LRA/Uganda bill passes Congress!

After over a year of lobbying for the passage of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, this landmark legislation has finally passed through Congress!

At 7:02pm this evening, after a series of powerful floor statements from several Representatives, the House passed the bill with overwhelming support by voice vote. The bill has now passed in both the House and the Senate and will be sent to the President's desk, where he will have up to ten days to sign it into law.

This highlight reel we put together from the vote says it all:

Today's vote was a truly historic and moving moment. You can read this more detailed Q&A from my officemate Michael on what comes next, and the impact this moment will have.

Not only did this legislation acquire more cosponsors than any other Africa-related bill on record (64 in the Senate and 201 in the House), it is now included in the very small fraction of bills introduced to Congress that actually pass. To put this achievement in perspective for you, only 3.3% of the bills introduced in the last session of Congress were passed into law.

All of us at Resolve Uganda are deeply grateful to the hundreds of thousands of activists who have written, called, donated, conducted meetings locally and in DC, and slept on the concrete in Oklahoma -- all to give the victims of LRA violence the attention and fight that they deserve.

We also are incredibly thankful for our partner organizations Invisible Children, the Enough Project, Human Rights Watch and other humanitarian and religious groups whose extraordinary efforts to see through the passage of the bill helped make it happen.

Finally, we are thankful for the Senators, Representatives, and their staffers who have worked tirelessly inside the halls of Congress to push this bill forward and make it a priority for our leaders in response to all our calls. A special thanks to the offices of Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA), Ed Royce (R-CA) and Brad Miller (D-NC) for boldly championing this legislation.  If you are constituents of these Members of Congress, we strongly encourage you to email their offices and thank them for their efforts and for a job well done.

Our most sincere appreciation, once again, to all of you who have played a part in this remarkable victory. Our partners at Invisible Children also put together this video documenting some of the process of getting here.

We will continue to keep you updated on developments from here as the bill heads to the President’s desk!