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CODEP (Conflict, Development and Peace) Conference 2000 in London and would like to share some of what I encountered and learned.In particular I found the AWLI - African Women's Leadership Initiative workshop most impressive. So I suggested they try to make contact through one of their member countries and even at this late stage try to give a workshop in Ottowa, as we could surely all benefit, whether we are from the 'developed' or 'developing ' world.
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi is a woman from a village, Wajir, in Northern Kenya who does not qualify for membership of our IFUW organization yet because she is still struggling to get a correspondence degree, but I would like to see her invited as a keynote speaker to address our next conference. She gave a remarkable and inspiring keynote talk about 'Developing Local responses to Local and Regional Conflict' for a London/Kenyan NGO, "Responding to Conflict". Her presentation displayed sheer original intelligence, common sense, an holistic grasp of human conflict, folly and potential for peaceful co-existence and was exemplified by practical steps immediately to de-escalate potential conflagration that could easily develop into open warfare, in short, wisdom and humane energetic dedication of rare calibre. What she is doing sets an example for us all of how the core aims for which IFUW was founded can be lived out dailywhile conceptualized in as sophisticated a fashion as any of us with our privileged university level educations are capable of, and illustrated by lived through experiences from which she has learned and can share with us. I hope we will be able to respond and accord her the honour she merits of asking her to address us and to assist her to join with us.
As seems at last to have become generally accepted, all the conflicts analysed could be viewed as originating multi-focally at points of interaction of different causal levels and as such require a multi-faceted response. Foci of potential disruption may be sparked from within individuals from personal motivating factors, or at a social level within families or conflicting clans or other social groupings with origins in more or less remote past, or present, or ideologically designed futures, and may operate at various levels, local, or neighbouring, or district, regional or national levels, cross-borders, and become international and are often aggravated from multinational groups (arms, drugs or ommodities or ideological political and religious traders). Most speakers grasped how any aid or intervention has potentially positive or negative conflict ameliorating and helpful or conflict-generating aggravating consequences.
How an outside program or its delivery is perceived by insiders, and how it impacts locally and regionally or in wider, often unpredictable ways; how any program from food aid to educational initiative is perceived by those who come from outside and how differently the various insider target 'beneficiaries' and their neighbours may perceive its implementation are complex interactions and situations. The varying interactions and overlapping agendas are very much dependent on local conditions, agendas, networks, life styles, conditions and partnerships.
Mary Anderson is Cambridge, MA - based President of USA's Collaborative for Development Action. She has been carrying out world-wide 'envelope scribbles'-based research in conflict situations with a very open, listening, questioning and deeply reflective attitude. She produced a useful cautionary model for analytic purposes of evaluating the effectiveness of any program and taking such factors into account as part of an in-built early warning possibility- expectation that the best-intentioned program may backfire if a would be Aid Agency is insufficiently sensitive to local social potential resources for partnership or conflict exacerbation such as traditions, elders, needs, history etc.
Local leadership has to be given a sense of direction and it is for us to strengthen and facilitate this.
How do we empower the 'innocent' marginalized, brutalized victims in their simple rural lives? restore their dignity? They didn't even understand the conflict and were the most victimized!
How do we know and enable who is located where to do what at what strategic time and to raise consciousness?
We can play a valuable role in documentation, even of on-going experience. We play complementary roles. We work in the present but constantly think about where we are going.
How do we deal with Drug Cartels, Multi-nationals? Arms trade dealers? illegal industries? Stop European and International Bankers from accepting the money of dictators and corrupt politicians???
I will summarize and distill my understanding in my own way, and am now not quoting those whose insights inspired me. I will not reproduce the 72 pages of notes I scribbled over the two and a half days I sat and learned or gained affirmation of what I may already have known.
In essence I believe it true to hold that the entry of the outsider or any program or person arriving into what is essentially a strange situation becomes a factor that changes that situation; the change may happen in many directions and have consequences that are unpredictable, may be for better or worse, may occur remote in time and place, with escalating or scaling properties. Those who are even marginally acquainted with physics- and mathematics-derived quantum theory, with chaos and complexity theory, with catastrophe theory, with the circularity and feedback-looped inter-influential either-direction systems theory, with Maturana and Ventura's autopoiesis, with searches for super symmetry and TOE, the Theory of Everything, will recognize that in the natural on-the- ground
events laboratories in the human inter-reactions social sphere one can begin to perceive the relevance of the theoretical lenses these 'hard science' fields have provided us with for examining 'random' life events, these one and/or many 'anecdotal' case studies to begin to understand and so better to work towards finding non-violent ways of dealing with conflicts, managing pro-actively, during and in after- situations, with providing support for psycho-social regeneration in post-conflict and disaster situations, for sustaining relatively peaceful or peaceful enough conditions for a measure of individual and communal recovery. It has to be stressed that all efforts have to be sustained. In the human sphere the symbolic component in terms of local interpretation is always of immense significance - something all too frequently entirely overlooked by Western trained or otherwise 'foreign' interloper-would be do-gooders in strange situations.
It was Emmanuel Bombande from the West African Network for Peace building, another very experienced practitioner and highly sophisticated thinker, who cautioned against imposing peace, or premature stop-gap 'peace' liable soon to erupt again if it is not 'a just peace'. He drew a little diagram of a plant growing and pointed to the visible parts and the invisible root system which he defined as always present in any situation. The three components he sees as most important are the symbolic, the emotional and the historical, perhaps centuries remote, components active in nurturing a visible conflict or any social situation.
Dekha produced a list of early warning indicators of what might explode into serious violence, suggested pro-active measures that could be taken, and convincingly illustrated how her initiatives together with the partnerships and influences she had built with various tribal elders, congregations, district and regional officials, politicians, journalists, and politicians at national level, as well as her international contacts and alliances had probably put out a couple of wars that might otherwise have been.
