Faces around the room light up as hands streak into the air. After more than 20 years of war between northern and southern Sudan, participants in this training are excited to be talking about peace.
CRS is training government representatives and other community leaders in southern Sudan on how to resolve conflicts peacefully. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"We southerners are really suffering, during the war and up to now," says the Honorable Agnes Odwar, a member of parliament for Torit County. "We're now learning how to bring peace to our people, families and communities."
Over eight months, Catholic Relief Services brought 40 participants together from across southern Sudan for five week-long workshops. The goal was simple: increase community leaders' ability to peacefully resolve conflicts over the long term. Using these new skills, however, is a significant challenge.
Although the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 ended 22 years of civil war, peace in the south is fragile. Local conflicts—such as cattle raids, militia activity and tension over sharing scarce resources—remain common. Also imperiling the peace are highly charged national issues, including delays in implementing the CPA and the upcoming vote in 2011 on self-determination for South Sudan and Abyei, a highly sensitive, oil-rich border area still under dispute.
"Representatives from Abyei and 9 of the 10 southern states—including state directors of the South Sudan Peace Commission—attended this training," notes Paul Nantulya, CRS' peacebuilding program manager in southern Sudan. "Community leaders experienced in advanced peacebuilding techniques are now available across southern Sudan to mediate conflicts. This is an incredibly exciting and promising development."
Breaking the Cycle of Violence
After more than 20 years of war, a culture of violence has become part of society in southern Sudan.
Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience teaches participants to peacefully resolve conflict over the long term. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"Communities need to learn how to foster peace, but current conditions make this difficult," explains Anisia Achieng, a CRS peacebuilding officer. "Families are still displaced, people have easy access to arms, and tough living conditions make some people desperate."
Fortunately, the government of South Sudan has set up the South Sudan Peace Commission. This body is tasked with promoting peace and reconciliation across the 10 southern states and has established local peace commissions at the state, county and community levels. The hope is that peace commission staff will identify problems before they turn violent and help parties in conflict resolve their differences.
CRS projects also help promote peace across the region. A key activity is an extensive leadership training program presented in partnership with Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). Known as the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program, the training teaches participants to peacefully resolve conflict over the long term—an essential skill in volatile post-conflict environments.
Just when CRS and EMU were beginning the training program in southern Sudan, the government began appointing peace commission directors for each state. These directors were invited to join the workshops, as were the paramount chief and another traditional elder from Abyei. In the end, government representatives, elected officials, elders, parish priests and peacebuilding officers from local nonprofits all came together from across the region to learn conflict mitigation and leadership skills.
Peaceful Approaches to Conflict
Meeting five times between August 2007 and April 2008, the STAR participants explored five principles that form the foundation of a peaceful, healthy society: security, conflict transformation, justice, trauma healing and identity. In addition, the final workshop focused on developing leadership abilities. Hands-on sessions let participants practice a range of new skills, including active listening, conflict mediation and the ability to see issues from multiple points of view.
Group discussion and hands-on practice ensure skills are relevant and practical. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"[Other] trainings only touch one or two points of the star. Then they try to solve a problem, and it comes back again," explains Reverend George King, a peacebuilding project officer with Lutheran World Service.
In contrast, the STAR method goes beyond basic conflict resolution to achieve conflict transformation. This involves examining the roots of a problem, analyzing the current situation, determining what's needed for healthy relationships moving forward and ensuring mechanisms are in place to prevent recurrence of the same problem.
For example, villages who raid each other's cattle typically reconcile by sitting down together. They come up with a peace agreement and sanctify it through a traditional ceremony, such as killing a bull or goat. Peace holds for a month or two, but then another raid occurs.
Conflict transformation takes resolution a few steps further. When communities sit down, they also examine the root causes of the conflict—limited grazing land, for example—and ensure the peace agreement addresses these issues as well. Communities also agree to have traditional local peace committees and new peace commission staff regularly monitor the agreement to prevent repeat outbreaks.
