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For digesting and understanding the logic of results chains it is very important to try it out. Therefore, this activity asks participants to develop sample results chains in small groups.
Handouts "Examples of peacebuilding projects"
All examples are taken from: European Center for Conflict Prevention (ECCP), People Building Peace. Successful Stories of Civil Society, online publication, <http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/>
Example 1:
Building Trust, Promoting Hope: The Families Forum Hello Peace Project in Israel and Palestine
Aaron Barnea, Ofer Shinar
Contacts between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are almost nonexistent these days. Hello Peace allows both groups to contact each other—anonymously—simply to talk. In less than two years, close to five hundred thousand telephone conversations have been facilitated by the project, which aims to rebuild both trust and hope.
“The leaders on both sides refuse to talk, but through Hello Shalom, nothing can stop the ordinary people—precisely those who have to face the most crippling consequences of the conflict—from trying to understand each other, which may end up saving lives.”
—“Peace on the Line,” Nick Taylor, The Guardian, 8 May 2004
In November 2000, the second Palestinian intifada had been raging for nearly two months, and relations between Israelis and Palestinians were at a new low. A young Israeli woman named Natalia Wieseltier picked up the telephone to call her friend,. It was not with the intention of being a peacemaker, but things took a strange turn. “A man picked up and said I had a wrong number,” she told Nick Taylor of the British newspaper The Guardian. “I said who is this, and he called himself Jihad and said he was an Arab living in Gaza. Instead of hanging up, I asked him how he was. He said he was very bad, his wife was pregnant and their town was under curfew, and we ended up talking for about 20 minutes.”
With this serendipitous wrong number, a tenuous bridge between one single Israeli and one Palestinian was established, from which an impressive project to encourage dialogue between ordinary Israelis and ordinary Palestinians has developed. The project is called Hello Shalom/Hello Salaam (Hello Peace).
Hello Peace is perhaps the best-known project of The Parents Circle—Families Forum (the Families Forum), an organization of over two hundred Palestinians and two hundred Israelis who have lost children or other family members in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Members of the Families Forum believe that “to move beyond silent despair and isolation, people must begin talking again—especially with people on the other side.” For almost a decade, the Families Forum has attempted to play a crucial role in spearheading a reconciliation process between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Families Forum itself developed from the unique response of a father to the murder of his son. On 7 July 1994, the body of nineteen-year-old Arik Frankenthal was found in a village near Ramallah. Arik, an Israeli Defense Forces soldier and an orthodox Jew, had been hitchhiking home on leave when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of Hamas.
No Revenge
Israeli society at the time was torn between hope and despair. On the one hand the government led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres showed a profound commitment to the peace process initiated at Oslo. At the same time, the mass media fed the public a steady stream of images of terror, death, and bereavement.
Yitzhak Rabin’s historic words of 13 September 1993, spoken from the White House lawn, still resonated with the Israeli public:
Let me say to you, the Palestinians: We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
Some Israelis were unable to embrace the words that followed:
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you—in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you: Let us pray that a day will come when we will say, enough, farewell to arms.
After each incident of terror, for example, the Terror Victims Association called for vengeance and violence against Palestinians. In response to the brutal murder of Arik Frankenthal, they raised the same cry. Then something new happened, something revolutionary. Arik’s father, also an orthodox Jew, faced the group and said, “You don’t represent me and my family. My Judaism is not one of revenge and hatred. I know that violence against Palestinians, revenge and inflicting bereavement and affliction to Palestinians will not bring back my son, but will cause more pain, more bereavement to other families in Israel. I call all of us to stop the killings, to stretch our hands towards the other in search of reconciliation. This is my view of authentic Judaism: a profound thirst for life and peace.”
Other bereaved Israeli families echoed his thoughts. These bereaved families became the core of the future organization—the Families Forum—which called for peace and reconciliation rather than vengeance. The forum was with Rabin, Peres, and Arafat at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony, and was at Rabin’s side on the tragic night of his assassination by an Israeli extremist.
Message of Reconciliation
The Israeli group soon approached bereaved Palestinian families, who enthusiastically embraced its message of reconciliation. The joint appearance of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families had a tremendous impact on individuals in both societies. An ambitious growing program was articulated and implemented, which included meetings in Palestinian and Israeli schools with kids aged sixteen to eighteen, bold public pronouncements, and support for peace rallies. The Family Forum’s actions attracted extensive media attention in the form of TV and radio interviews and numerous articles in the press.
Notably, the Families Forum sees reconciliation not just as a process following conflict resolution, but as part of the process that helps to bring violent conflict to an end. Reconciliation allows each side to transform precisely those views about the other side that led to a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. This transformation creates trust between the two sides, a prerequisite for any peace process.
Empathy for those victims on the opposing side who have suffered loss is a key step in the process of reconciliation. Empathy can create the emotional change needed to undertake the transformation of beliefs that is inherent in genuine reconciliation; generating such empathy has been a prime focus of the work of the Families Forum.
The activities of the Families Forum focus on victims who, instead of seeking vengeance, choose to pursue dialogue with victims of the opposing side. The Hello Peace project of the Families Forum is, accordingly, a logical extension of this goal of pursuing dialogue and reconciliation.
Creating Contact at the Level of the Individual
According to the article “Palestinian-Israeli Hotline Melts Hate” by Deborah Blachor of the Daily News, 8 December 2002, Sammy Waed, a Palestinian user of Hello Peace, said: “Before, I thought Israelis didn’t care at all when innocent Palestinians suffer and are killed, but now I know they do care. And now I have hope that there can be peace.” “We are all people and want the best for our children and grandchildren. We have the power to make a change,” said Miriam Inbal, an Israeli user of Hello Peace.
Hagit Ofran, an Israeli user of Hello Peace, said in a letter to the editor of Haaretz on 11 October 2002: “Instead of continuing to weep in frustration we should pick up the phone, hear the voices, and continue onward with renewed hope, knowing that there’s someone to talk to, that the cycle of bloodshed can be brought to an end.”
The Hello Peace project is an attempt to respond to the lack of trust and empathy between the Palestinians and Israelis that, scholars say, is one of the primary reasons that the cycle of violence continues. By getting thousands of Israeli and Palestinians to talk with each other, and by publicizing this fact, the popular belief that “there is no partner for peace” can be dispelled.
Hello Peace is the brainchild of Natalia Wieseltier and developed from that first errant phone call. Recalling that initial contact, she says, “We weren’t making apologies to each other; I wasn’t trying to make him feel better. We were just talking as individuals. At the end of the conversation, he said he was amazed that Jewish people were able to talk like that. He thought we wanted all Palestinians dead.” After that phone call, Jihad discovered Natalia’s phone number on his own mobile phone, called her back the next day, and left a message saying that the conversation had changed the way he thought. Then he gave her number to his brother. Soon, a circle of strangers from the two sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide were talking to each other. Attitudes began to change. And that gave Natalia an idea. The contact she had created by mistake led Natalia to approach the Families Forum with a proposal to set up a system to allow Palestinians and Israelis to talk to each other over the phone.
With Hello Peace, Israelis and Palestinians can call a special number—*6364—and a computer will automatically connect them to someone on “the other side” who has expressed a similar willingness to talk. Users do not have to leave their details or even their telephone number, ensuring that their privacy is protected.
From the moment of inspiration until the project was officially launched, it took two years of fund raising and preparation. In October 2002, the project started up with a massive media campaign under the same slogan in both Arabic and Hebrew: “You can talk about peace/pain/reconciliation.” The publicity campaign leading up to the launch was undertaken on both sides of the divide in a similar manner and at the exact same time. This is crucial to the success, which depends on the perception that Hello Peace is totally unbiased. A second media campaign was conducted in October and November 2003, coinciding, completely by chance, with the intensive media campaign to alert the international community to the independent peace initiative known as the Geneva Initiative. With the synergies of these simultaneous campaigns, peacemaking received a new impetus, and public interest in peacemaking was clearly apparent, suggesting a grassroots movement for peace was alive and well in both Palestinian and Israeli society.
Hello Peace endeavors to break down the psychological, if not physical, barriers between the two peoples. If numbers can serve as a measure of success, than Hello Peace has been a resounding success, and stands as proof that many Israelis and Palestinians are willing to engage in dialogue; between the project’s inception in October 2002 and October 2004, more than 480,000 phone calls had been made. Hello Peace is probably the broadest peace project ever implemented regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its success suggests that many in both societies remain hopeful that peace is possible and are willing to communicate and learn more about those on the other side.
With Hello Peace a link has been established between the activities of the Families Forum promoting reconciliation over revenge among bereaved families, and the more general need among ordinary citizens on both sides to engage in a humanizing dialogue. As Roni Hirshenzon, a member of the Families Forum notes, sometimes the conversations initiated through the Hello Peace system begin with arguments, but quickly the parties will ask more personal questions, such as “where are you from,” “how old are you?,” “do you have children?,” and so forth, and then, often, the anger dissipates. The intimate nature of the contact that is possible with the Hello Peace system allows both sides to view the “other” as human beings rather than nameless members of an impersonal mass. By creating contact at the level of the individual, participants on both sides come to understand more of the complexity of the situation and learn more about the circumstances and difficulties of those on the opposing side. This knowledge, which is generated by all who are involved with the project, is the basis for the creation of trust between the sides.
Impact
While an independent evaluation of Hello Peace has yet to be undertaken, it can be said that its impact radiates out from the participants in three concentric circles: an inner circle that includes all those who have actively taken part in the project by talking with a person from the opposing side; a middle circle consisting of the friends and relatives of those who have used the system and who have heard about the project and its influence; and a third circle comprising those who have heard about the project either from news articles of from the media campaign. While the impact of Hello Peace on the inner circle is clear, the influence on those in the wider circles has also been notable. Those in the “middle” circle who have heard about the conversations of their friends or relatives have also grasped the significance of dialogue and are likely to feel more inclined to trust the opposing side as a result. Those in the outer circle may also be influenced, especially by the notion that so many have taken up the opportunity and used the system.
Challenges
Hello Peace now faces two challenges: first, how to increase the number of users, and second to create a sense of community, allowing the nascent dialogue to become a normative part of the lives of many Israelis and Palestinians. This will not only legitimize the project but will also give credibility to the opening of new and innovative channels of communication.
Currently, thousands of calls are being made each month. The Families Forum now aims, in the second stage of the Hello Peace project, to tie in other Families Forum activities to stimulate more extensive grassroots activities involving both Palestinians and Israelis. This second stage will focus on further development of the current telephone system, the launch of a new website, and a media campaign. Alongside the inventive use of traditional means of communication, it will exploit technology to allow more people to join in and participate in the dialogue, offering, for example, Palestinians and Israelis ways to expand their communication to the Internet as well as to continue talking over the phone. Already, the Families Forum, in collaboration with the international NGO One to One Children’s Fund, is setting up an Internet site allowing Israeli and Palestinian youth to communicate online.
Building trust between Israelis and Palestinians may seem to many to be futile after so much violence, but Hello Peace has proven that where ordinary people make contact with each other on a personal level, it is still possible to bridge the divide and rekindle hope, which had long seemed extinguished.
Aaron Barnea, who has lost his twenty-one-year-old son, Noam, due to the conflict, is the Families Forum international relations director. Ofer Shinar, the Families Forum Reconciliation Initiative’s director, has researched reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians under the guidance of Alexander Boraine, the former cochair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Source: http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=128&typ=theme
Example 2:
The Pastor and the Imam: The Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum in Nigeria
James Wuye , Muhammed Ashafa
In recent years, Nigeria has been plagued with alarming frequency by violence between its Muslim and Christian communities. One of the worst-hit regions has been Kaduna State. The cofounders and national coordinators of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum of Kaduna in 1995 are two men with deep roots in the opposing communities, both of whom have turned away from violence and militancy action and instead embraced nonviolence, reconciliation, and the advocacy of peaceful relations between their communities.