Dekha also took two examples, one a local occurrence of cattle theft and the other of the theft of a gun from a border guard by a marauding neighbouring delinquent from across the border. She analysed from newspapers and meetings how very differently these incidents were perceived by local pastoralists, the cattle-herding tribesmen, the injured tribesmen's needs for retaliation, justice and /or vengeance, reactions of the local communal and religious leaders, tradesmen, arms dealers, district officials, those across the border from Northern Kenya in Somaliland, regional and national Journalists, national politicians, security such as police and army responses, and the potential for
misunderstanding and different perceptions to lead to a disastrous escalation of conflict out of all proportion to the original events. In a place where the appearance of government troops with helicopters has in the past been associated with government massacres of populations, when they appear for 'peace-keeping' or security enforcement purposes, the local population is likely to erupt into fear and panic. Her alliances with local tribal elders and their freedom to cross national borders and communicate with elder tribesmen of neighbouring National territory is likely to have
de-fused situations that may readily have exploded into regional armed conflict.
Thus Dekha sees this kind of vigilance and activity as ongoing necessity to be carried on by her children and grandchildren if current unrest is not to become more destructive of ongoing communal life. But my precis does little but introduce the levels of sophistication of her analyses and lived actions taken in implementing the necessary processes such situational assessments require.
Any program or person becomes but one player in networks of interacting influences in any situation. It is absolutely essential to develop co-operative alliances and partnerships with local individuals, local institutions and local networks, to let them direct initiatives, and to develop working alliances with other agencies of every variety, as well as with funding agencies. International funding agencies also have to be asked to be accountable no less than local organizations. Emmanuel Bombande suggested that he and his alliances have to think through critically how resources are used and may need to refuse funding from governments and even refuse other sources of funding is there cannot be flexibility of their use.
A general theme was the importance and usefulness of mixing professionals, administrators and politicians, journalists, academics, civil society representatives in order to think together, form alliances and networks including with Universities, to inform practice with conceptual frameworks, to enable publications and maintain ongoing sustained associations.
Influences must trickle up as well as down and no outsider can know or predict what the effects are going to be whatever their intentions. Several case studies were given of the value of fluidity and flexibility in field conditions, but all too often funding agencies have prescriptive and proscriptive agendas that hamper. Accountability has to work in all directions. While corruption and fund-wasting undoubtedly exists, often what projects set out to do may not be optimal in view of local conditions.
There are many examples which I will not here elaborate on. But local communities should not be silenced - they nee a voice in what is going to be delivered to them. Programs should be developed driven by local organizations with civilian societal ownership and empowerment, but with a dialogue kept going and sustained over time where there are situations sometimes of unprecedented human rights violations and atrocities.
What local society has in common, be it market place or belief systems or ceremony or water needs, links them, as well as what divides them. Programs have to determine what the commonalties as well as the dividers are and work to sustain links.
Dekha stressed how it is up to civil society to show the way to politicians to help them effect good governance, to work also and strategically with those not in power but in opposition who may one day be in a position to govern better. She believes politicians need to be led. She looks for a way
to support the small initiative. Elders have to be sought out, respected and supported. They have to be helped to develop communicative links across regional and political divides so that their networks can act as continuous ongoing stabilizing informal networks alongside the political and administrative structures. She insists we think geographically. Other speakers too emphasized how local situations spill over into other territories, countries, and can destabilize and afflict huge areas. Dekha said: "A village is not an island, nor is any country." We need a step by step sharing of ideas and strategies to link neighbouring regions and countries in informal and formal ways. Like many others she pointed out how we all are learning from experience. If an initiative for peace fails, next time violence erupts the situation may be handled differently and better.
She discussed who does an analysis of any situation and emphasized how whether it is the analysis of a village child, or elder, or scholar, it needs to be heard and taken account of, pooled and shared locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
Sources of much of the conflict exist in the North (Western World) not locally in Africa, post-colonial, and in existing multi-national greed and exploitation as in local corrupt war-lording dictators. Arms proliferation has to be tackled at source. There is no point in e.g. trying to re-build Sierra Leone while this continues with negative Ukrainian a negative Ukrainian and European partners. There is a , South Africa to stop arms flow to Sierra Leone and elsewhere. When the problem is external it has to be fixed from the external source. It will need an Africa-Northern collaborative link to cut weapon supply lines and illegal diamond dealing. Certain businesses exacerbate conflicts in Africa.
The voices of victims are insufficiently heard -- a few minutes of a personal story on radio before nightly news can greatly help.
If a collaboration is not strategic it will create a gridlock. Each actor contributes just a little. Your contribution is not significant without the other actors and can always either enhance or bring about gridlock. Most money comes from outside Africa.. respect those who promote funding to be active, but they need information about deep-rooted causes of conflict they may not appreciate or know.
Work advances and retreats leading to frustration as if work proceeds too slowly and people tend to give up in such situations when they need to persevere.
Immediate detailed issues need to be identified and responded to and learnt from.
W need patience to see how change comes about gradually.
Funding agencies need to find consortiums of supportive communities rather than create individual NGO programs, should identify and support critical activities within the communities who seek a sympathetic ear for funding.
Either/or is an unenlightening approach to conflict.
Economics isn't everything but without it there isn't much else.
The wise funder frees his local workers from the sometimes distracting chore of having to report on progress, but frequent collaborative telephonic communication and consultation and progress reports can be very helpful in drawing funder into partnership. This facilitates the development of a web of trust and should be sufficient not that sometimes projects don't merit a narrative written report - that enables concentration of process itself rather than admin./managerial reportage. It is important that funders develop a relationship so that the funder becomes a more than financially enabling collaborative evaluating partner. Yes, there has to be accountability, but equally also trust and flexibility. When organizations come together in a country e.g. Ghana, each gains credibility by the presence of and association with the other.
Electocracy not democracy exists in Africa.
Dekha Ibrahim is thinking in terms of recomposition of the state civic, legal and cultural. "Peace is a long term process: my role is to facilitate that. ... Think of the vulnerable groups like women and children in villages who can't escape... Keep on like a dog and we'll get there."
