Archbishop Odama (above, center), who has served as the Catholic Archbishop of Gulu, Uganda since 1997, will receive the 2012 Peacemaking Award during a special ceremony at the Gulu Kaunda Ground on Wednesday, Sept. 19. The event will also commemorate the United Nations International Day of Peace.
From 2002 to 2010, Archbishop Odama served as chairman of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interfaith peacebuilding and conflict transformation organization whose members – religious leaders of six different faiths and denominations – are dedicated to ending the civil war in Northern Uganda. The group is now a URI Cooperation Circle.
As a bridge builder between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Uganda, Archbishop Odama acted as an adviser and observer at the Juba Peace Process talks in 2006. He is also known for his support of children. During the height of the civil war, Archbishop Odama joined Uganda’s “night commuters” – children forced to walk up to 12 miles from internally displaced person camps to larger towns in search of safety from the Lord’s Resistance Army – in sleeping on the streets.
Archbishop Odama has served as chairman of the Uganda Episcopal Conference since 2011. He was elected to URI’s Global Council in 2012 as one of three trustees representing Africa.
The 2012 Peacemaking Award will be presented by World Vision, a Christian relief, development and advocacy organization that works with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. The award honors an individual deemed to have taken risks and excelled in the work of conflict resolution, and is given either to someone who has brought parties together to resolve a conflict or who has engaged peacemakers, mediators and people of moral authority into a peace process that brings hope and resolution to a destructive conflict.
The organization created the award in 2008 to honor the memory of Steve Williams, the former senior policy advisor on peace and conflict for World Vision U.K. Previous honorees have included the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (2011), human rights leader Rubina Feroze Bhatti of Pakistan (2010) and community organizer Mary Ann Arnado of the Philippines (2009).
The Sept. 19 award ceremony will be preceded by a football game between members of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative and the officers of Uganda’s armed forces. The game will be followed by a candlelit walk and vigil in memory of those who died in Northern Uganda’s civil war, starting at Gulu’s Pece Stadium and ending at the Ker Kwaro Acholi-Gang Kal Madit palace.
The ceremony will be held in conjunction with the International Day of Peace, an annual event celebrated by the United Nations and people throughout the world as a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence.
The theme of this year’s Peace Day – celebrated everywhere on Sept. 21 – is “Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future,” in keeping with the recent United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More information about URI’s celebration of the International Day of Peace is available at uri.org.
