Trust Africa is delighted to join His Grace Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Fatou Bensouda – ICC Chief Prosecutor, and H.E. Ruhakana Rugunda, Prime Minister of Uganda, and countless others in congratulating Victor Ochen and the African Youth Initiative Network (AYINET) for their joint 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination.
We believe that Victor and AYINET represent the new optimism currently reshaping the discourse on African-led processes of transformative change. We first met Victor and AYINET in 2013 and were immediately drawn to the important and innovative processes that they were putting in place. Since then, TrustAfrica has supported AYINET’s efforts to facilitate more meaningful victim participation in Uganda’s transitional justice policy and build nation-wide solidarity around victims’ rights. These activities culminated in the 2014 National war Victims’ Conference in Kampala, which succeeded in bringing both national and international attention to the needs of Uganda’s victims.
TrustAfrica is committed to generating and testing new ideas, and as such, we are proud to support AYINET’s pioneering work with victims’ communities in Uganda, which we hope will motivate similar initiatives in other post-conflict settings around the continent. TrustAfrica is working to build a more robust, informed and concerted advocacy movement to entrench the principles of justice and accountability in Africa.
We highly commend Victor and AYINET’s impactful role in Uganda. He is a beacon of light, inspiring African civil society to remain motivated in the pursuit of justice and accountability on the continent.
We congratulate Victor and AYINET for their nomination, which we wholeheartedly endorse.
Sincerely,
Tendai Murisa
Executive Director, TrustAfrica