Once they were bitter rivals, but now they consider themselves brothers. In fact, at one time, they each tried to have the other killed. James Wuye and Muhammed Ashafa are living proof that people can change, and that the urge for revenge can be replaced by an urge to foster reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Pastor James Wuye readily acknowledges that he was a militant in his youth. For that, he paid a price—he lost his arm during this struggle of communal violence in 1992. Imam Muhammed Nurayn Ashafa was a militant as well. During that same eruption of unrestrained violence in 1992, he lost his teacher and two sons. For both men, coming to terms with terrible loss forced reflection, and reflection brought transformation. “Both began to question the cost of violence and turned to the Bible and the Koran, where they found passages showing commonalities between Islam and Christianity and calling on believers to be peacemakers,” writes Christian Science Monitor reporter Mike Crawley (2003). Yet, “when the pair first met face to face in 1995, distrust lingered. At the urging of a civil society leader, they agreed to try to work out some sort of understanding, and they say the resulting dialogue helped them to overcome stereotypes and misconceptions and gain respect for each other.”
They staged a public debate—no easy task in such a charged atmosphere—and this early effort at dialogue has since become an ongoing exchange through the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum. Each of them has made a quantum leap—from violent youth leader to successful nonviolent mediator of Muslim-Christian conflicts. Now, they listen to the each other’s sermons. In fact, together they have published a book, The Pastor and the Imam: Responding to Conflict , which examines the perceptions of Muslim and Christian about each other, explores the commonalities at the root of the two faiths—and the differences—and then describes the efforts, at first tenuous and later more confident, to forge a common effort to promote understanding between the communities.
Intercommunal Violence
Kaduna State is the seat of Nigeria’s northern elite, including senior military, religious, and traditional figures. Its population of approximately 3.5 million is divided more or less equally between Muslims and Christians. Kaduna has also, unfortunately, been at the epicenter of intercommunal conflict—conflict that has only worsened since the Kaduna state government’s declaration of its intent to introduce shariah law . This declaration sparked an outbreak of violence in late February 1999, and subsequent anti-Muslim reprisals in various southern towns, that left an estimated two thousand people dead, eighty thousand displaced, and many private homes and business premises looted and destroyed.
With its mix of ethnic and religious groups, Kaduna continues to be one of the most conflict-prone states in the country. The various communities compete for a greater share of the limited socioeconomic resources and for political power, each feeling itself politically and economically marginalized. In that environment, religion is, in a sense, “perverted” as it is invoked in the political arena, and youth are exploited by those who seek to gain personally from the conflict.
A Myriad of Contributing Factors
Ethnic and religious differences have been a source of tension throughout Nigeria’s turbulent postindependence history, which has been marked by decades of military rule. The third and most recent attempt at instituting democracy in the federal republic has been under way since 1999.
Pastor Wuye stresses that during the long periods of military rule, ethnic and religious tensions have tended to increase. Official appointments to federal posts have often been made on the basis of patronage as opposed to merit, which has favored Muslim northerners who have been quite dominant in the Nigerian military. Thus, Christian clerics have preached against what they perceive to be injustice in the trend of federal government appointments under military regimes.
Another factor that has contributed to Nigeria’s ethnic tensions has been the country’s poor progress toward economic development. In spite of its abundant petroleum and natural-gas reserves, the United Nations Development Program ranked Nigeria as 151st of 174 countries evaluated in terms of human development. Imam Ashafa also notes that when the bubble that was Nigeria’s oil economy burst in the 1980s, there was an apparently related increase in ethnic conflict with religious undertones.
In view of such linkages, observes Pastor Wuye, one can reasonably conclude that “most of the problems in Nigeria do not come from religion but economics and social conditions.”
Multitrack Approach
Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye share a view that civil-society organizations—such as the Interfaith Mediation Centre, which they set up—can do a better job of defusing potentially violent situations in Nigeria than security forces. According to Pastor Wuye, the Interfaith Mediation Centre uses a multitrack approach to address issues of intercommunal violence. “We ‘deprogram’ people by making them aware of what the other side is thinking.”
The project that the two men launched, which consists of both the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum and the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre, aims to prevent the recurrence of violent conflict and to contribute to an increase in the level of trust and tolerance between Christians and Muslims in Kaduna State. With trust, tolerance, and an absence of violence, reconciliation can begin through the development over time of collaborative relationships and cohesive peace constituencies in both communities. At the same time, as such reconciliation takes root, the communities’ capacity to resolve conflicts will also be enhanced.
Five specific objectives have been identified:
1.To reestablish relationships that have been damaged due to recurring violence over the last five years
2.To minimize the reoccurrence of violence amongst various groups in the community
3.To initiate programs and projects that require and encourage the involvement of Christians and Muslims (including dialogues, workshops, cultural events, and the establishment of a resource center)
4.To enhance interreligious relationships and cooperation within the state
5.To support and build the capacity of local partners who are involved in peacemaking
The center organizes a range of activities to bring together religious leaders, policymakers, technocrats, small-business owners and traders, grassroots participants including women, youth, and religious leaders, and other stakeholders. The inclusion of women is especially important because of the role women play in educating children at home. Engaging youth is vital because it is youth, in fact, who are often the perpetrators of violence (Nigerians, observes Pastor Wuye, tend to be fiercely passionate about their faith. For many Nigerian youths, religion is everything. He draws an important distinction—that one can be “religious” without being “godly”). Because operators of businesses and traders have a vested interest in peace and stability in the community, they are viewed as valuable potential partners in the peace and reconciliation process.
Some of the activities that take place include programs focusing on dialogue among the various constituencies; intensive problem-solving workshops for women and youth groups; annual cultural events; capacity-building training programs for local community leaders and members of civil society; and programs designed to address the trauma that citizens have suffered as a result of the violence.
One of the most significant achievements of the center has been the drafting of the “Kaduna Peace Declaration,” which is an articulation of a common vision to put in place effective machinery appropriate for building and sustaining long-term peaceful coexistence between the Christian and Muslim communities. The document was carefully formulated so as to be broadly acceptable and realistic in its goals, and the potential signers were encouraged to review it together with their constituents. In August 2002, some twenty senior religious leaders signed the Kaduna Peace Declaration and declared that each year, 22 August would be observed as Peace Day in Kaduna State.
Impact
Since the signing of the Kaduna Peace Declaration, grassroots efforts to maintain peace have continued, but the challenges have remained as well. Any incident runs the risk of turning into a crisis. In November 2002, for example, protests over a newspaper article connecting the prophet Mohammed to the Miss World beauty pageant caused much tension. Both Pastor James and Imam Ashafa, in union with transformed religious leaders, drove around affected neighborhoods on a bus and arranged to have them appear on television to appeal for calm. The intervention only was made possible because of the commitments made in the Kaduna Peace Declaration, which was an important factor in containing a volatile situation.
Religious leaders who have signed the declaration are also credited with helping to control violence and vote rigging during elections at both the state and federal levels. In addition, they have, on numerous occasions, intervened in conflicts in the schools, when minor arguments threatened to turn into major incidents. Indeed, some instigators are intent on using schools as a breeding ground for religious conflict. To stem this tide, the Interfaith Mediation Centre, in collaboration with signers of the Kaduna Peace Declaration, has embarked on a program to provide conflict resolution training to religious instructors and secondary-school officials.
Other Approaches
The consultative approach of the center stands in stark contrast to the approach of the federal Nigerian government, which has attempted to achieve peace by viewing conflict, especially in Kaduna, as a question of law and order. This has systematically failed and attracted international criticism. On the other hand, at the state level, it can be said that the Kaduna state government has played a somewhat more constructive role. It has tried to transform the conflict in the region through rudimentary arbitration and mediation methods utilizing official Track One approaches—governmental agencies and government-sponsored dialogue. Such efforts have changed the conflict’s dynamics but not contributed to resolving it; nonetheless, Kaduna State’s efforts have been somewhat promising in view of the fact that the state has attempted to address the fundamental structural causes of the conflicts. This work has been informed by intensive research and consultation with local partners, especially the Kaduna Peace Committee, an organization with extensive knowledge of the conflict dynamics and issues at stake in Kaduna and the greater north, and familiarity with parties to the conflicts.
One other important result of the cooperation between Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye has been a successful initiative to bring together two warring communities of Plateau State, the nomadic Fulani cattle rearers and the native Beroms. To settle long-standing disputes, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye arranged to hold talks and actively facilitated a mediation process. In 2003, the two parties made a start on engaging in a healing process and exploring pragmatic solutions to the conflict.
Overall, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have successfully facilitated dozens of conflict resolution activities. Whereas their efforts were once confined to their hometown of Kaduna, they are increasingly working in other regions as well. Through its perseverance, the Interfaith Mediation Centre has gathered the strength to break free from one-time interventions and extend its reach and influence across Nigeria.
Lessons Learned
For Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye, it has been a long and difficult journey, from outright animosity to cautious steps to get to know each other—still holding to much suspicion and mistrust—to trust and acceptance, and finally to cooperation. Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have come to see, by engaging in dialogue, that they, as believers in their faith, are more similar than dissimilar. The greatest threat to peaceful coexistence, as they see it, comes not as a result of cultural or religious difference, but from ignorance of the humanity that binds people together.“Erroneous perceptions affecting Christian-Muslim relationships have been a source of commotion and tears,” they write in The Pastor and the Imam . “They have bred assumptions, stereotypes, and suspicions. As long as we insist on passing judgment on others by the verdict of our perceptions, and refuse them opportunity to explain . . . to us who and what they are, we are creating room for conflict in our inter-personal and inter-religious relationships” (Wuye and Ashafa 1999: 24).
The refreshing, if simple, discovery of the pastor and the imam is that they can draw strength and inspiration from the very faith that is so central to their lives, by looking to the messages of Jesus Christ and the prophet Mohammed, to eschew conflict and violence and instead pursue justice, love, and peaceful coexistence.
[...]
Source: Pastor James Movel Wuye and Imam Mohammed Nurayn Ashafa are the founders and coordinators of the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre/Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum.http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=93&typ=theme
Example 3:
Church Council Bridges the Ethnic Divide: Voice of the Voiceless in Kenya
‘Ethnic identification is a sensitive, emotional issue, one that is easily manipulated. Ethnicity can become part of the transition phenomena when people do not know how to relate swiftly and correctly to rapid political change. In such times of uncertainty, it is easy to politicise ethnicity and to build a support base from it.’ (Sam Kobia, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) in ‘The Quest for Democracy in Africa’, 1993)
The government’s complicity in the violence in Kenya (see Box) is both deeply troubling, in that it reflects the absence of the rule of law within the Kenyan political system, but also just slightly hopeful, to the extent that it suggests that the violence was not triggered by such fundamental differences, bitter rivalries, or deep-rooted hatred between neighbouring ethnic groups that reconciliation between the parties can never be achieved.
Estimates vary, but it is generally agreed that, beyond the dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded, more than 300,000 people have been displaced due to ethnic violence. And naturally, with this enormous displacement, economic and social displacement have followed, with families divided, health and educational infrastructure disrupted, and food shortages occurring because of crop damage and the inability of farmers to work their fields.
To address this large scale refugee problem, and to try to work for reconciliation among the rival groups, the NCCK has launched a multi-faceted program called the NCCK Peace and Reconciliation Project. Financial support for the project has been provided by the Government of the Netherlands, at the outset (1992-1993) through the Dutch Ministry for Development Co-operation, and later on, via Dutch Interchurch Aid (DIA).
