Grounded in her own experience of war and torture, Stella Sabiiti has spent more than 30 years brokering and facilitating armed groups, national armies, governments, and communities for dialogue, negotiation and mediation. Specializing in peace processes at the level of national, regional and international , she supports small arms and light weapons (SALW)-related work, including disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and post conflict stabilization, as well as security sector reform (SSR), including the role of women in such processes (such as within AMISOM in Mogadishu, Somalia; Liberia; Sudan; South Sudan and the Arab Spring countries). She is an avid supporter of the voice of civil society in development and peace processes as well as positive African Traditional Mechanisms of peace-building.
Ms. Sabiiti spent several years with the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Department’s Capacity-building program, under EU support, to strengthen the AU, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), Regional Mechanisms (RMs) for peace and security and their regional standby forces in building and operationalizing the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). She worked at the AU’s Women, Gender and Development Directorate (WGDD) strengthening African women’s voices to be heard in peace processes within the framework of UNSCR 1325 and the AU’s Gender Architecture (AUGA) and continues as part of a team of experts training personnel on the AU’s Gender Training Manual for Peacekeepers and Peace Support Operations (PSO) military, police and civilian components. She is a trained and qualified PSO Mission Leader. She is a member of the Institute for Inclusive Security’s Resolution to Act which assists UN member states in articulating their National Action Plans (NAPs) for operationalizing UNSCR 1325.
Most recently she worked with AMISOM in helping the new government in Somalia to craft a National Gender Policy. She continues to assist key players in the Sudan/South Sudan peace process.
In 2002, Ms. Sabiiti facilitated negotiations between the Uganda National Rescue Front II (UNRF2) and the Government of Uganda, leading to a signed peace agreement that has stood the test of time, and has worked with actors in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)-affected areas in the Great Lakes Region, Horn of Africa and Central Africa. On behalf of the then Organization of African Unity’s (now AU) Women’s Committee on Peace and Development, she helped mobilize Burundian women to build their negotiation skills to successfully have badly-targeted sanctions on Burundi lifted and to be involved in the peace talks.
Ms. Sabiiti is founder of the Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE) in Uganda,