She pointed to links between violence and natural disaster, and also to elections. She pointed out how if we can be prepared and can see such links we can ameliorate such situations. She gave examples of how she had enabled politicians to cut down on electioneering violence by asking their supporters not to sing and dance in their support once she had shown them the effect of this practice on youth and how unwittingly the political competition had contributed to outbreaks of violence. "You have to lead the politicians, not let them drive you!" she said matter-of-factly. We have to use whatever leverage we can to engage the state even though often it isn't possible. When not possible, we have to calm down and think of private strategies. Always the context determines whether or not people
fight. Always look at the context of what you can change.
State organizations must not be ignored but international networks have to be formed. At first level one has to identify who is doing what where, what NGOs are interested in service delivery or peace-building and who does well on what issues. Try to determine whether or not a local resource exists.
At a second level there are programs driven by local resources there is civilian societal ownership but a network can enable the internal and outside communities to keep a dialogue going even in most terrible situations. Universalism is all very well but implementation is always a domestic affair and this applies especially to issues of human rights. As one African graphically put it: "The thing up North is actually inside your trousers." They perceive the UN as a ritualization of peace and security while countries like Rwanda imploded and UN could have done better. "No European will bleed for Africa." "Sandhurst and West Point are not appropriate for the African situation of machetes." "No one cares about who puts his life in line."
At the centre of West African Economic Alliance are the most advanced and sophisticated Human Rights treaties and aspirations, already signed to but not yet implemented - nonetheless a basis for good governance.
As someone else, a high LSE academic, said: "We have to punch above our weight but not be so professionalized that we lose sight of values and those that led to this work in the first place'. "Peace itself may be a more complex emergency" said Mark Hoffman, from department of international relations at LSE. Sophisticated understanding has to be delivered to journalists and politicians alike in short, sharp pithy arguments that must be convincing and compelling. Marketing ideas is of the essence. We have to use a comparative approach to see what is unique in any particular situation, deliver the understanding as if the situation exists and can be explained in a 1-2 page memorandum.
Mari Fitzduff from Northern Ireland also gave a wise and experienced address before sadly returning to where a Peace Process has entered a hopefully temporary setback. We have to use whatever leverage we can to engage the state even though often it isn't possible. When not possible, we have to calm down and think of private strategies. Women pick up the pieces after war but aren't sufficiently in power in the power systems that create war and keep it going. Women's coalitions and movements into power have been very significant for women in Northern Ireland. We need
women in power in Northern Ireland as soon as possible, as elsewhere worldwide. We need to think universalistically through all humanity. Marie pointed to the importance of doing local analyses month after month, repeatedly because today's divisory factor may become tomorrow's connector and the dynamic changes in relationships that are always fluid must be anticipated and built on.AWLI - AFRICAN WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE
Aims and Objectives are
- to develop leadership potential,
- to provide leadership training
- to facilitate empowerment
-to be a networking forum
-to provide mentoring and a positive role modelling system
-to facilitate the development of intergenerational influences so that younger women may learn from the experiences of older women and vice versa
-to carry out gender analysis research and
- documentation of women's experience
-arrange meetings and develop networks all over Africa providing forums for meetings and workshops
locally, regionally, sub-regionally, nationally and internationally
- alumni meet regularly provide feedback and draw up key areas of concern so that 'tailor made' programs can be drawn up to meet local needs as they arise and how they work or don't can be fed back in centrally and disseminated out to other alumni, who are encouraged to carry on similar
programs so that leadership cadre women are identified, contacted, encouraged and helped
-follow-up grants are allocated to AWLI alumni
-panels, workshops and conferences are held at regional, national and international levels
-a tri-annual newsletter keeps the women in touch with each other and enables them to conceptualize, feed back and know how they use information gained to implement objectives and effect change in particular communities
-produce research and policy papers together with AWLI mentors
The importance of networking is a key issue. They
- establish partnerships with other African women organizationally individually
-in order
1) to undertake a feminist analysis of status of women in Africa in relation to equality, co-existence, economics, social and religious systems that operate against African women achieving their full potential and playing their full role in their communities and countries
2) to identify and work with young women leaders ad their organizations
3) lobby for resources and carry on advocacy influencing policy, business and documentation
- They are a training Institute for African women because
i) there is a great lack of such institutions in Africa
ii) to develop leadership potential of young African women who all contributed during conflicts that marginalized them to mobilize them for reconstruction and peace-building and maintaining efforts
AWLI has Regional Training Networks and information forums where 25-40 women share information and experience, build coalitions, and strategize local, regional, national and international initiatives
- they provide professional support, advice and information
- they run three week residential leadership training programs
- they aim for qualitative and quantitative changes and participants not just to support the status quo but they aim to revolutionize the status of women in Africa.
On Policy making they question how qualitatively to effect changes in leadership and the way it relates to women, children and the poor they seek gender-sensitive fund getting access to all rights and their enforcement and implementation -do grass-roots work all over but need and actively seek more voice at very strategic levelsOrganization for African Unity may be important and not just a waste of time for regional and international levels where female voices are absent They lobby and advocate for women at UN level
African Women for Peace and development Committee is now 2 years old They have formed a committee of eminent women from all over Africa, a Vice president of Uganda, and other politicians or women connected with politicians, and with regional and Sub-regional NGOs ( I suggested they
link up with IFUW) trying to provide a voice so if any party is sent to OAU a woman or women may be involved through this high--powered committee plus try to influence high-powered men to give voice to women's rights and needs
Thus they do training, networking, information sharing, resource mobilization
have realized the more efforts are put into women leadership the more this might help
What they do is difficult to quantify in terms of
-empowerment,
-changing African women's self-esteem,
-giving voice to laws
- to protect women from violence,
- from forced conscription or sexual slavery in child soldier subservience-ship
- from traditional practices that mutilate or degrade and enforce secondary or chattel status of women
- They document efforts in peace-building and reconstructive strategies
-They aim to fight, protest and to protect... for instance the experiences of women in Rwanda must be documented. They aim to give women an outlet to testify to what happened to them which they cannot reveal t any so-called TRC ( Truth and Reconciliation Committee or Commission)
-They care for survivors of violent conflict.