The NCCK, which dates back to 1908, is an umbrella organisation for Christian churches in Kenya. It has a long and consistent record of working to spur development at all levels - economic and political as well as spiritual. In campaigning for greater democracy and a more open society, and attempting to serve as the ‘voice of the voiceless’, it has clashed with the authorities on more than one occasion. The NCCK’s own investigations into the causes of the communal violence of the early nineties led to the very same conclusions as those of outside observers: the violence was politically instigated.
The Peace and Reconciliation Project was primarily an emergency relief program during its first phase, at a time when the victims of ethnic violence required assistance. But the focus has gradually shifted from relief and rehabilitation to peace and reconciliation, with concerted efforts underway to ‘prevent ethnic conflict, improve inter-ethnic relationships, reduce the suffering as a result of ethnic violence, and create awareness on issues causing conflicts.’
It was during phase II, from 1994 until 1996, that the first efforts were made to present an integrated approach in which relief and rehabilitation efforts were linked to reconciliation programs with a more social focus. Subsequently, beginning with phase III in August 1996, more extensive reconciliation programs were initiated to not only restore hope to the victims of violence and provide them with a means to earn a decent living, but also to assist them in re-integrating themselves into the communities they had fled.
The basic administrative unit of the Peace and Reconciliation Project is an ‘Area Peace and Rehabilitation Committee’ (APRC), which draws its membership from a cross section of local including representatives of local leadership, churches, NGOs, youth, and women. In fact, the success of the program has been premised on the active participation of the local population.
These APRCs organised hundreds of Good Neighbourliness Seminars, open to elders, local opinion leaders, local politicians, educators, community workers, government workers, and members of other important groups and organisations at the local level. At these seminars, the participants could discuss the causes of the local conflicts and analyse the effects that these conflicts had on their communities, and could examine potential strategies for successfully resolving the conflicts without resorting to violence.
In those meetings held for community leaders, the leaders own roles in promoting peace and reconciliation were a focus of the discussions. Meetings held exclusively for women gave women the chance to participate in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in mixed seminars. In seminars focusing on youth, the participants were challenged to re-evaluate the values that resulted in them perceiving ‘the other’ as enemy, and encouraged not to allow others to manipulate them into acts of violence, but rather to channel their energies into more constructive activities. Intercultural sports and social activities were also encouraged.
Those seminars bringing together elders and traditional leaders were of particular importance, as traditional leaders are held in high regard and retain enormous influence in their communities. Their roles as peacemakers are crucial.
Inevitable Ethnic Violence?
In the ethnic patchwork that is Kenya, it is sometimes convenient to point to ethnic conflict as an inevitable element of the culture. And that has all too frequently seemed to be the case as Kikuyus and Kalenjins have battled and slaughtered each other over the past decade. Kenya is, after all, a nation of more than 40 distinct ethnic groups, where dozens of languages are spoken, with a set of borders imposed on it by an outside colonial power, a national government that asserts authority across those ethnic divides, and a system of government not entirely consistent with traditional Kenyan notions of authority or governance. And the ethnic divisions have clearly been a major factor in determining the political landscape of Kenya since before independence. But in fact, much of the ethnic violence that has recently plagued Kenya and claimed several thousand lives has its roots not in fundamental ethnic rivalries, but rather in politics.
Outside observers, from the United States government to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Article 19 and Human Rights Watch have all concluded that the serious ethnic violence which flared up during the run-up to multi-party elections in 1992, and again prior to the elections in December 1997, was instigated by the government and the ruling party, the Kenyan African National Union (KANU). While it is true that these ethnic clashes took place primarily between the original Kalenjin inhabitants of the Rift Valley region, and other ethnic groups who had migrated to the region and settled there (and later, in the coastal regions as well), it is generally agreed that the violence was motivated by a desire of the KANU leadership to assure electoral victory by launching a campaign against members of those ethnic communities who affiliated with the opposition, so that they would be forced to flee or would not vote to oppose KANU candidates.
During these seminars, some 200 Village Peace Committees were established. Peace Committee members were drawn from both the displaced persons and those who had remained in their villages, and they were responsible for a wide variety of activities: to act as arbiters between the various interest groups within the community, to initiate efforts to restore local amenities and set priorities, to serve as representatives of the local communities on the APRCs, and together with the APRCs, to function as a sort of ‘early warning system’ to detect and de-fuse ethnic tension before it erupted into violence.
Beyond the small scale seminars intended to bring people with similar social positions together, the project encouraged local officials to organise larger community meetings called ‘barazas’ to discuss issues related to peace, security, and resettlement with a broad cross-section of stakeholders within a community.
Key interest groups, such as legislators, religious leaders, and public administrators were invited to participate in specialised workshops designed to provide these individuals with information and experience that would help them to reduce ethnic tensions and overcome mistrust. For example, at workshops attended by legislators, the conflicts in Kenya were placed against the backdrop of ethnic conflicts in other African states, with an examination of the causes of these conflicts, and discussions on the ways to resolve disputes nonviolently. In considering strategies for peacemaking, it was suggested that ‘conflict transformation’ might be a better description of the process, where the essential ingredients for successful resolution demand that the parties to a conflict come to a basic understanding of the root causes of their dispute, and seek a solution that both sides view as fair, based on the premise that ‘justice is a prerequisite of peace.’
The NCCK has been publishing a monthly magazine that reports on both reconciliation efforts and incidents of violence. It has also actively distributed peace and reconciliation posters in the affected regions, many produced by schoolchildren in the local communities. To encourage an exchange of ideas among the members of the APRCs, it has sponsored exchange visits, and has sponsored similar activities for youth groups and women’s organisations. To assist the resettlement of the victims of violence, it has created a ‘Central Clashes Rehabilitation Register’ with data about land purchases, organised monthly meetings on resettlement issues, and provided material assistance to individuals and groups to help them make a new start.
At the outset, the NCCK conducted extensive interviews with a broad range of stakeholders so that it would come to a more complete understanding of the causes of conflict. And throughout the duration of the project, it has worked with these stakeholders, so that they have a sense of ownership. In evaluating the success of the project, M.E. Witte-Rang of the Dutch ecumenical development organisation OIKOS attributes much of the success of the project to this approach. ‘When people own a project,’ writes Witte-Rang, ‘they feel responsible and will defend their own activities,’ adding ‘it is a matter of principal: local people know better than anyone else the causes of the conflict and the possible solutions to end it.’ (Witte-Rang, M.E. A Way Out of the Conflict (OIKOS: Utrecht, 1998)
In its own description of its activities, the NCCK attributes much of the Peace and Reconciliation Project’s success to its ‘inclusive’ approach. ‘You cannot make peace on your own or with a few enlightened people ... all actors, no matter whether they are perceived as friend or enemy, good or bad, influential or [simply members of the] community, they all have to be involved in the process.’ And while that is no guarantee of success, it has, in the view of the NCCK, helped to reduce the level of violence in the Rift Valley, and enhanced mutual understanding among ordinary people.
Source: Published in People Building Peace- 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (1999) by European Centre for Conflict Prevention
http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=188&typ=theme
Example 4:
Internews Uses Media to Reduce Conflict: Beyond Talking Heads
Who can really tell the world about war? Politicians? Analysts? Peace negotiators? The ‘talking heads’ we see on the News? Or does the useful information really lie with ordinary people, those in the conflict zones who are trying to live their lives in the middle of it all? Surely their experience would help us to empathise and put pressure on our governments to end the conflict more than statistics about numbers killed and military hardware used?
These are questions raised by Internews, an international non-profit agency which works with local electronic media in conflict zones in order to go behind the headlines and find the people who are trying to survive them.
Take Ali Lahmar, for instance. This 38-year-old ticket collector daily traversed the deadliest rail route in one of the most dangerous countries on earth: Algeria, Northern Africa, where tens of thousands of people have died in civil war. Every day, Lahmar braved death on the Algiers-Oran route. One day, he faced it, and didn’t survive to tell the tale.
But he had told his story just before that. In a 26-minute documentary titled ‘Train of Hope’, which focused on the personal and intimate side of life in Algeria. Part of a series of documentaries called, ‘The Other Algeria’, it gave viewers an overall impression, not of violence, but of hope.
‘People say these terrible things are happening in our country,’ says Nayla Abdo-hanna, one of the producers. ‘But we have to hope and to go on with our lives.’
The series was made with production grants, technical and editorial support from Internews, which also sponsored ‘Robert and Gasan: We Haven’t Changed That Much’. This documentary is based on a video conference between two old friends, Robert Saakiantz and Gasan Ismailzade. Respectively Armenian and Azeri, the two men were both born in Baku, Azerbaijan and met in primary school. Their friendship continued even after Robert moved to Armenia, but, in 1988, ethnic conflict ruptured their personal links. Putting them in touch again for the first time in 13 years, Internews recorded the contact. During their three-hour exchange in August 1998, the two childhood friends discussed the conflict between their two countries.
Formed in 1982, and funded by public and private foundation grants, Internews tries to enhance tolerance and understanding by supporting independent media outlets in emerging democracies. It also promotes the use of the media to reduce conflict within and between countries. Projects in this area have been undertaken in the former Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Responding to the political changes in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, Internews has assisted the formation of and helped to sustain the explosion of new media outlets in the former Soviet Union. As of the end of 1998, the agency produced 12 regular news and analysis programmes in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Some of these examined the role of the media or served educational purposes. Most were centred on depicting everyday lives - people long used to closed central government control.
‘In the eight countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States where Internews currently supports non-governmental television, its innovative productions challenge both audiences and local journalists,’ says a report in the organisation’s newsletter.
Production efforts in the former Soviet Union began in 1993. The Moscow-based ‘Local Time’ brought together news stories from all over the former Soviet Union into a national television news magazine. Stations across the region each contributed a three-minute story. In return, they received a half-hour programme with news from other cities - unfiltered by state broadcasters.
A similar approach was adopted in other countries of the CIS, using programmes produced in local languages to enrich the media landscape. Viewer response was encouraging.
‘What Internews strives to do is to create the programmes that each country’s audience and stations need at any given time,’ says Manana Aslamazian, Executive Director of Internews Russia.
That often means focusing on people, working with the people who are driven apart by war, local producers not correspondents. ‘Kosov@: A View From Inside’, is a series of four 13-minute episodes co-produced by Internews and Media Project, an Albanian production company. ‘Our Daily Bread’ was the result of a video-conference link in which Serb and Albanian bakers talked frankly about the political situation and hostilities in Kosovo, the former-Yugoslavia.
[...]
Similar technology was utilised to good effect in a celebrated coup for Internews: the unprecedented live video dialogue between Americans and Iranians that occurred during the FIFA World Cup in 1998. A digital satellite link allowed soccer fans in New York and Tehran to have a face to face meeting. They discussed the widely anticipated World Cup game between Iran and the United States, sports in general, shared personal aspirations and touched on the political tensions between their countries. Video diaries were shared about their lives.
That video link was maintained during the course of the game. The audience reaction was filmed as developments unfolded on the field. There were strong images of Iranians cheering their team’s goal, Americans showing their disappointment. (Iran won the game, 2-1) Producer Stephen Lawrence says over 30 television, radio and print news media across the globe covered the Internews link.
Fewer participants were involved but there was no absence of passion in ‘Vis a Vis: Blue and Black’, a digital video link facilitated by Internews involving a black South African policeman, and his American counterpart. Sergeant Hendriek Mohale of the South African Police Service was based in Soweto; Sergeant David Van, a patrol officer in the predominantly black neighbourhood of Philadelphia, the 23rd District. Meeting via television monitors from their homes and workplaces, the two men discussed their lives and experiences, shared video diaries, and formed a friendship.
