Betty Bigombe
Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program
September 2006-January 31, 2008
Project Focus:
The Challenge of Managing Mediation: The Northern Uganda Experience
East Africa and the Horn | Asia | Mediation and Conflict Resolution | Child Soldiers
ARCHIVED SPECIALIST PROFILE
Languages: Swahili, Japanese
Note: Journalists interested in interviewing Ms. Bigombe should contact Lauren Sucher in the USIP public affairs office at 202.429.3822.
Betty Bigombe has been involved in peace negotiations in Uganda to end the Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) insurgency since the early 1990s. Prior to taking on these negotiation initiatives, she was appointed minister in Yoweri Museveni’s government and minister of state for pacification of North and Northeastern Uganda, and Office of the Prime Minister, resident in the North. She also was tasked with seeking a peaceful means to end the war in north and northeastern Uganda. Following the failure of a military solution, Bigombe initiated contact with rebel leader Joseph Kony. This initiative gave birth to what would become known as "Bigombe talks."
In 1994 Bigombe was named "Uganda’s Woman of the Year" for her efforts to end the violence. She spent time providing technical support to the Carter Center in the peace efforts between the governments of Uganda and Sudan. She then held a fellowship at Harvard University’s Institute for International Development in Public Policy in 1997. Bigombe joined the World Bank in 1997 as a senior social scientist at the Bank’s newly created Post-Conflict Unit and also worked with the Social Protection and Human Development Units.
Bigombe holds a master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Available on usip.org:
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