-work in communities to understand responsibilities to women as wellExample In Mozambique there is a traditional purification ritual for young men returning to
their communities from whatever atrocities they may have perpetrated during armed conflict so that they come back symbolically as whole complete persons. But none exist for girls who equally may forcibly have been conscripted and used as sexual slaves and who may be marginalized as a result of this resulting in a compounded victimization.Young men can display their scars of war which give them access to authority, status and even power in the community but women after such experienced may be effectively as if floating ghosts. They need processes at community as well as individual level to bring them back to active full life in their communities.
In Eritrea many men who were soldiers returned with women who they regarded as their fiancees after establishing liaisons with these women during the conflict/war period in camps, but their communities will not recognize such women ad regard them as prostitutes who don't belong, again deepening and
complexifying their compounded and enforced suffering. Communities have to be made responsible to bring back previous women and young girl sexual slaves as whole rehabilitatable persons.- Lastly AWLI works around peace and holistic sustainable peace settlements. They too stress that it is important not to rush to a here and now cease-fire and let some actors continue to roam with impunity e.g., in urban South Africa. They see this as a recipe for disaster.
The strength of AWLI is born of African women's experiences, developed, conceptualized and implemented by African women.
They give three weeks of intensive training.
Week1:
personal empowerment,
conceptualizing gender and women's human rights tools to effect change,
self-development,
self-assertiveness,
past leadership dynamic to mobilize communities and lobby for change by articulation of needs
and they also address leadership dynamics
Week 2:
organizational development
strategic planning
resource mobilization
managing change
how to draw up lobbying and advocacy strategies etc.
Week 3
Transfer of skills
how to create the critical mass (35%) to effect change intergenerational linkages in African women
training of trainers
to show it isn't true that women's roles are not documented and are not valued
they are trained to develop initiatives for what they feel their particular communities and constituencies need and can use.
Women have come from most conflict-ridden situations and countries and taken something from the leadership institute to try to create change in their communities.
They go away and do a needs assessment in their own countries and regions and come back and request tailor-made courses from leadership to become more effective in their particular local situations. Women have come from Mozambique have shown how they have made invisible contributions ... the challenge is how to make their contributions acknowledged and valued as important.The challenge is to change information and perceptions for such women and take away from others from specific women's experiences to strategize and to effect positive change.
AWLI achievements
-They provide a theoretical framework for understanding gender and Women's Human Rights while operating in deeply patriarchal and oppressive systems who allow no autonomy or decision-making role and they need to develop an effective stratagem for dealing with this context.
-They have created a space for young African women to learn from older African women and vice versa
-They have created strong networks throughout the region and important prospects of building coalitions creating strategic links they are aiming to have key people in media, politics, for community mobilization and to create systems to allow, sustain and build on what's been achieved
-they have transferred and are transferring skills and knowledge
-They realize how important it is to target quantitative as well as qualitative changes
-African ( as all) women must respect and acknowledge each other's skills and knowledge, create linkages and representatives ad representations and build on and insist on this by mentoring and role model systems. They have to develop and maintain mechanisms to sustain through networks and institution building, share their care ad home-building and maintaining responsibilities which they cope with with very little support and are core CV roles plus take on these other issues and try to achieve them.
- Training doesn't stop with the three week seminar. Follow-up is just as important, as is feedback.
A leadership development centre has to provide the latest in supporting networks to take difficult issues into account at the end of the training, and to create the sub-regional and regional networks.
Those who are trained are not a the top of their careers - all say they wish their boss could hear this. Their organizational structure has to be diagnosed and assessed by them and tackled by them.
Powerful political people take advantage of weak organizations. they have to learn not to accept a politically imposed settlement when communities are vulnerable/ Leaders may or may not have taken part in combat groups and it doesn't work if they then change their arena and take on positions in government when they've gained from violent conflict as e.g. in Liberia or Sierra Leone
They have developed new leadership paradigms taking into account that leadership should facilitate empowerment in as many as possible. Leadership is a facilitatory process through which choices can be maximized and respect for others' needs and sensibilities.
Conventions they subscribe to are a combination of practical and analytic tools, must be consistent, with demystification of processes such as female genital mutilation in Senegal where helplessness and hopelessness can be mitigated and resistance encouraged by citing the example of Somali where resistance to the practice has already taken place.They strive for a critical mass of women at policy making levels and decision making and therefore identify women in potential leadership positions, entrepreneurs or any, and use monitoring and conceptual Human Rights tools and information to assist them in realizing how they can contribute to effecting change and organize to get there to affect governments actually to implement changes at very level. So their decision to target young women in key posts is a strategic one. What women will take from them and do in their communities is always assisted. They need space in which to reflect and to operate within their present systems... even in a finger-in-the-dike methodology. For example, once let into parliament, the women in Somalia took up the first three rows of seats usually reserved for minister and refused to move at the opening of parliament.
How do women deal with re-entry after traumatic experiences? A Somaliland psychiatrist said that in his experience women are usually more overtly traumatized than are men because men can run away and become active in conflict situations whereas women stay at home and take care of the elderly and children and have many more triggers to flashbacks in activities and more opportunities for emotional expression. Therefore he thinks there ought to be more women in high government positions.
In campaigning for elections in Zimbabwe women are seriously wanting leadership positions because Leadership forgets the role of women in conflicts present and past conflict situations.
What's the strategy for reaching to men to achieve the critical goal mass (35%)? It is important to try to find men in high positions also to advocate on behalf of women. There is considerable use and misuse of women in politics in Africa. First ladies should not start their own projects but should be used to support causes and autonomous women's movements rather than their own things.