The programme was the second to be aired on the American Public Broadcasting Service. In the previous one, ‘Vis a Vis: Beyond the Veil’, broadcast August 27, 1998, an American and an Iranian English teacher, one in Washington DC, the other in Teheran, talked about the differences that had kept their two countries apart.
Both were pilot programmes. They were developed by Internews as part of an educational series on conflict for American Public Television and will serve as a model for other educational programmes.
But making programmes about conflict is one thing. Getting them on air, and having them viewed, is a different kettle of fish. Often the crucial role of the international media in raising public awareness of impending conflict and post-conflict situations is undermined by the short attention span of journalists and their editors. Hard economic facts of media life also play a part. Interest is sustained only as long as there are bodies to be counted and explosions to film. That ignores two crucial phases: the period before the conflict erupts, and its aftermath.
‘The blood and guts of actual conflict bring rating points and profit whereas programming that focuses on preventing conflict is often too abstract to attract public attention,’ says Paul Greenberg, Internews’ Director of International Co-productions. ‘We see a real lack of information in the West about conflicts that have not yet turned violent but could in the near future. We also see the international media regularly ignoring conflicts that have supposedly ‘ended’ but in fact have continued to fester because international assistance was too rapidly diverted.’
To overcome this problem, Internews has developed a project called Media Rapid Response, involving the creation of several mobile television crews equipped with flyaway satellite communications systems. These would be deployed to areas like Kosovo, where conflict is brewing, and footage provided to both Western broadcasters and local stations on both sides of the conflict.
Coverage of the ‘pre-conflict’ situation would be provided at below-market cost to news agencies around the world. Eventually Internews would work with channels in the west to develop ‘early warning’ sections of their broadcasts that could highlight the mechanics of emerging conflict in a clear and understandable fashion. Educational programmes will also be developed on the nature of local conflict, involving schools, universities and public television channels. In this way a constituency of viewers would be built up that could become more reactive to local conflict and exert more pressure on governments.
A third approach is Pre- and Post-Conflict programming for local channels. In addition to providing footage and programming to Western channels, programming would be developed on a local level that deals with local conflicts on site - as is currently being done in the former-Yugoslavia and the Caucasus.
The distribution of constructive radio or television programming, Internews staff believe, could help lower tensions in countries like Congo, Albania and Turkey, and in instances forestall eruption of full-scale war.
Source: Published in People Building Peace - 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (1999) by European Centre for Conflict Prevention http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=194&typ=theme
Example 5:
Open Fun Football Schools: Playing for Peace
The Danish organisation Cross Cultures uses sports as a tool for social cohesion in society and post-conflict reconciliation. In 1998 they introduced the Open Fun Football Schools programme in the war torn Bosnia Herzegovina. This programme concentrates on bringing children from warzones together through football. In this way they are able to make people meet and communicate in a “space” that is not politically contaminated. “Football is emotions and, therefore, football can function as a “driver” that unites people across cultural or religious differences. Football constitutes a universal language, which can be used by everyone of us. The language is fun, enjoyment and team spirit that derive from the game” (Anders Levinsen). The project has developed into a broad Nordic cooperation, which so far involves larger regional operations in the Balkans, Trans Caucasus and Moldova and the Middle East.
History
The open Fun Football Schools project is organized by the Danish NGO Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA) in cooperation with the Norwegian Football Association (NFA) and with administrative assistance from the Gerlev Sports Academy.
The project was initiated by Anders Levinsen. A Master of Social Geography and Public Relations. He was a former football player / coach in Denmark. During the war in Bosnia Herzegovina he was heading the UNHCR operation in the Central and North Eastern part of the country. In 1997-98 he was employed in a private consulting company called ENCORE (European Negotiation and Conflict Resolution). It was here that the idea for the Open Fun Football Schools was born. However, Levinsen preferred to keep the project non-profit and decided to end his contract with ENCORE. When Levinsen couldn’t get any of the NGO’s he knew to adopt the idea of organizing Open Fun Football Schools in Bosnia, he decided to found a little NGO himself, which he called the Cross Cultures Project Association.
The Cross Cultures Project Association is a politically independent, non-profit, humanitarian organization. The association exists for the purpose of developing, participating in as well as implementing projects cutting across cultural lines, and which have as their main objective the promotion of reconciliation and integration among people through dialogue and collaboration. The objectives of the organization are primarily sought realized through projects rooted in interests commonly shared by the participants and cutting the lines of different cultures.
Levinsen went back to Bosnia Herzegovina in February 1998 and succeeded in convincing some old colleagues at the UNHCR that it might be a good idea to make some football schools after a concept developed by the Danish Football Association. Afterwards he also succeeded in raising some additional funds from different companies in Denmark, and since then Levinsen has been working full time organising Open Fun Football Schools and play-sports-activities for children in warn-torn and fragile societies.
The fun football concept
The Open Fun Football Schools are built on the experience of what war is doing to people and how it is dividing communities. It is a humanitarian project that use joyful games and the pedagogical “fun-football-concept” as a tool to stimulate the process of democracy, peace, stability and social cohesion in South Eastern Europe by re-establishing friendships and sports co-operation between otherwise opposed population groups. At the same time, they contribute to a promotion of football as a game.
The name Open Fun Football Schools was chosen to emphasize that the project is for children and open for everyone; boys and girls, fat and skinny, no matter their ethnic and social background etc. Moreover it is not important to be a talented football player to participate. Focusing on developing the children’s talents is not their main goal – that is the task of football clubs and football associations. The Open Fun Football School is a supplement to the very important work in football clubs. It is a new and joyful way of playing football, giving participants the chance to gain some new experiences. It is more important that children learn that playing football is “fun” .
At the Open Fun Football Schools it is all about educating children in a friendly environment where they can be happy and develop healthy friendships and interests. It is the balance between playing and learning that is important. Each child should have the possibility to express and develop him- or herself through the game.
Goals
The role and function of Open Fun Football Schools is to bring teachers, leaders, trainers and children from different ethnic and social backgrounds to work together. To promote democratic behavior through grassroots football and a basic principle of “sport for all” based on a strong local foundation, democratic principles, volunteerism and parent support. To bring new impulses and educate hundreds of qualified trainers from the football clubs and teachers from the elementary schools. To motivate children, trainers and teachers by developing get-togethers both on and off the field and to distribute thousands of footballs and other sport equipment to the benefit of the local football clubs.
The pedagogical goal depends of the target group. By implementing the specific “fun football” approach CCPA would like to give the children a powerful experience, which would inspire them to get registered or to stay at a football club. Football schools are successful if children unconditionally answer positively on the following questions: Did I have fun at the Open Fun Football School? Have I met any new friends at the Open Fun Football School? Have I learned any new tricks at the Open Fun Football School? If a child is not a member of any football club, will he or she beg the parents to be registered in a football club along with his or her friends?
“I like coming here. It is better than school and than playing at home alone. Here I meet a lot of my friends and other children. At school we can’t play like here…there is no equipment at school and the teachers are not as funny as the trainers here.” Ginam (12), Lebanon
In regard to the trainers the main goal is to recruit and educate young trainers who can continue working under the same principles of the schools even after the project. By implementing training seminars and by leaving all the equipment behind, CCPA hopes to motivate and encourage the local football clubs to continue their important community work in organizing grassroots football for their children all year round.
Responsible leaders and trainers will be especially alert about the creation of a psychical and social environment where adults have the chance to teach children how to play football and to educate them to live a responsible and constructive life on and off the playground. There should be a training environment where children listen to each other, take care, show tolerance, make compromises, take up the responsibilities together and realize they are dependable of each other. The trainers must aim to train children concrete football skills and let them experience through that process to become better in a football game. Additionally, children must experience companionship and coexistence – saying that everyone must have his or her own position in a society and that there has to be enough space for everyone no matter their qualifications, sex or skin color. The experience of unity during a game of football is essential. The children should acknowledge that everyone has a right to participate equally with the skill that each one possesses. First of all they will learn that these games are not against the other team members but with them as well. The experience of successes (mental experience), will positively influence their self-confidence, as well as the enjoyment of playing football with their friends will positively influence their personal development.
“To help here is a great hobby for me. I love children and to see them happy. When they come here, they forget their problems at school or at home and just start playing and having fun. When they return home after this they are smiling and are already looking forward to the next training”. Anami (20), Lebanon
Impact
The project started in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina with 12 football schools involving 2254 boys and girls, and 189 coaches and school leaders. Since then the project has evolved from being a reconciliation tool developed in the post-war context of Bosnia- Herzegovina to a tool to bridge understanding and tolerance across existing divides between population groups. In 2000 the schools had become a conflict-prevention measure in FYR Macedonia, helping forestall the processes that generate violence, hatred, fear and the well-known "national war psychosis". In the summer of 2003, Open Fun Football Schools staged a total of 78 schools involving 16,000 youngsters (13,000 boys and 3,000 girls) and 1,400 and school leaders from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro. Since then the program has evolved to the Trans Caucasus and Moldova and the Middle East with schools in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia Moldova and Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Currently 750 Open Fun Football schools have been established for a total of 150,000 boys and girls from 7-11 years old and approximately 13,000 voluntary coaches and leaders have been trained during regional seminars according to the specific fun football concept (duration 3-5 days).
The Open Fun Football Schools have created a very strong and dedicated platform of leaders, coaches, parents and children in the Balkans, in Trans Caucasus and in the Middle East that is promoting grassroots football for their children across ethnic, social and political lines. The schools have stimulated the formation of hundreds of local football clubs in the respective countries that are organising football for all children regardless gender, talent, ethnic or social backgrounds.
Current situation and future of the project
The future structure of Open Fun Football Schools programme from 2008-2012 is divided into local activities and regional and further education programmes. In regard to their local activities they hope for their offices to become fully integrated in the national football association, alternatively funded by the national football association in cooperation with the national government. The required financial resources to cover operational costs will be the most difficult to raise among local and national partners/ donors (Sustainability Report 2006). In addition they aim to have the municipalities engaged in the Open Fun Football Schools programme financing the local costs (accommodation and provision) of the leaders and coach education. Last summer 254 municipalities in the Balkans sponsored coaches, participating in the programme, for 100 euro per coach. With this fee CCPA could cover the expenses – such as accommodation etc – for their comprehensive coach education. Experiences have shown that the procurement and distribution of sports equipment is most expedient and cost-effective done centrally by Cross Cultures. The activities in the Middle East qualitatively differ from their programme in Europe due to a less developed football club structure.
The Open Fun Football project has evolved over the years and many schools have been opened in three regions of the world. The aim of the project is to recruit and educate young trainers who can continue working under the same principles of the schools even after the project.
