you to Grace Acan for providing translation.
- Juliet Adoch's "A Project Partner's Reflection"
- Dr. Annie Bunting’s post “‘Ododo Wa’ African Launch, Uganda”
Introduction
On 23 October 2019, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) launched the "Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War" exhibit. The exhibit focuses on girls' experiences in war and the issue of abduction and forced marriage in contemporary conflict situations. It centres the stories of two girls, Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony, who were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. Acan and Amony are now grown women, mothers, researchers, activists, authors, and co-founders of the Women's Advocacy Network. They survived years in captivity, escaped to freedom, and now they advocate for justice and reparations.

Listen to Evelyn Amony introduce the history of the Ododo Wa project by clicking the "►" on the audio recording. Amony is speaking in Acholi and Grace Acan translates in English.

Ododo Wa started with the Justice and Reconciliation Project in northern Uganda when a group of survivors worked together and shared their experiences following their return from captivity.
Sharing experiences with other survivors was a healing process that led to the development of Women's Advocacy Network. Listen to Grace Acan explain how the Network developed and what justice means to survivors by clicking the "►" on the audio recording.

The Ododo Wa exhibit came together after years of collaboration between curator Isabelle Masson, Conjugal Slavery in War (CSiW) project director Dr. Annie Bunting, CSiW project coordinator Véronique Bourget, Evelyn Amony, and Grace Acan.

A traveling version of the Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War exhibit launched in Uganda in December 2019.

The traveling exhibit, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council connection grant, was developed to facilitate community dialogues about justice, reparations, and the needs of survivors, their families, and communities in their local, regional, and national contexts.

Follow the journey of the traveling exhibit through the StoryMap.
Reigniting the Fire: Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony Reflect on Presenting Ododo Wa in Uganda
In December 2019, the traveling exhibit launched in Uganda. The launch of "Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War / Ododo pa anyira ikare me lweny" was an opportunity to ground the exhibit in its regional context in northern Uganda. For Evelyn Amony and Grace Acan, it was also a chance to show their community of fellow survivors the exhibit. The exhibit features drawings by survivors and the exhibit's tour in northern Uganda was the first chance artists had to see their drawings included in the exhibit.
Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony have co-authored a reflection about their experience. Read their reflection below.

The main reason we held the Ododo Wa event at the TAKS Art Centre in Gulu was to reignite the fire. The will to address the issues stemming from our sufferings and those of our colleagues was dying. We needed to come together in solidarity with our sisters, with whom we experienced the same fate, so they would know they are not forgotten. We wanted our sisters to know we continue to fight together for our rights and advocate for reparations. We continue to call for the end of the abuse of girls in war.

Living together with our fellow victims has built very strong bonds and relationships among us. We share ideas and challenges and we look for solutions to help each other whenever we go through hard times. Our experience has made us so close to each other that we feel the relationships we have are stronger than the ones we have with our own siblings.

There is a saying that "a friend in need is a friend indeed." That is how we lived in captivity -- we shared whatever we had to spare with friends who needed it most. Be it food, water, clothing, or any help we could offer, we gave what we had to someone who needed it. This is the attitude we have maintained. Even when we got home without anything except our lives, we gave emotional support to each other to encourage each other while we were starting a new life after war. In the original storytelling group there were only five members. We started sharing stories and the stories became our source of inspiration. Many more women saw the positive change in the lives of those involved with the storytelling and decided to make changes for themselves. This is the origin of our strong bonds.

We addressed issues with our sisters in Gulu to assure them and the broader community that we didn’t engage in the exhibition for only our sakes. Ododo Wa is not only about us. It about women and girls in northern Uganda as a region–girls who suffered and continue to suffer several abuses like we did. It is also about girls and women globally. We have the spirit of sisterhood that we had before when we first started sharing our stories. Together with our sisters, we are determined to go far. We will advocate until justice is accorded to all women who have suffered in conflict in northern Uganda. Our commitment is evident in the exhibit through the inclusion of significant drawings that were jointly made as a group. We used visual art to express the challenges we went through. The drawings are a visual expression of passed suffering but they also remind us of our healing. Now the drawings are in the exhibit, which is a tool for advocacy.

The responses to the traveling exhibit were positive because it is a representation of all the affected women's experiences. The exhibit supports us as we re-emphasize the challenges we face. The presentations and dialogues around the exhibit showed that its audience agrees that our stories matter and that justice and reparations are urgently needed.

Before the exhibit’s launch in Uganda, we worried it would trigger past, bad memories of the war. But when we presented at the museum, and then in Kitgum, the welcome was warm and positive. The audience expressed that many victims in Uganda do not have the courage to come out and speak about their experiences. That deters them from getting complete healing. They live in pain because of fear over their community's reactions. One of the positive results of the presentation of the exhibit and the storytelling is that it gave courage to others. It created a space to express the needs of affected women and their families.

Gulu was our third stop during the exhibit's tour. It followed the events at the Uganda National Museum and the National Memory and Peace Documentation Centre. We agreed to take the exhibit to Gulu because there were more conversations to have among the women and the community in the region. Women are still facing challenges. Those in attendance, who include affected women, parents of affected people, and community members, appreciated the efforts we made to disrupt the increasing silence on the plight of women and girls who suffered during the war. The presentation in Gulu encouraged us to continue what we started and the audience was appreciative of the good work we have completed so far. They kept asking for the next plans after the Ododo Wa event.

We continue to advocate for reparations, and we are appealing to the government of Uganda to speed up the work of the national transitional justice policy so that meaningful reparations are implemented. Reparations include victims' reintegration needs. That includes our social, economic, and psychological needs. We also need Non-Governmental Organisations and international communities to support us in our struggle. We need to ensure that women affected by war access social, economic, and psycho-social justice. Psycho-social justice supports survivors to heal emotionally through counseling and social support. We need to end the stigma and encourage acceptance by survivors' communities. Survivors need to feel loved and safe in their communities. Direct support, buying the hand-made products made by survivors, and the support of income generating activities, are all important in empowering survivors so that they can sustain a means of livelihoods
Symbols of belonging
“It belongs to the people later.” (Participant, UNM Participant Discussion, 2019)
"Our Sisters"
When the exhibit launched in Uganda, the audience discussed how "it belongs to the people" and "tells the story […] to the generations to come." In the Ugandan context, the exhibit encouraged reflection on those caught up in the conflict and those who felt distant from it. In those dialogues, nation and kin were central to queries about overcoming hardship and trauma.

The language used in these dialogues show how kinship and sharing stories, through drawings, artefacts, and oral testimony, were an important part of the responses to the exhibit – for example, as participants referred to Acan and Amony as "our sisters" in the Ugandan National Museum participant discussion.
“I was interested in the skirt. And, it tells the story, to me, to, to the generations to come (…) In the next fifty, hundred years, something which, which I was trying to reflect it, is it going to be, um that same skirt to come back again?”(Participant, UNM Participant Discussion, 2019)
Artefacts
Questions about artefacts featured in the exhibit, and whether they would return to Uganda, also demonstrate how the exhibit spoke to the political and social climate in Uganda. The political will to address survivors' needs has waxed and waned over time. The current political and social climate and the traveling exhibit facilitate timely and urgent dialogues on transitional justice for girls, women, survivors of conjugal slavery, and those returning to their communities. The audience in Uganda pointed to artefacts, such as Amony’s green skirt and the grinding stone, as national symbols of survival and of overcoming hardship.

These responses to the artefacts, their meaning, and Acan's and Amony's stories, led to reflections about representation, belonging, and the need to support other survivors' storytelling.