Women have the right to governance that gives them dignity. There has to be a radical change in leadership development paradigm in Africa. Women and men have to b reached not just in urban areas.
There is much need for grassroots work as well as at leadership level. It is important to mix skilled and unskilled women, educated and uneducated.
The work tends to get overwhelming regardless of strategy. One tries to be strategic if possible but has to be flexible. We'd like to fight in each country but have rather to try to the women in the place to use the men as allies and show them what's in it for them, for their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters. Women reach men through marriage and association.
We have to be extremely careful when we work with the women in Africa both in budgeting an in program design. e.g. if we promise free Medicare while they're at a meeting or during a workshop many arrive with their various ailments and needs to see a Dr. because there may not be one where they are. They could get medical attention for the first time in a longtime!
It is important not to make promises you cannot deliver on. When you sell programs you sell integrity.
You have to be very careful with statements because environments can be conducive or not. You have to judge what is/is not applicable.
management of civil society organizations can't criticize government if they cannot set a good example and demonstrate themselves to be a good recruitment ground for funding and training.
Training has to take place in one another's countries.
Women have to mobilize one another. They have to provide technological support, grants, information, link them strategically, sympathetically and link with other women's organizations. Try to put a number of strategies in place ad keep challenging.
They also do consultancies because it makes money and connections with outside without compromising basic goals. they have to keep focused but know they cannot always rely on grants.
Networks have to be established of various sorts, women's communication networks, African women and NGOs, and Development NGOs. Regional network web sites on which reports of seminars can be published bi-annually so that women who cannot attend can have the same access as those who do not come to seminars.
How do you assess achievement?
Don't be blind to lack of remorse in situations where atrocities have been perpetrated. perpetrators are not motivated to be remorseful. For peace to be sustainable regions require a comprehensive process to be sustained.
Don't try to simplify what demands complex approaches. Understand their complex forms to discover in detailed form how to develop a multifaceted collaborative responsive stratagem.. Like peeling layers of an onion or pulling sticks out of a fire to put it out, one by one, each layer may be too complex to be peeled off and we have to work collaboratively.. .we need other partners networking to achieve any social transformation. We need local peace advocates.
Collaborative interventions enhance credibility.
Long term destruction of government capacity as well as community capacity has to be taken into account when conceiving a just peace. Peace for peace sake can create new problems and requires postponement for a just peace.
post conflict stages
able to go home
going home
needs for basic support/protection
access to market
more complex if were, say, pastoral, and you've lost the herds...
they're much more expensive than the crops... also problems of land mines
many technical issues
livelihood rehabilitation
environment/security
strategic focus has to be technical. contextual.. like different soils require different ploughs etc.
There is a research interaction that sometimes needs to be done by expatriates rather, than government or agencies who need to do this research
Reconciliation requires dignity of ability to earn your livelihood - yet if you ask even pastoralists, they will say that if keeping cattle has brought about this war, then they'd prefer some other way of livelihood
MARY ANDERSON suggested:
Try to find patterns by reflecting as an AID community of NGOs which is built adequately only on local connectors that either increase or decrease intergroup tensions
What can outsiders do?
i) provide positive resources
2) have an effect by the voluntariness of their presence - there's a significance merely to being there as a sign that the outsiders are sincerely motivated "to make my suffering your suffering"...
3) signify impartiality, fairness, non-embroiledness in conflict situation
4) be accountable only to principles of cessation of suffering + inclusive justice which keeps us aware
5) outsiders provide space - can carve out space in which to act that the insiders can't - space for what? cessation of violence? or resolution of conflicts?
6) bring techniques that insiders can't bring
7) have different options of being there or not - outsiders don't have to be there, can leave
8) their accountabiity is outside inside and is different to different constituencies
9) outsiders can ask foolish questions and leave insiders not entirely comfortable - the good question can break patterns
10) outsiders can bring examples from other situations and places and therefore open up situations to the verges of the possible
11) outsiders can see connections and capacities for building peace that insiders cannot
12) outsiders can cross lines when insiders can't
13) We can allow locals from different groups to be seen to be working together as well as with NGOs
So the problems of the intrinsic flaws of being an outsiders have another side if well managed or handled
These ideas push us towards the path of what outsiders can do and can have a productive role to play The insider/outsider relationship is ambivalent, overlapping sometimes.
Both want more and expect more than the other can deliver.
What attention do we want? What do we want? What don't we want?
Insiders and outsiders can form truly united partnerships
a) by their desire to work for peace
b) by the fact that neither and none has any idea how to bring it about
There is no model or plan.
if we could get partnerships right and worry about it perhaps we can bring about cessation of conflict and work towards peace...
No one can make any one else's peace. Addressing real issues and institutionalizing processes is an insider job.
The outsider can operate programs by taking lessons from others and applying them day to day y asking "can you use?" and "Does it help?" from the insiders.
The outsider can compile a field manual of what works, what doesn't work, what issues are generalizable, and what harms..
The most productive outsider role is to help in cessation of violent conflicts that perpetuate destruction and cycles of violence
'To Do No Harm: How AID supports Peace or War.' Mary Anderson Boulder,Co:Lynne Reiner
There are questions about the role of the Diaspora insider... ? What is an insider? What is an outsider? and the spectrum between, and the possibilities that exist for all at which stage... all may be very different from the perception of outsiders by insiders which may be as of the other camp! Even the act of giving food or counseling may be interpreted as a non-neutral act... location of an office, etc.
Who can do what where and when and how with least harm and possible effectiveness?
Outsiders can play a valuable role in documentation of on ground experience and insiders and outsiders have complementary roles
One works on the present but have constantly to think about where you're going
Allow locals from different groups to be seen to be working together as well as NGOs
Local leadership has to give sense of direction for us to strengthen and facilitate
The question of time is highly important - framework is fixed at outset of conflict but on a different time scale seen differently because usually perception of the conflict is a long term one
Peace depends on the building of conviviality in society - but that may continue in warring factions in lulls even during intense violent conflict.