Source: http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=162&typ=theme
| Purpose: | To understand the concept of results chains and apply it (by creating examples) |
| Participants: | From 3-4 to many. |
| Time: | 90 min. or more |
| Materials: | A4-Paper in different colours (for the diffferent levels of the results chain, i.e. input, activities, output, outcomes, impact) Marker pens (different colours) Handout "Results chains as Roadmaps to change. An introduction" with examples Handouts "Examples of peacebuilding projects" (see below) Masking tape Space on walls/or floor |
| Process: | 1) Organise participants into groups of 3 to 4 (in very small groups, pairs are also possible). 2) Assign the task: The group's task is to develop a results chain for one real-world peacebuilding project. Distribute handout to the groups, some groups (depending on the number of workshop participants) might get the same example. Also the introductory handout should be available to the participants. 3) In the group, participants should first take some time to read about the project. Whilst doing that, they should keep the concept of theories of change and the results chain logic in the back of their minds. After reviewing the handout, the group starts first by briefly reflecting on theories of change. It would be good if the basic logic of the project - how do activities lead to success - could be identified. Then the group should move to discussing how a results chain for the described initiative could look like. As implied by the results chain logic, it is good to start with the top of the chain and then move down, but other ways - for instance by listing activities first - can also be used. Participants can use the A4-papers in different colours to note the elements of the results chain. The group can try to arrange the papers on the floor or wall in order to get a good overview of the chain and see where there are gaps to fill. Facilitator(s) should walk the room and assist groups in their work. 4) Upon completion of the group work, ask participants to walk the room and look at the work of the other groups. 5) Debriefing in plenary:
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| Note: | For this activity to work, participants need to have been introduced to what results chains are. Some crispy and straightforward examples should be provided to participants. The results chains that are developed here by the groups can be used for later steps, such as for developing indicators. You could also let all groups work on the same example so that everyone is familiar with the project. |
| Handout(s): | Handout "Results chains as Roadmaps to change. An introduction" Handouts "Examples of peacebuilding projects" (see below), one example on each hand out and for each group |
| Source(s): | chachabooth@gmail.com |
Handouts "Examples of peacebuilding projects"
All examples are taken from: European Center for Conflict Prevention (ECCP), People Building Peace. Successful Stories of Civil Society, online publication, <http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/>
Example 1:
Building Trust, Promoting Hope: The Families Forum Hello Peace Project in Israel and Palestine
Aaron Barnea, Ofer Shinar
Contacts between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are almost nonexistent these days. Hello Peace allows both groups to contact each other—anonymously—simply to talk. In less than two years, close to five hundred thousand telephone conversations have been facilitated by the project, which aims to rebuild both trust and hope.
“The leaders on both sides refuse to talk, but through Hello Shalom, nothing can stop the ordinary people—precisely those who have to face the most crippling consequences of the conflict—from trying to understand each other, which may end up saving lives.”
—“Peace on the Line,” Nick Taylor, The Guardian, 8 May 2004
In November 2000, the second Palestinian intifada had been raging for nearly two months, and relations between Israelis and Palestinians were at a new low. A young Israeli woman named Natalia Wieseltier picked up the telephone to call her friend,. It was not with the intention of being a peacemaker, but things took a strange turn. “A man picked up and said I had a wrong number,” she told Nick Taylor of the British newspaper The Guardian. “I said who is this, and he called himself Jihad and said he was an Arab living in Gaza. Instead of hanging up, I asked him how he was. He said he was very bad, his wife was pregnant and their town was under curfew, and we ended up talking for about 20 minutes.”
With this serendipitous wrong number, a tenuous bridge between one single Israeli and one Palestinian was established, from which an impressive project to encourage dialogue between ordinary Israelis and ordinary Palestinians has developed. The project is called Hello Shalom/Hello Salaam (Hello Peace).
Hello Peace is perhaps the best-known project of The Parents Circle—Families Forum (the Families Forum), an organization of over two hundred Palestinians and two hundred Israelis who have lost children or other family members in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Members of the Families Forum believe that “to move beyond silent despair and isolation, people must begin talking again—especially with people on the other side.” For almost a decade, the Families Forum has attempted to play a crucial role in spearheading a reconciliation process between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Families Forum itself developed from the unique response of a father to the murder of his son. On 7 July 1994, the body of nineteen-year-old Arik Frankenthal was found in a village near Ramallah. Arik, an Israeli Defense Forces soldier and an orthodox Jew, had been hitchhiking home on leave when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of Hamas.
No Revenge
Israeli society at the time was torn between hope and despair. On the one hand the government led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres showed a profound commitment to the peace process initiated at Oslo. At the same time, the mass media fed the public a steady stream of images of terror, death, and bereavement.
Yitzhak Rabin’s historic words of 13 September 1993, spoken from the White House lawn, still resonated with the Israeli public:
Let me say to you, the Palestinians: We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
Some Israelis were unable to embrace the words that followed:
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you—in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you: Let us pray that a day will come when we will say, enough, farewell to arms.
After each incident of terror, for example, the Terror Victims Association called for vengeance and violence against Palestinians. In response to the brutal murder of Arik Frankenthal, they raised the same cry. Then something new happened, something revolutionary. Arik’s father, also an orthodox Jew, faced the group and said, “You don’t represent me and my family. My Judaism is not one of revenge and hatred. I know that violence against Palestinians, revenge and inflicting bereavement and affliction to Palestinians will not bring back my son, but will cause more pain, more bereavement to other families in Israel. I call all of us to stop the killings, to stretch our hands towards the other in search of reconciliation. This is my view of authentic Judaism: a profound thirst for life and peace.”
Other bereaved Israeli families echoed his thoughts. These bereaved families became the core of the future organization—the Families Forum—which called for peace and reconciliation rather than vengeance. The forum was with Rabin, Peres, and Arafat at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony, and was at Rabin’s side on the tragic night of his assassination by an Israeli extremist.
Message of Reconciliation
The Israeli group soon approached bereaved Palestinian families, who enthusiastically embraced its message of reconciliation. The joint appearance of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families had a tremendous impact on individuals in both societies. An ambitious growing program was articulated and implemented, which included meetings in Palestinian and Israeli schools with kids aged sixteen to eighteen, bold public pronouncements, and support for peace rallies. The Family Forum’s actions attracted extensive media attention in the form of TV and radio interviews and numerous articles in the press.
Notably, the Families Forum sees reconciliation not just as a process following conflict resolution, but as part of the process that helps to bring violent conflict to an end. Reconciliation allows each side to transform precisely those views about the other side that led to a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. This transformation creates trust between the two sides, a prerequisite for any peace process.
Empathy for those victims on the opposing side who have suffered loss is a key step in the process of reconciliation. Empathy can create the emotional change needed to undertake the transformation of beliefs that is inherent in genuine reconciliation; generating such empathy has been a prime focus of the work of the Families Forum.
The activities of the Families Forum focus on victims who, instead of seeking vengeance, choose to pursue dialogue with victims of the opposing side. The Hello Peace project of the Families Forum is, accordingly, a logical extension of this goal of pursuing dialogue and reconciliation.
Creating Contact at the Level of the Individual
According to the article “Palestinian-Israeli Hotline Melts Hate” by Deborah Blachor of the Daily News, 8 December 2002, Sammy Waed, a Palestinian user of Hello Peace, said: “Before, I thought Israelis didn’t care at all when innocent Palestinians suffer and are killed, but now I know they do care. And now I have hope that there can be peace.” “We are all people and want the best for our children and grandchildren. We have the power to make a change,” said Miriam Inbal, an Israeli user of Hello Peace.
Hagit Ofran, an Israeli user of Hello Peace, said in a letter to the editor of Haaretz on 11 October 2002: “Instead of continuing to weep in frustration we should pick up the phone, hear the voices, and continue onward with renewed hope, knowing that there’s someone to talk to, that the cycle of bloodshed can be brought to an end.”
The Hello Peace project is an attempt to respond to the lack of trust and empathy between the Palestinians and Israelis that, scholars say, is one of the primary reasons that the cycle of violence continues. By getting thousands of Israeli and Palestinians to talk with each other, and by publicizing this fact, the popular belief that “there is no partner for peace” can be dispelled.
Hello Peace is the brainchild of Natalia Wieseltier and developed from that first errant phone call. Recalling that initial contact, she says, “We weren’t making apologies to each other; I wasn’t trying to make him feel better. We were just talking as individuals. At the end of the conversation, he said he was amazed that Jewish people were able to talk like that. He thought we wanted all Palestinians dead.” After that phone call, Jihad discovered Natalia’s phone number on his own mobile phone, called her back the next day, and left a message saying that the conversation had changed the way he thought. Then he gave her number to his brother. Soon, a circle of strangers from the two sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide were talking to each other. Attitudes began to change. And that gave Natalia an idea. The contact she had created by mistake led Natalia to approach the Families Forum with a proposal to set up a system to allow Palestinians and Israelis to talk to each other over the phone.
With Hello Peace, Israelis and Palestinians can call a special number—*6364—and a computer will automatically connect them to someone on “the other side” who has expressed a similar willingness to talk. Users do not have to leave their details or even their telephone number, ensuring that their privacy is protected.
From the moment of inspiration until the project was officially launched, it took two years of fund raising and preparation. In October 2002, the project started up with a massive media campaign under the same slogan in both Arabic and Hebrew: “You can talk about peace/pain/reconciliation.” The publicity campaign leading up to the launch was undertaken on both sides of the divide in a similar manner and at the exact same time. This is crucial to the success, which depends on the perception that Hello Peace is totally unbiased. A second media campaign was conducted in October and November 2003, coinciding, completely by chance, with the intensive media campaign to alert the international community to the independent peace initiative known as the Geneva Initiative. With the synergies of these simultaneous campaigns, peacemaking received a new impetus, and public interest in peacemaking was clearly apparent, suggesting a grassroots movement for peace was alive and well in both Palestinian and Israeli society.
Hello Peace endeavors to break down the psychological, if not physical, barriers between the two peoples. If numbers can serve as a measure of success, than Hello Peace has been a resounding success, and stands as proof that many Israelis and Palestinians are willing to engage in dialogue; between the project’s inception in October 2002 and October 2004, more than 480,000 phone calls had been made. Hello Peace is probably the broadest peace project ever implemented regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its success suggests that many in both societies remain hopeful that peace is possible and are willing to communicate and learn more about those on the other side.
With Hello Peace a link has been established between the activities of the Families Forum promoting reconciliation over revenge among bereaved families, and the more general need among ordinary citizens on both sides to engage in a humanizing dialogue. As Roni Hirshenzon, a member of the Families Forum notes, sometimes the conversations initiated through the Hello Peace system begin with arguments, but quickly the parties will ask more personal questions, such as “where are you from,” “how old are you?,” “do you have children?,” and so forth, and then, often, the anger dissipates. The intimate nature of the contact that is possible with the Hello Peace system allows both sides to view the “other” as human beings rather than nameless members of an impersonal mass. By creating contact at the level of the individual, participants on both sides come to understand more of the complexity of the situation and learn more about the circumstances and difficulties of those on the opposing side. This knowledge, which is generated by all who are involved with the project, is the basis for the creation of trust between the sides.
Impact
While an independent evaluation of Hello Peace has yet to be undertaken, it can be said that its impact radiates out from the participants in three concentric circles: an inner circle that includes all those who have actively taken part in the project by talking with a person from the opposing side; a middle circle consisting of the friends and relatives of those who have used the system and who have heard about the project and its influence; and a third circle comprising those who have heard about the project either from news articles of from the media campaign. While the impact of Hello Peace on the inner circle is clear, the influence on those in the wider circles has also been notable. Those in the “middle” circle who have heard about the conversations of their friends or relatives have also grasped the significance of dialogue and are likely to feel more inclined to trust the opposing side as a result. Those in the outer circle may also be influenced, especially by the notion that so many have taken up the opportunity and used the system.
Challenges
Hello Peace now faces two challenges: first, how to increase the number of users, and second to create a sense of community, allowing the nascent dialogue to become a normative part of the lives of many Israelis and Palestinians. This will not only legitimize the project but will also give credibility to the opening of new and innovative channels of communication.
Currently, thousands of calls are being made each month. The Families Forum now aims, in the second stage of the Hello Peace project, to tie in other Families Forum activities to stimulate more extensive grassroots activities involving both Palestinians and Israelis. This second stage will focus on further development of the current telephone system, the launch of a new website, and a media campaign. Alongside the inventive use of traditional means of communication, it will exploit technology to allow more people to join in and participate in the dialogue, offering, for example, Palestinians and Israelis ways to expand their communication to the Internet as well as to continue talking over the phone. Already, the Families Forum, in collaboration with the international NGO One to One Children’s Fund, is setting up an Internet site allowing Israeli and Palestinian youth to communicate online.
