by Ssekandi Ronald, Chen Cailin     

    KAMPALA, Sept. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- As the world commemorates the International Peace Day on Tuesday, countries in the Great Lakes region, where continued conflicts have undermined peace for over four decades, embarked on an in-house cleaning to quell the increasing conflicts.

    Currently, the United Nations and the African Union are sponsoring the international peace efforts to address peace, security, democracy and development in the region. The different countries in the region have embarked on nationwide seminars to involve the ordinary people in devising ways of ending conflicts.

    The region has faced the worst conflicts the African continent has ever experienced. The Rwanda genocide of 1994 left close to 800,000 people dead. This state-sponsored genocide was mainly characterized by two ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi killing each other.

    The conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) also undermined peace in the region. In these conflicts thousands of people have been killed and others fleeing to their neighboringcountries. In 1998, five African countries, namely Uganda, Rwanda,Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, amassed their troops in the DRC. This culminate in the breakdown of state machinery in the vast central African country. Warlords were created to manage various provinces especially in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country. Violence was the order of the day.

    In Burundi, as fresh wounds over 150 people mainly Tutsi women,children and babies who had fled fighting in southern DRC were burnt to death on Aug. 13.

    The massacre was similar to that of northern Uganda where over 200 people were brutally murdered by suspected rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighting the Ugandan government.

    The Darfur crisis in western Sudan is still fresh in many people's minds. In this area thousands of people have reportedly been killed and over one million others displaced by the Janjaweedmilitia.

    Since the beginning of this year, the conflicts in the region have claimed thousands of innocent lives and displacing millions of others.

    These hurting events have forced the leaders in the Great Lakesregion to devise means of ending the killing of their people.

    Late last month in a tripartite meeting sponsored by the UnitedStates, Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC agreed to embark on a crackdownon militia that have destabilized the region for decades. The three governments agreed to disarm the DRC-based Interahamwe militia, who are accused of engineering the 1994 genocide and being involved in the Aug. 13 massacre of the 150 people in Burundi.

    They also agreed to disarm the Allied Democratic Force rebels who are said to be regrouping in eastern DRC to fight the Ugandan government.

    In a bid to stop the widespread violence in the region, the countries mentioned above agreed to form the Inter Parliamentary Forum to discuss ways of preventing and stopping conflicts.

    The pressure by the Great Lakes leaders on Sudan to talk peace with the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) has also yielded good results. During the peace talks held in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, the SPLA and the Sudanese government signed a peace agreement, which turned to be a major setback to the LRA rebels fighting the Ugandan government. The Sudanese government stopped arming the LRA rebels.

    The recent support given to the Ugandan troops by the Sudanese army to fight the LRA rebels in southern Sudan have greatly affected the LRA. The training grounds for the LRA in southern Sudan have now been razed by the Ugandan troops.

    The leaders of the Great Lakes countries have also agreed underthe African Union to deploy their troops as protection forces in Sudan's western region of Darfur. Rwanda has already deployed its troops there. Recently, Uganda also announced its readiness to deploy its troops in Darfur.

    The Great Lakes countries have also improved their relations with each other. Uganda and Rwanda, who were previously on the verge of going to war with each other, are now good friends. The relations between Rwanda and the DRC are also improving.

    The countries themselves have also started working to dissolve their internal differences. For example, Rwanda carried out a peaceful presidential election in August last year which saw President Paul Kagame win with a wide margin. The presidential elections in the DRC are also due soon.

    If these efforts geared toward lasting peace in the Great Lakesregion are kept up, the people will at least have a chance of settling down and embark on improving their lives. Enditem