All societies are conflict prone.
There's a continuum from not open warfare to active warfare to conflict in the past which provides a useful framework to think about the unexpected impact of any work done on intergroup relations becoming aggravated and greater or lessening.
There's a continuum from healthy competition to destructive competition, while inclusive practice and common interests exist that build in a dynamic.
One has to find what increases and what decreases tension and think of alternatives.
MARI FITZDUFF: COMMUNITY COUNCIL N IRELAND pointed out that by 2199 with the kind of fragmentation going on as East Timor there could be 2000 nation states at UN and governments can no longer control what people know
If you don't exist on www you don't exist... that's where the power is going.
We can't stop the process so we have to try to get people to join us.
We have to redress the knowledge lag, the resource lag, get communication infrastructure going for networking to establish a change in the realignment of power.
NGO capacity has grown enormously - are equivalent at UNO to the lobby in Washington, and the power of the lobby is growing. e.g. CARE has a $365 million per annum budget
It is time we recognize our capacity.
The weight and burden of bureaucracy and traditions is appalling.
There's an increased capacity to be flexible and to work with political organization back home
Respect, recognize and cooperate with armies and UN training school for responses to complex emergencies.
We/they need a multifaceted approach to deal with complex emergency
NGOs reflect on what they're doing - better to reflect together.
Compare peace processes and making information available .. very very important information to learn about other ways of doing it.
Opportunities open up for peacemaking organizations like the N Ireland Community Council.
We need our work to be taken seriously. Start to meet in Hotels, take yourself seriously, talk to those who develop you, become part of sub-elements who know how to do it
TIMING of response is vital
Take responsibility
Think about what are we about to achieve? and what do we want to achieve?
Don't use the word PEACE too much as Holy Grail.
Use an available possible goal or past goal.
The cartography of conflict needs sequentializing over time.
Debate what's useful.
Every conflict has a different cartography and what has to be done has to be done differently and appropriately.
For a just sustainable agreement one has simultaneously to develop partnerships and to consider dialogue work, roles and interrelationships and influences of:
-economic development, use business people because it is in their interests
- law and order,
- community development,
- equality, -H rights
- radical politics
- the unknown factors and questions
- anti-sectarian work
- interdependence
-community relations
Don't get hung up on terminology, never mind the terminology!
Locally visualize what you want to be different here in the village ten years down the line....
Be accountable for knowledge and success
People decide what they want to do
Be more excellent at strategy
You need street level rhetoric and you need them to come back and think and get on with what they want and what to do to get there
The task is big enough for all of us.
Management of diversity is facing us in so many different forms.
Partnerships as brokers, makers - made at local level and with the police and politicians moving up and down in quality etc.
One has to know where friends are at top levels, have policy possibilities re who you talk to and who you interact with...
Just being there you can enable them to get themselves together.
Establish really good partnerships at
local level politicians,
NGOs,
trade unions,
business partners,
media
local leaders and
academics as sounding board available in the back room as Chris Mitchell has functioned effectively in some situations as a back room available consultant during discussions.
Stick through the hell period and they could make joint decisions eventually
We have to understand why people fight.
Combatants have said:" I was never as alive as when murdering/fighting"
There's a drop in adrenaline in the aftermath and depression.
Concepts of meaning ???
Consider why do people change?
Most of us think things through rationally but what happens happens because of emotional reasons : we don't have positive emotional strategies of inclusion!
800 mothers in Rwanda murdered their own children...
There's a difference between anger and awareness
Your anger, hope, idealism doesn't matter - what matters is you have to get inside their heads and try to get them to realize and understand the value of politics rather than violence.
Is peacemaking art or science? One has to move from hope to strategy..
that's about where we are...
NGOs and academics have to develop a more effective typology of conflict because different types of conflict present different challenges in the landscape of Africa - as everywhere- for NGO partnerships. We have to now how to be relevant and how to engage the big players.
The dark side of humanitarianism is hard-headed Humanitarian relief work.
There are already neo-Peaceniks - academics critical of the peace-building industry.
We have to become better at partnerships and move along new alliances with
people and organizations that are under-used.
Sometimes help politicians to move by campaigns, Nobel prizes etc.
Enable paramilitary resources to feel skilled in doing politics rather than behave as gangs ..
Give people rewards in the new order.
Don't depend on politicians to lead on peace - give them support and give them ideas.
Include the media as lay players in partnerships:
Media can be positive: You have to start using the media.
Give a one minute story of a victim from all the sides daily on media -
this is a collective way to pick up pieces after war for everyone.
Negotiations aren't simple and can't be public.
Think in terms of advocacy vs. process work with processes and people including government -
Use examples from elsewhere.
Don't make platonic guardianships, one needs co-partnerships with Africans or whomever as our side, or at least as equal partners
If NGO-bashing is going on that's an indicator for some self-assessment..
Good practice is to learn form experience and learn a range of possibilities.
Accept that globalization is here to stay. Maintain an ongoing globalization-watch for what is positive and what negative.
Watch for new media technologies. Highlight how to build and make better use of new technologies to give voice to what is hidden.
There has to be access to everything positive and everything negative.
Natural resources competition has to be tackled.
Putting this in the public domain for ongoing scrutiny - improve on the commonplace information-media reportage to a more authentic scrutiny during conflict. Maximize opportunities for new technologies to be used in a productive and accessible way ( even connecting tribal elders throughout Africa!)
Politicians have to be included!
NGOs require a consortium to tackle arms industries.
Give support and more permanence to transient movements.
EMMANUEL BOMBANDE - WEST AFRICAN NETWORK FOR PEACE-BUILDING: AMA
We hope to enable communities to transform their destructive conflicts towards reconstruction. All too frequently we learn more than we think we have to offer. We have to run from any idea that we can go in and fix the problem. Our skills enable us to set helpful rules for partnership and transformation. Our 'expertise' may be organizational.