Building trust between Israelis and Palestinians may seem to many to be futile after so much violence, but Hello Peace has proven that where ordinary people make contact with each other on a personal level, it is still possible to bridge the divide and rekindle hope, which had long seemed extinguished.
Aaron Barnea, who has lost his twenty-one-year-old son, Noam, due to the conflict, is the Families Forum international relations director. Ofer Shinar, the Families Forum Reconciliation Initiative’s director, has researched reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians under the guidance of Alexander Boraine, the former cochair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Source: http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=128&typ=theme
Example 2:
The Pastor and the Imam: The Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum in Nigeria
James Wuye , Muhammed Ashafa
In recent years, Nigeria has been plagued with alarming frequency by violence between its Muslim and Christian communities. One of the worst-hit regions has been Kaduna State. The cofounders and national coordinators of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum of Kaduna in 1995 are two men with deep roots in the opposing communities, both of whom have turned away from violence and militancy action and instead embraced nonviolence, reconciliation, and the advocacy of peaceful relations between their communities.
Once they were bitter rivals, but now they consider themselves brothers. In fact, at one time, they each tried to have the other killed. James Wuye and Muhammed Ashafa are living proof that people can change, and that the urge for revenge can be replaced by an urge to foster reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Pastor James Wuye readily acknowledges that he was a militant in his youth. For that, he paid a price—he lost his arm during this struggle of communal violence in 1992. Imam Muhammed Nurayn Ashafa was a militant as well. During that same eruption of unrestrained violence in 1992, he lost his teacher and two sons. For both men, coming to terms with terrible loss forced reflection, and reflection brought transformation. “Both began to question the cost of violence and turned to the Bible and the Koran, where they found passages showing commonalities between Islam and Christianity and calling on believers to be peacemakers,” writes Christian Science Monitor reporter Mike Crawley (2003). Yet, “when the pair first met face to face in 1995, distrust lingered. At the urging of a civil society leader, they agreed to try to work out some sort of understanding, and they say the resulting dialogue helped them to overcome stereotypes and misconceptions and gain respect for each other.”
They staged a public debate—no easy task in such a charged atmosphere—and this early effort at dialogue has since become an ongoing exchange through the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum. Each of them has made a quantum leap—from violent youth leader to successful nonviolent mediator of Muslim-Christian conflicts. Now, they listen to the each other’s sermons. In fact, together they have published a book, The Pastor and the Imam: Responding to Conflict , which examines the perceptions of Muslim and Christian about each other, explores the commonalities at the root of the two faiths—and the differences—and then describes the efforts, at first tenuous and later more confident, to forge a common effort to promote understanding between the communities.
Intercommunal Violence
Kaduna State is the seat of Nigeria’s northern elite, including senior military, religious, and traditional figures. Its population of approximately 3.5 million is divided more or less equally between Muslims and Christians. Kaduna has also, unfortunately, been at the epicenter of intercommunal conflict—conflict that has only worsened since the Kaduna state government’s declaration of its intent to introduce shariah law . This declaration sparked an outbreak of violence in late February 1999, and subsequent anti-Muslim reprisals in various southern towns, that left an estimated two thousand people dead, eighty thousand displaced, and many private homes and business premises looted and destroyed.
With its mix of ethnic and religious groups, Kaduna continues to be one of the most conflict-prone states in the country. The various communities compete for a greater share of the limited socioeconomic resources and for political power, each feeling itself politically and economically marginalized. In that environment, religion is, in a sense, “perverted” as it is invoked in the political arena, and youth are exploited by those who seek to gain personally from the conflict.
A Myriad of Contributing Factors
Ethnic and religious differences have been a source of tension throughout Nigeria’s turbulent postindependence history, which has been marked by decades of military rule. The third and most recent attempt at instituting democracy in the federal republic has been under way since 1999.
Pastor Wuye stresses that during the long periods of military rule, ethnic and religious tensions have tended to increase. Official appointments to federal posts have often been made on the basis of patronage as opposed to merit, which has favored Muslim northerners who have been quite dominant in the Nigerian military. Thus, Christian clerics have preached against what they perceive to be injustice in the trend of federal government appointments under military regimes.
Another factor that has contributed to Nigeria’s ethnic tensions has been the country’s poor progress toward economic development. In spite of its abundant petroleum and natural-gas reserves, the United Nations Development Program ranked Nigeria as 151st of 174 countries evaluated in terms of human development. Imam Ashafa also notes that when the bubble that was Nigeria’s oil economy burst in the 1980s, there was an apparently related increase in ethnic conflict with religious undertones.
In view of such linkages, observes Pastor Wuye, one can reasonably conclude that “most of the problems in Nigeria do not come from religion but economics and social conditions.”
Multitrack Approach
Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye share a view that civil-society organizations—such as the Interfaith Mediation Centre, which they set up—can do a better job of defusing potentially violent situations in Nigeria than security forces. According to Pastor Wuye, the Interfaith Mediation Centre uses a multitrack approach to address issues of intercommunal violence. “We ‘deprogram’ people by making them aware of what the other side is thinking.”
The project that the two men launched, which consists of both the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum and the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre, aims to prevent the recurrence of violent conflict and to contribute to an increase in the level of trust and tolerance between Christians and Muslims in Kaduna State. With trust, tolerance, and an absence of violence, reconciliation can begin through the development over time of collaborative relationships and cohesive peace constituencies in both communities. At the same time, as such reconciliation takes root, the communities’ capacity to resolve conflicts will also be enhanced.
Five specific objectives have been identified:
1.To reestablish relationships that have been damaged due to recurring violence over the last five years
2.To minimize the reoccurrence of violence amongst various groups in the community
3.To initiate programs and projects that require and encourage the involvement of Christians and Muslims (including dialogues, workshops, cultural events, and the establishment of a resource center)
4.To enhance interreligious relationships and cooperation within the state
5.To support and build the capacity of local partners who are involved in peacemaking
The center organizes a range of activities to bring together religious leaders, policymakers, technocrats, small-business owners and traders, grassroots participants including women, youth, and religious leaders, and other stakeholders. The inclusion of women is especially important because of the role women play in educating children at home. Engaging youth is vital because it is youth, in fact, who are often the perpetrators of violence (Nigerians, observes Pastor Wuye, tend to be fiercely passionate about their faith. For many Nigerian youths, religion is everything. He draws an important distinction—that one can be “religious” without being “godly”). Because operators of businesses and traders have a vested interest in peace and stability in the community, they are viewed as valuable potential partners in the peace and reconciliation process.
Some of the activities that take place include programs focusing on dialogue among the various constituencies; intensive problem-solving workshops for women and youth groups; annual cultural events; capacity-building training programs for local community leaders and members of civil society; and programs designed to address the trauma that citizens have suffered as a result of the violence.
One of the most significant achievements of the center has been the drafting of the “Kaduna Peace Declaration,” which is an articulation of a common vision to put in place effective machinery appropriate for building and sustaining long-term peaceful coexistence between the Christian and Muslim communities. The document was carefully formulated so as to be broadly acceptable and realistic in its goals, and the potential signers were encouraged to review it together with their constituents. In August 2002, some twenty senior religious leaders signed the Kaduna Peace Declaration and declared that each year, 22 August would be observed as Peace Day in Kaduna State.
Impact
Since the signing of the Kaduna Peace Declaration, grassroots efforts to maintain peace have continued, but the challenges have remained as well. Any incident runs the risk of turning into a crisis. In November 2002, for example, protests over a newspaper article connecting the prophet Mohammed to the Miss World beauty pageant caused much tension. Both Pastor James and Imam Ashafa, in union with transformed religious leaders, drove around affected neighborhoods on a bus and arranged to have them appear on television to appeal for calm. The intervention only was made possible because of the commitments made in the Kaduna Peace Declaration, which was an important factor in containing a volatile situation.
Religious leaders who have signed the declaration are also credited with helping to control violence and vote rigging during elections at both the state and federal levels. In addition, they have, on numerous occasions, intervened in conflicts in the schools, when minor arguments threatened to turn into major incidents. Indeed, some instigators are intent on using schools as a breeding ground for religious conflict. To stem this tide, the Interfaith Mediation Centre, in collaboration with signers of the Kaduna Peace Declaration, has embarked on a program to provide conflict resolution training to religious instructors and secondary-school officials.
Other Approaches
The consultative approach of the center stands in stark contrast to the approach of the federal Nigerian government, which has attempted to achieve peace by viewing conflict, especially in Kaduna, as a question of law and order. This has systematically failed and attracted international criticism. On the other hand, at the state level, it can be said that the Kaduna state government has played a somewhat more constructive role. It has tried to transform the conflict in the region through rudimentary arbitration and mediation methods utilizing official Track One approaches—governmental agencies and government-sponsored dialogue. Such efforts have changed the conflict’s dynamics but not contributed to resolving it; nonetheless, Kaduna State’s efforts have been somewhat promising in view of the fact that the state has attempted to address the fundamental structural causes of the conflicts. This work has been informed by intensive research and consultation with local partners, especially the Kaduna Peace Committee, an organization with extensive knowledge of the conflict dynamics and issues at stake in Kaduna and the greater north, and familiarity with parties to the conflicts.
One other important result of the cooperation between Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye has been a successful initiative to bring together two warring communities of Plateau State, the nomadic Fulani cattle rearers and the native Beroms. To settle long-standing disputes, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye arranged to hold talks and actively facilitated a mediation process. In 2003, the two parties made a start on engaging in a healing process and exploring pragmatic solutions to the conflict.
Overall, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have successfully facilitated dozens of conflict resolution activities. Whereas their efforts were once confined to their hometown of Kaduna, they are increasingly working in other regions as well. Through its perseverance, the Interfaith Mediation Centre has gathered the strength to break free from one-time interventions and extend its reach and influence across Nigeria.
Lessons Learned
For Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye, it has been a long and difficult journey, from outright animosity to cautious steps to get to know each other—still holding to much suspicion and mistrust—to trust and acceptance, and finally to cooperation. Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have come to see, by engaging in dialogue, that they, as believers in their faith, are more similar than dissimilar. The greatest threat to peaceful coexistence, as they see it, comes not as a result of cultural or religious difference, but from ignorance of the humanity that binds people together.“Erroneous perceptions affecting Christian-Muslim relationships have been a source of commotion and tears,” they write in The Pastor and the Imam . “They have bred assumptions, stereotypes, and suspicions. As long as we insist on passing judgment on others by the verdict of our perceptions, and refuse them opportunity to explain . . . to us who and what they are, we are creating room for conflict in our inter-personal and inter-religious relationships” (Wuye and Ashafa 1999: 24).
The refreshing, if simple, discovery of the pastor and the imam is that they can draw strength and inspiration from the very faith that is so central to their lives, by looking to the messages of Jesus Christ and the prophet Mohammed, to eschew conflict and violence and instead pursue justice, love, and peaceful coexistence.
[...]
Source: Pastor James Movel Wuye and Imam Mohammed Nurayn Ashafa are the founders and coordinators of the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre/Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum.http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=93&typ=theme
Example 3:
Church Council Bridges the Ethnic Divide: Voice of the Voiceless in Kenya
‘Ethnic identification is a sensitive, emotional issue, one that is easily manipulated. Ethnicity can become part of the transition phenomena when people do not know how to relate swiftly and correctly to rapid political change. In such times of uncertainty, it is easy to politicise ethnicity and to build a support base from it.’ (Sam Kobia, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) in ‘The Quest for Democracy in Africa’, 1993)
The government’s complicity in the violence in Kenya (see Box) is both deeply troubling, in that it reflects the absence of the rule of law within the Kenyan political system, but also just slightly hopeful, to the extent that it suggests that the violence was not triggered by such fundamental differences, bitter rivalries, or deep-rooted hatred between neighbouring ethnic groups that reconciliation between the parties can never be achieved.
