PEACE – NO SUBSTITUTE! UPDF & YOUTH FOR PEACEFUL ELECTIONS
On 5th February 2016, civil society representatives from UYONET and Uganda National NGO Forum, and the Chief of the Defense Forces, General Katumba Wamala representing the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces symbolically lit a peace torch on the theme ‘#Peace – No Substitute! UPDF and the Youth for Peaceful Elections’. This collaboration with UPDF comes in the wake of several initiatives by civil society calling for peaceful elections come Thursday 18th February 2016. Including but not limited to Women Situation Room, the youths’ ‘I pledge peace Campaign’, the financial monitoring of the campaigns by ACFIM, I Choose Peace Ug and the TOPOWA campaign.
This was at the 62nd State of the Nation Platform organized by ACODE in collaboration with the UPDF Liberation Symposium and organizing partner the Foundation for Youth Mentorship at Imperial Royale Hotel Kampala. This was in partnership with other organizations like Uganda National NGO Forum, Inter Party Youth Platform, International Republican Institute (IRI), Situation Room, UYONET, Center for Policy Analysis.
Moderated by Colonel Felix Kulaigye, the peace symposium saw presentations by Dr. John Kabudi, Professor of Political Science University Of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania on ‘The Survival of the African State and Elections in Africa: The Case of Tanzania’ and ‘Democracy and the Role of the Military in Peacetime Africa’ by Dr. Arthur Bainomugisha, the Executive Director of ACODE. General Katumba Wamala also presented on the concept ‘Peace – No Substitute! UPDF and the Youth for Peaceful Elections’.