Most conflicts are deeply entrenched in Centuries of history. We appreciate the objective aspects of conflict but in time may create new problems if roots are left untouched.
For example, delivering a health and /or educational program to community A and/or not in community B has symbolic aspects which the program delivers may be unaware of because they're less discernible. It may never occur to the NGOs concerned that they can be seen to be sympathetic to one side!
Competing world views determine the interpretation of events and interrelationships. There are multifaceted problems that require multiple levels of activity for response. Many relationships, power, control are all affected.
e.g. the problem in Sierra Leone is much bigger than Sierra Leone. There are very complex external dimensions regional and even global. Intervention should also involve many actors because this is also a world conflict at one of its levels.
The dynamics of collaboration at NGO levels:
Where many agencies are involved they perform different roles with different expertise and they do not complement each other. They have to understand to cooperate. They are similar actors and have to agree to equality and accord each other mutual respect to work together towards similar goals, recognize their inter-dependence and the limitations of their own organizations.
No individual organization can go in and respond to build peace.
They have to see the value added by other partners and work to bring out the best in each other.
Critical partnerships require shared interest.
The dynamics of collaboration are different when establishing working partnerships with vulnerable communities because we cannot quantify the impact of our work on the community because symbolic meanings are not quantifiable.
There are discernible problems and the not visible root problems, One can see the proximate, objective issues that have to be dealt with such as politics, land, mineral resources etc. But the most critical issues in conflict are not visible, not the emotional impact, nor the symbolic aspects nor all the interrelationships.
There is need to develop a shared vision on issues and to find out what are the real issues behind the issues so the fire doesn't ignite again later.
There is no sense in achieving anything but a just peace - better postpone peace if it is not going to be a just one is an issue that has to be considered!
A collaborative approach can enable government to become more confident and supportive of particular NGOs who were in portive of particular NGOs who were in touch with commreal agenda.
NGOs together collaboratively can seek and raise funds cooperatively and wisely.
The communities should own space.
NGOs should be enablers and facilitators but not intervene in state actions. NGO interventions should aim to empower groups to deal with their conflicts themselves.
They should develop critical partnerships that are meaningful e.g. NO bank accounts!
How do we empower the 'innocent' marginalized, brutalized victims in their simple rural lives? restore their dignity? They didn't even understand the conflict and were the most victimized!
How do we know and enable who is located where to do what at what strategic time and to raise consciousness?
How do we deal with Drug Cartels, Multi-nationals? Arms trade dealers? illegal industries? Stop European and International Bankers from accepting the money of dictators and corrupt politicians???
Because communities are so desperate the obvious needs for food, health issues etc. are rushed in but support, care, counselling, health needs are not considered primary and float around while people are trying to survive on a day to day basis.
If AMA were to be in a position where they could make decisions, such as how much spent on ammunition and arms, going to war or not, they wouldn't spend on warfare - this is said in bitterness and frustration because have never had access to leadership that have turned communities and entire
countries into battlefields littered with bodies and at the end are left alone to clean up the mess. Therefore now want to have a political voice and peace at all costs so peace-building begins to emerge all over Africa because of the past twenty years of intra- and inter-state marked increase
in conflict all over the continent of Africa. We need to promote a new Africa - a new peaceful continent. And no one can do so without 50% of the population - the women. Peace strategies and policies have to be promoted by women so women can become involved at all levels in decision-making, and become affirmative all over the continent.
Today, only in SA, Uganda, Mozambique, Eritrea, Tanzania and Ghana do women have a voice: then we run out of examples!
We have to have strategies in place to link women, peace-building and leadership.
There have to be affirmative action and quotas to create a critical mass of 35% women at decision making level in local councils, decentralization, parliament and internationally.
to counteract demoralization, have a voice in allocation of resources, deal with trauma and its after-effects, deal with and provide a voice for marginalized groups because the moment they are voiceless women begin to lose out.
Access and visibility are denied to women
Women may fight side by side but at the end of the day have nothing to show for it
Eritrea, SA , Mozambique have more progressive laws and constituencies than the rest of Africa.
When violent conflicts cease what governments regard as priorities may not deal at all with very basic critical issues and needs.
They never deal with the psyche of the community or population but only in buildings and so on.
many women in conflict zones say they feel as if they're ghosts floating along. They say: "Our spirits have been killed" their men have been killed in their presence and they have nothing to hold on to to feel part of the community. Societies don't acknowledge their personhood, just their responsibilities but not their rights. For example, access to land! They realize that despite all they put in by way of personal effort to that land they cannot own land even of their killed sons and husbands and therefore
they lose their rights and their livelihood.
Women were talking in post-conflict situations about questions of personhood as in some ways denied them even when there was no conflict. There are more single parent- women led families.
[Women did actively kill in Rwanda.]
Civil society should reduce marginalization of people.
DILEMMAS HIGHLIGHTED BY ACCORD WORKERS ( project N Ghana with Acholi
people)
It is scary to raise local people's expectations. We promise always more than we can deliver, see too little, know too little, learn during and after!
We have to get beyond agencies to the people and wee have to change, adapt, learn to listen to their concerns. This is important for conflict theory and therapy because precedents have been broken and multi-layered diplomacy is necessary - mix up everyone through from grass-roots to middle
range leaders to national to international plus media, other NGOs, army leaders etc. etc.. at every stage involved and be opportunistic and flexible.
People's voices for peace have to feed up through the system and raise questions that may previously have been taboo or undiscussed because governmental and international agencies were cut off from the questions.
Is there a hidden agenda to punish the Acholi people for their past collaboration with Idi Amin in post-colonial era? People ask: "If soldiers are here, why don't they protect us?"
is rape a by-product of the situation or ineffectiveness of local police at and their attitudes?
How to get more accountable systems?
Does the presence of soldiers on our soil in itself put us at risk is a question that may be asked!
At a conference where everyone got mixed up together and talked, a soldier said: " Your government should not put you in a position where we violate people's human rights!"