Estimates vary, but it is generally agreed that, beyond the dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded, more than 300,000 people have been displaced due to ethnic violence. And naturally, with this enormous displacement, economic and social displacement have followed, with families divided, health and educational infrastructure disrupted, and food shortages occurring because of crop damage and the inability of farmers to work their fields.
To address this large scale refugee problem, and to try to work for reconciliation among the rival groups, the NCCK has launched a multi-faceted program called the NCCK Peace and Reconciliation Project. Financial support for the project has been provided by the Government of the Netherlands, at the outset (1992-1993) through the Dutch Ministry for Development Co-operation, and later on, via Dutch Interchurch Aid (DIA).
The NCCK, which dates back to 1908, is an umbrella organisation for Christian churches in Kenya. It has a long and consistent record of working to spur development at all levels - economic and political as well as spiritual. In campaigning for greater democracy and a more open society, and attempting to serve as the ‘voice of the voiceless’, it has clashed with the authorities on more than one occasion. The NCCK’s own investigations into the causes of the communal violence of the early nineties led to the very same conclusions as those of outside observers: the violence was politically instigated.
The Peace and Reconciliation Project was primarily an emergency relief program during its first phase, at a time when the victims of ethnic violence required assistance. But the focus has gradually shifted from relief and rehabilitation to peace and reconciliation, with concerted efforts underway to ‘prevent ethnic conflict, improve inter-ethnic relationships, reduce the suffering as a result of ethnic violence, and create awareness on issues causing conflicts.’
It was during phase II, from 1994 until 1996, that the first efforts were made to present an integrated approach in which relief and rehabilitation efforts were linked to reconciliation programs with a more social focus. Subsequently, beginning with phase III in August 1996, more extensive reconciliation programs were initiated to not only restore hope to the victims of violence and provide them with a means to earn a decent living, but also to assist them in re-integrating themselves into the communities they had fled.
The basic administrative unit of the Peace and Reconciliation Project is an ‘Area Peace and Rehabilitation Committee’ (APRC), which draws its membership from a cross section of local including representatives of local leadership, churches, NGOs, youth, and women. In fact, the success of the program has been premised on the active participation of the local population.
These APRCs organised hundreds of Good Neighbourliness Seminars, open to elders, local opinion leaders, local politicians, educators, community workers, government workers, and members of other important groups and organisations at the local level. At these seminars, the participants could discuss the causes of the local conflicts and analyse the effects that these conflicts had on their communities, and could examine potential strategies for successfully resolving the conflicts without resorting to violence.
In those meetings held for community leaders, the leaders own roles in promoting peace and reconciliation were a focus of the discussions. Meetings held exclusively for women gave women the chance to participate in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in mixed seminars. In seminars focusing on youth, the participants were challenged to re-evaluate the values that resulted in them perceiving ‘the other’ as enemy, and encouraged not to allow others to manipulate them into acts of violence, but rather to channel their energies into more constructive activities. Intercultural sports and social activities were also encouraged.
Those seminars bringing together elders and traditional leaders were of particular importance, as traditional leaders are held in high regard and retain enormous influence in their communities. Their roles as peacemakers are crucial.
Inevitable Ethnic Violence?
In the ethnic patchwork that is Kenya, it is sometimes convenient to point to ethnic conflict as an inevitable element of the culture. And that has all too frequently seemed to be the case as Kikuyus and Kalenjins have battled and slaughtered each other over the past decade. Kenya is, after all, a nation of more than 40 distinct ethnic groups, where dozens of languages are spoken, with a set of borders imposed on it by an outside colonial power, a national government that asserts authority across those ethnic divides, and a system of government not entirely consistent with traditional Kenyan notions of authority or governance. And the ethnic divisions have clearly been a major factor in determining the political landscape of Kenya since before independence. But in fact, much of the ethnic violence that has recently plagued Kenya and claimed several thousand lives has its roots not in fundamental ethnic rivalries, but rather in politics.
Outside observers, from the United States government to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Article 19 and Human Rights Watch have all concluded that the serious ethnic violence which flared up during the run-up to multi-party elections in 1992, and again prior to the elections in December 1997, was instigated by the government and the ruling party, the Kenyan African National Union (KANU). While it is true that these ethnic clashes took place primarily between the original Kalenjin inhabitants of the Rift Valley region, and other ethnic groups who had migrated to the region and settled there (and later, in the coastal regions as well), it is generally agreed that the violence was motivated by a desire of the KANU leadership to assure electoral victory by launching a campaign against members of those ethnic communities who affiliated with the opposition, so that they would be forced to flee or would not vote to oppose KANU candidates.
During these seminars, some 200 Village Peace Committees were established. Peace Committee members were drawn from both the displaced persons and those who had remained in their villages, and they were responsible for a wide variety of activities: to act as arbiters between the various interest groups within the community, to initiate efforts to restore local amenities and set priorities, to serve as representatives of the local communities on the APRCs, and together with the APRCs, to function as a sort of ‘early warning system’ to detect and de-fuse ethnic tension before it erupted into violence.
Beyond the small scale seminars intended to bring people with similar social positions together, the project encouraged local officials to organise larger community meetings called ‘barazas’ to discuss issues related to peace, security, and resettlement with a broad cross-section of stakeholders within a community.
Key interest groups, such as legislators, religious leaders, and public administrators were invited to participate in specialised workshops designed to provide these individuals with information and experience that would help them to reduce ethnic tensions and overcome mistrust. For example, at workshops attended by legislators, the conflicts in Kenya were placed against the backdrop of ethnic conflicts in other African states, with an examination of the causes of these conflicts, and discussions on the ways to resolve disputes nonviolently. In considering strategies for peacemaking, it was suggested that ‘conflict transformation’ might be a better description of the process, where the essential ingredients for successful resolution demand that the parties to a conflict come to a basic understanding of the root causes of their dispute, and seek a solution that both sides view as fair, based on the premise that ‘justice is a prerequisite of peace.’
The NCCK has been publishing a monthly magazine that reports on both reconciliation efforts and incidents of violence. It has also actively distributed peace and reconciliation posters in the affected regions, many produced by schoolchildren in the local communities. To encourage an exchange of ideas among the members of the APRCs, it has sponsored exchange visits, and has sponsored similar activities for youth groups and women’s organisations. To assist the resettlement of the victims of violence, it has created a ‘Central Clashes Rehabilitation Register’ with data about land purchases, organised monthly meetings on resettlement issues, and provided material assistance to individuals and groups to help them make a new start.
At the outset, the NCCK conducted extensive interviews with a broad range of stakeholders so that it would come to a more complete understanding of the causes of conflict. And throughout the duration of the project, it has worked with these stakeholders, so that they have a sense of ownership. In evaluating the success of the project, M.E. Witte-Rang of the Dutch ecumenical development organisation OIKOS attributes much of the success of the project to this approach. ‘When people own a project,’ writes Witte-Rang, ‘they feel responsible and will defend their own activities,’ adding ‘it is a matter of principal: local people know better than anyone else the causes of the conflict and the possible solutions to end it.’ (Witte-Rang, M.E. A Way Out of the Conflict (OIKOS: Utrecht, 1998)
In its own description of its activities, the NCCK attributes much of the Peace and Reconciliation Project’s success to its ‘inclusive’ approach. ‘You cannot make peace on your own or with a few enlightened people ... all actors, no matter whether they are perceived as friend or enemy, good or bad, influential or [simply members of the] community, they all have to be involved in the process.’ And while that is no guarantee of success, it has, in the view of the NCCK, helped to reduce the level of violence in the Rift Valley, and enhanced mutual understanding among ordinary people.
Source: Published in People Building Peace- 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (1999) by European Centre for Conflict Prevention
http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=188&typ=theme
Example 4:
Internews Uses Media to Reduce Conflict: Beyond Talking Heads
Who can really tell the world about war? Politicians? Analysts? Peace negotiators? The ‘talking heads’ we see on the News? Or does the useful information really lie with ordinary people, those in the conflict zones who are trying to live their lives in the middle of it all? Surely their experience would help us to empathise and put pressure on our governments to end the conflict more than statistics about numbers killed and military hardware used?
These are questions raised by Internews, an international non-profit agency which works with local electronic media in conflict zones in order to go behind the headlines and find the people who are trying to survive them.
Take Ali Lahmar, for instance. This 38-year-old ticket collector daily traversed the deadliest rail route in one of the most dangerous countries on earth: Algeria, Northern Africa, where tens of thousands of people have died in civil war. Every day, Lahmar braved death on the Algiers-Oran route. One day, he faced it, and didn’t survive to tell the tale.
But he had told his story just before that. In a 26-minute documentary titled ‘Train of Hope’, which focused on the personal and intimate side of life in Algeria. Part of a series of documentaries called, ‘The Other Algeria’, it gave viewers an overall impression, not of violence, but of hope.
‘People say these terrible things are happening in our country,’ says Nayla Abdo-hanna, one of the producers. ‘But we have to hope and to go on with our lives.’
The series was made with production grants, technical and editorial support from Internews, which also sponsored ‘Robert and Gasan: We Haven’t Changed That Much’. This documentary is based on a video conference between two old friends, Robert Saakiantz and Gasan Ismailzade. Respectively Armenian and Azeri, the two men were both born in Baku, Azerbaijan and met in primary school. Their friendship continued even after Robert moved to Armenia, but, in 1988, ethnic conflict ruptured their personal links. Putting them in touch again for the first time in 13 years, Internews recorded the contact. During their three-hour exchange in August 1998, the two childhood friends discussed the conflict between their two countries.
Formed in 1982, and funded by public and private foundation grants, Internews tries to enhance tolerance and understanding by supporting independent media outlets in emerging democracies. It also promotes the use of the media to reduce conflict within and between countries. Projects in this area have been undertaken in the former Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Responding to the political changes in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, Internews has assisted the formation of and helped to sustain the explosion of new media outlets in the former Soviet Union. As of the end of 1998, the agency produced 12 regular news and analysis programmes in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Some of these examined the role of the media or served educational purposes. Most were centred on depicting everyday lives - people long used to closed central government control.
‘In the eight countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States where Internews currently supports non-governmental television, its innovative productions challenge both audiences and local journalists,’ says a report in the organisation’s newsletter.
Production efforts in the former Soviet Union began in 1993. The Moscow-based ‘Local Time’ brought together news stories from all over the former Soviet Union into a national television news magazine. Stations across the region each contributed a three-minute story. In return, they received a half-hour programme with news from other cities - unfiltered by state broadcasters.
A similar approach was adopted in other countries of the CIS, using programmes produced in local languages to enrich the media landscape. Viewer response was encouraging.
‘What Internews strives to do is to create the programmes that each country’s audience and stations need at any given time,’ says Manana Aslamazian, Executive Director of Internews Russia.
That often means focusing on people, working with the people who are driven apart by war, local producers not correspondents. ‘Kosov@: A View From Inside’, is a series of four 13-minute episodes co-produced by Internews and Media Project, an Albanian production company. ‘Our Daily Bread’ was the result of a video-conference link in which Serb and Albanian bakers talked frankly about the political situation and hostilities in Kosovo, the former-Yugoslavia.
[...]
Similar technology was utilised to good effect in a celebrated coup for Internews: the unprecedented live video dialogue between Americans and Iranians that occurred during the FIFA World Cup in 1998. A digital satellite link allowed soccer fans in New York and Tehran to have a face to face meeting. They discussed the widely anticipated World Cup game between Iran and the United States, sports in general, shared personal aspirations and touched on the political tensions between their countries. Video diaries were shared about their lives.
That video link was maintained during the course of the game. The audience reaction was filmed as developments unfolded on the field. There were strong images of Iranians cheering their team’s goal, Americans showing their disappointment. (Iran won the game, 2-1) Producer Stephen Lawrence says over 30 television, radio and print news media across the globe covered the Internews link.
Fewer participants were involved but there was no absence of passion in ‘Vis a Vis: Blue and Black’, a digital video link facilitated by Internews involving a black South African policeman, and his American counterpart. Sergeant Hendriek Mohale of the South African Police Service was based in Soweto; Sergeant David Van, a patrol officer in the predominantly black neighbourhood of Philadelphia, the 23rd District. Meeting via television monitors from their homes and workplaces, the two men discussed their lives and experiences, shared video diaries, and formed a friendship.
The programme was the second to be aired on the American Public Broadcasting Service. In the previous one, ‘Vis a Vis: Beyond the Veil’, broadcast August 27, 1998, an American and an Iranian English teacher, one in Washington DC, the other in Teheran, talked about the differences that had kept their two countries apart.
Both were pilot programmes. They were developed by Internews as part of an educational series on conflict for American Public Television and will serve as a model for other educational programmes.
But making programmes about conflict is one thing. Getting them on air, and having them viewed, is a different kettle of fish. Often the crucial role of the international media in raising public awareness of impending conflict and post-conflict situations is undermined by the short attention span of journalists and their editors. Hard economic facts of media life also play a part. Interest is sustained only as long as there are bodies to be counted and explosions to film. That ignores two crucial phases: the period before the conflict erupts, and its aftermath.
‘The blood and guts of actual conflict bring rating points and profit whereas programming that focuses on preventing conflict is often too abstract to attract public attention,’ says Paul Greenberg, Internews’ Director of International Co-productions. ‘We see a real lack of information in the West about conflicts that have not yet turned violent but could in the near future. We also see the international media regularly ignoring conflicts that have supposedly ‘ended’ but in fact have continued to fester because international assistance was too rapidly diverted.’
To overcome this problem, Internews has developed a project called Media Rapid Response, involving the creation of several mobile television crews equipped with flyaway satellite communications systems. These would be deployed to areas like Kosovo, where conflict is brewing, and footage provided to both Western broadcasters and local stations on both sides of the conflict.
Coverage of the ‘pre-conflict’ situation would be provided at below-market cost to news agencies around the world. Eventually Internews would work with channels in the west to develop ‘early warning’ sections of their broadcasts that could highlight the mechanics of emerging conflict in a clear and understandable fashion. Educational programmes will also be developed on the nature of local conflict, involving schools, universities and public television channels. In this way a constituency of viewers would be built up that could become more reactive to local conflict and exert more pressure on governments.
A third approach is Pre- and Post-Conflict programming for local channels. In addition to providing footage and programming to Western channels, programming would be developed on a local level that deals with local conflicts on site - as is currently being done in the former-Yugoslavia and the Caucasus.
The distribution of constructive radio or television programming, Internews staff believe, could help lower tensions in countries like Congo, Albania and Turkey, and in instances forestall eruption of full-scale war.
Source: Published in People Building Peace - 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (1999) by European Centre for Conflict Prevention http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=194&typ=theme
Example 5:
Open Fun Football Schools: Playing for Peace
The Danish organisation Cross Cultures uses sports as a tool for social cohesion in society and post-conflict reconciliation. In 1998 they introduced the Open Fun Football Schools programme in the war torn Bosnia Herzegovina. This programme concentrates on bringing children from warzones together through football. In this way they are able to make people meet and communicate in a “space” that is not politically contaminated. “Football is emotions and, therefore, football can function as a “driver” that unites people across cultural or religious differences. Football constitutes a universal language, which can be used by everyone of us. The language is fun, enjoyment and team spirit that derive from the game” (Anders Levinsen). The project has developed into a broad Nordic cooperation, which so far involves larger regional operations in the Balkans, Trans Caucasus and Moldova and the Middle East.
History
The open Fun Football Schools project is organized by the Danish NGO Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA) in cooperation with the Norwegian Football Association (NFA) and with administrative assistance from the Gerlev Sports Academy.
The project was initiated by Anders Levinsen. A Master of Social Geography and Public Relations. He was a former football player / coach in Denmark. During the war in Bosnia Herzegovina he was heading the UNHCR operation in the Central and North Eastern part of the country. In 1997-98 he was employed in a private consulting company called ENCORE (European Negotiation and Conflict Resolution). It was here that the idea for the Open Fun Football Schools was born. However, Levinsen preferred to keep the project non-profit and decided to end his contract with ENCORE. When Levinsen couldn’t get any of the NGO’s he knew to adopt the idea of organizing Open Fun Football Schools in Bosnia, he decided to found a little NGO himself, which he called the Cross Cultures Project Association.
The Cross Cultures Project Association is a politically independent, non-profit, humanitarian organization. The association exists for the purpose of developing, participating in as well as implementing projects cutting across cultural lines, and which have as their main objective the promotion of reconciliation and integration among people through dialogue and collaboration. The objectives of the organization are primarily sought realized through projects rooted in interests commonly shared by the participants and cutting the lines of different cultures.
Levinsen went back to Bosnia Herzegovina in February 1998 and succeeded in convincing some old colleagues at the UNHCR that it might be a good idea to make some football schools after a concept developed by the Danish Football Association. Afterwards he also succeeded in raising some additional funds from different companies in Denmark, and since then Levinsen has been working full time organising Open Fun Football Schools and play-sports-activities for children in warn-torn and fragile societies.
The fun football concept
The Open Fun Football Schools are built on the experience of what war is doing to people and how it is dividing communities. It is a humanitarian project that use joyful games and the pedagogical “fun-football-concept” as a tool to stimulate the process of democracy, peace, stability and social cohesion in South Eastern Europe by re-establishing friendships and sports co-operation between otherwise opposed population groups. At the same time, they contribute to a promotion of football as a game.
The name Open Fun Football Schools was chosen to emphasize that the project is for children and open for everyone; boys and girls, fat and skinny, no matter their ethnic and social background etc. Moreover it is not important to be a talented football player to participate. Focusing on developing the children’s talents is not their main goal – that is the task of football clubs and football associations. The Open Fun Football School is a supplement to the very important work in football clubs. It is a new and joyful way of playing football, giving participants the chance to gain some new experiences. It is more important that children learn that playing football is “fun” .
At the Open Fun Football Schools it is all about educating children in a friendly environment where they can be happy and develop healthy friendships and interests. It is the balance between playing and learning that is important. Each child should have the possibility to express and develop him- or herself through the game.
Goals
The role and function of Open Fun Football Schools is to bring teachers, leaders, trainers and children from different ethnic and social backgrounds to work together. To promote democratic behavior through grassroots football and a basic principle of “sport for all” based on a strong local foundation, democratic principles, volunteerism and parent support. To bring new impulses and educate hundreds of qualified trainers from the football clubs and teachers from the elementary schools. To motivate children, trainers and teachers by developing get-togethers both on and off the field and to distribute thousands of footballs and other sport equipment to the benefit of the local football clubs.
The pedagogical goal depends of the target group. By implementing the specific “fun football” approach CCPA would like to give the children a powerful experience, which would inspire them to get registered or to stay at a football club. Football schools are successful if children unconditionally answer positively on the following questions: Did I have fun at the Open Fun Football School? Have I met any new friends at the Open Fun Football School? Have I learned any new tricks at the Open Fun Football School? If a child is not a member of any football club, will he or she beg the parents to be registered in a football club along with his or her friends?
“I like coming here. It is better than school and than playing at home alone. Here I meet a lot of my friends and other children. At school we can’t play like here…there is no equipment at school and the teachers are not as funny as the trainers here.” Ginam (12), Lebanon
In regard to the trainers the main goal is to recruit and educate young trainers who can continue working under the same principles of the schools even after the project. By implementing training seminars and by leaving all the equipment behind, CCPA hopes to motivate and encourage the local football clubs to continue their important community work in organizing grassroots football for their children all year round.
Responsible leaders and trainers will be especially alert about the creation of a psychical and social environment where adults have the chance to teach children how to play football and to educate them to live a responsible and constructive life on and off the playground. There should be a training environment where children listen to each other, take care, show tolerance, make compromises, take up the responsibilities together and realize they are dependable of each other. The trainers must aim to train children concrete football skills and let them experience through that process to become better in a football game. Additionally, children must experience companionship and coexistence – saying that everyone must have his or her own position in a society and that there has to be enough space for everyone no matter their qualifications, sex or skin color. The experience of unity during a game of football is essential. The children should acknowledge that everyone has a right to participate equally with the skill that each one possesses. First of all they will learn that these games are not against the other team members but with them as well. The experience of successes (mental experience), will positively influence their self-confidence, as well as the enjoyment of playing football with their friends will positively influence their personal development.
“To help here is a great hobby for me. I love children and to see them happy. When they come here, they forget their problems at school or at home and just start playing and having fun. When they return home after this they are smiling and are already looking forward to the next training”. Anami (20), Lebanon
Impact
The project started in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina with 12 football schools involving 2254 boys and girls, and 189 coaches and school leaders. Since then the project has evolved from being a reconciliation tool developed in the post-war context of Bosnia- Herzegovina to a tool to bridge understanding and tolerance across existing divides between population groups. In 2000 the schools had become a conflict-prevention measure in FYR Macedonia, helping forestall the processes that generate violence, hatred, fear and the well-known "national war psychosis". In the summer of 2003, Open Fun Football Schools staged a total of 78 schools involving 16,000 youngsters (13,000 boys and 3,000 girls) and 1,400 and school leaders from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro. Since then the program has evolved to the Trans Caucasus and Moldova and the Middle East with schools in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia Moldova and Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Currently 750 Open Fun Football schools have been established for a total of 150,000 boys and girls from 7-11 years old and approximately 13,000 voluntary coaches and leaders have been trained during regional seminars according to the specific fun football concept (duration 3-5 days).
The Open Fun Football Schools have created a very strong and dedicated platform of leaders, coaches, parents and children in the Balkans, in Trans Caucasus and in the Middle East that is promoting grassroots football for their children across ethnic, social and political lines. The schools have stimulated the formation of hundreds of local football clubs in the respective countries that are organising football for all children regardless gender, talent, ethnic or social backgrounds.
Current situation and future of the project
The future structure of Open Fun Football Schools programme from 2008-2012 is divided into local activities and regional and further education programmes. In regard to their local activities they hope for their offices to become fully integrated in the national football association, alternatively funded by the national football association in cooperation with the national government. The required financial resources to cover operational costs will be the most difficult to raise among local and national partners/ donors (Sustainability Report 2006). In addition they aim to have the municipalities engaged in the Open Fun Football Schools programme financing the local costs (accommodation and provision) of the leaders and coach education. Last summer 254 municipalities in the Balkans sponsored coaches, participating in the programme, for 100 euro per coach. With this fee CCPA could cover the expenses – such as accommodation etc – for their comprehensive coach education. Experiences have shown that the procurement and distribution of sports equipment is most expedient and cost-effective done centrally by Cross Cultures. The activities in the Middle East qualitatively differ from their programme in Europe due to a less developed football club structure.
The Open Fun Football project has evolved over the years and many schools have been opened in three regions of the world. The aim of the project is to recruit and educate young trainers who can continue working under the same principles of the schools even after the project.
Source: http://www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=162&typ=theme