At a problem solving workshop" there is a tendency to take people out and break down the problem. In a way ACCORD in Acholiland almost inadvertently demuralized problem-solving.
After the Sudan taboo was spoken about during the meeting the governments have now recognized each other and will talk. But that this happened cannot necessarily be attributed to the impact of the conference on the governmental leads who participated.
Amnesty bill has been passed. But multiple conflicts exist, all multi-dimensional, and stop-start processes are normal!
Peace is not an event, and not something a conference delivers, and the event itself can't solve problems.. people go away to live and suffer the next day.
We must fit traditional ways of conflict resolution and healing into contemporary frames .
We have to recognize every action as a form of communication and try to understand it. Some one who is shooting a gun is probably communicating -
but a conference he doesn't shoot off that gun - and at the ACCORD-stimulated meeting that spontaneously attracted all manner of participants and players from local to national to international levels, the gun shooters were there! That as the benefit of the meeting. And they too began to consider the causes and the effects on women and ids. The government had come to power through a guerrilla movement - a movement mounted to rid Uganda of ethnic differences and conflicts - yet it didn't in North Uganda.
They're trying to re-dress their political platform now and did so during the conference ( which PM attended) The LRA and government were invited and exchanged views in a forum they had not organized.
There are connections and connectors, dividers, and insiders ad outsiders ad they all inter-influence ad interact and can worsen or lessen the tensions and problems.
There is great power of forgiveness in the community
NGOs must support local initiatives.
Scary to come in and come out, rather than stay. What is the silence like when you're gone?
Is this a lull or is this peace?
There has to be the greatest flexibility about time frames and horizons.
One cannot secure peace prior to making peace, work backwards or forewards in sustaining peace - to work on issues early on helps capacities and momentum to reach early horizons/goals.
Are people who work on a non-overt political agenda actually contributing to co-existence with violent conflict in positive/negative ways and/or co-existence without violent conflict, that is, political settlement?
On requires extraordinary flexibility to seize and capitalize on the opportunity.
On can argue whether development of coherent links and meeting needs happens in an internal vacuum or cross-cutting involvement with external agencies.
Linkages have to be established between 475,000 people in the Gulu district yet the news never gets out that the kids in N Uganda are in a different situation to that in the rest of the country - our countries have a direct chance to influence other governments.
Policy desks don't reflect what is actually going on
Therefore advocacy and synchronization of efforts is of greatest importance.
Locally:
There is a livestock shortage and no money to make it good. Ox power is vital to agriculture. There is a gender division of labour, male and female farmers - nowadays it takes longer to trade an ox than a person. Without recovery of the livelihood base there is no chance of survive; of peace or
of reconciliation in Acholiland And no livelihood rehabilitation without 'going home' rehabilitation. UNHCR starts its relocation programs when they've already gone home. The villages are now camps. There's a remarkable work overload on girls. There's no sanitation etc. in a camp of 10,000. the
mechanics of agriculture become impossible when they are in camps that size ( for 'security' purposes). So death occurs from environmental effects.
cattle walk less fast than people - moving them in and out of camp for grazing purposes becomes impossible.
There are continuum stages of trade-offs and syntheses.
You can't send them home under the continuing threat of armed conflict.
Young men's self-identity is bound up with independence of herding livestock - this may have helped them to cope in exile in Diaspora and when returning to find community pillaged and devastated. Is a society where every adult is responsible for behaviour of every child - a strong community spirit with strong social pressures.
Feedback through local teams and members has to be taken on by a local agency - this is not a local NGO!
There are many facets to examine - aims to fight, and aims to protect. When trying to get an idea of field- situations gave video cameras to local delivery drivers to film what they liked - a very different and interesting picture as they notice and note what outsider would not.
Mozambique was/is a very unusual situation.
Hard core leaders die off or fade away and then there's the likelihood of more raids that the overstretched Ugandan army cannot cope with - especially as at present they're in the Congo!
Border country has many aspects - natural, technological, psychological, social and political. Some borders are indefensible and some aren't.
If camps can't restore livelihood they can't survive. If they do, they need to be defended - and that needs resources. If they go home their government needs to defend them. Some raids will get through, some won't, some camps will grow and so on. Situation is not an easy one.
NGOs talk about educating the communities, but the capacities are already there. For instance, the traditional ceremonies for re-accepting back into the communities those who were abducted into armed conflict – abductees aren't given a hard time by their communities. Because of social pressures
and early upbringing ( if taken after the age of 8) returnees have a very low level of repeat offenders - social pressures count tremendously. These are communities where consensus building takes place as always. There's a strong insider-outsider aspect to the communities, people define themselves
as to whether they're In or Out and have different roles to play according to how they define the roles but this also is dependent on perceptions.
Pressures are v.v. important - pressures to conformity and co-existence are v.v. strong.
Dr. Judith Issroff
+44 [0] 7970674381 e-mail: 100076.1170@compuserve.com jiss@iname.com
issroj@yahoo.co.uk
Psychoanalyst, Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist, Group Analyst,
conflict management and mediation [CRI registered]
M.B. B.Ch(Wits); MRCPsych; DPM; A. Brit. Psychoanal. Soc. & Child Analyst;
M. Grp. Analyt. Soc. (Lond.); MBPS
Locum Consultant Child & Family Psychiatrist
St Edwards Hospital, Cheadle Road, Cheddleton, Nr.Leek Staffs ST13 7EB
Tel: 01538 360421 X 4368; Fax: +44 (0)1782 275100
Ropefield Cottage, Old Hag Farm, Meerbrook, Leek, Staffs ST138XW,U.K.
tel/fax: +44 (0)1260 227366
27a Hampstead Hill Gardens, London NW3 2PJ (permanaent address)
Israeli Association for Social Care, Health & Solution of Conflicts [IASC - ASULHAH]
P.O.B. 80534 Maoz Zion- Mevasseret Zion 90805 Jerusalem Israel Tel/Fax:
00972 2 6798871