Such transformation doesn't happen overnight, however—one of the reasons the training program spanned eight months. This extended timeframe gave STAR participants time to reflect on new approaches to peacebuilding. Participants were also able to test and refine skills in the field between sessions, breaking into three groups to identify and resolve a conflict in Ikotos, Torit and Abyei.
"The training has affected my life so much and even helped me to understand myself better," Reverend King adds. "I can see a problem from a different angle. I don't address you; I address the problem."
Personal Learning for Communal Impact
While the training prepares participants to use conflict transformation and peacebuilding skills professionally in their communities, attendees also go through their own personal journey of healing. Most participants lost family members and friends during the civil war. Many were also forced to flee Sudan for years, even being separated from their husbands and children.
Forty participants from across southern Sudan graduated as "Leaders in Peacebuilding" in April 2008. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"The trauma in me has been released," notes Beatrice Omony Ogak, director of child welfare for the ministry of social development in the state of Eastern Equatoria. Beatrice's child was killed during an attack by the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group that sometimes conducts raids in southern Sudan. "I had hatred built up toward the offender, but I wouldn't meet with them," she says. "Now I've forgiven them, and today I've become the example. People expected me to be down, but I raise my head. I now build my future."
"This workshop has made some changes in my life. It's given me some strength and courage and has helped me in solving my neighbor's problems," the Honorable Odwar adds. "Even in my own family, I now have the courage to talk to my husband when having problems."
CRS is expanding STAR training activities in Abyei in hopes of increasing the area's ability to prevent outbreaks of violence over contested issues. The 40 program participants, who graduated as "Leaders in Peacebuilding" in early April 2008, are also continuing their ongoing work to transform southern Sudan into a place that wages peace instead of war.
Debbie DeVoe is CRS' regional information officer in east Africa, based in Nairobi। She recently attended a STAR training in conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Ikotos, South Sudan।
CRS is training government representatives and other community leaders in southern Sudan on how to resolve conflicts peacefully. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"We southerners are really suffering, during the war and up to now," says the Honorable Agnes Odwar, a member of parliament for Torit County. "We're now learning how to bring peace to our people, families and communities."
Over eight months, Catholic Relief Services brought 40 participants together from across southern Sudan for five week-long workshops. The goal was simple: increase community leaders' ability to peacefully resolve conflicts over the long term. Using these new skills, however, is a significant challenge.
Although the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 ended 22 years of civil war, peace in the south is fragile. Local conflicts—such as cattle raids, militia activity and tension over sharing scarce resources—remain common. Also imperiling the peace are highly charged national issues, including delays in implementing the CPA and the upcoming vote in 2011 on self-determination for South Sudan and Abyei, a highly sensitive, oil-rich border area still under dispute.
"Representatives from Abyei and 9 of the 10 southern states—including state directors of the South Sudan Peace Commission—attended this training," notes Paul Nantulya, CRS' peacebuilding program manager in southern Sudan. "Community leaders experienced in advanced peacebuilding techniques are now available across southern Sudan to mediate conflicts. This is an incredibly exciting and promising development."
Breaking the Cycle of Violence
After more than 20 years of war, a culture of violence has become part of society in southern Sudan.
Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience teaches participants to peacefully resolve conflict over the long term. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"Communities need to learn how to foster peace, but current conditions make this difficult," explains Anisia Achieng, a CRS peacebuilding officer. "Families are still displaced, people have easy access to arms, and tough living conditions make some people desperate."
Fortunately, the government of South Sudan has set up the South Sudan Peace Commission. This body is tasked with promoting peace and reconciliation across the 10 southern states and has established local peace commissions at the state, county and community levels. The hope is that peace commission staff will identify problems before they turn violent and help parties in conflict resolve their differences.
CRS projects also help promote peace across the region. A key activity is an extensive leadership training program presented in partnership with Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). Known as the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program, the training teaches participants to peacefully resolve conflict over the long term—an essential skill in volatile post-conflict environments.
Just when CRS and EMU were beginning the training program in southern Sudan, the government began appointing peace commission directors for each state. These directors were invited to join the workshops, as were the paramount chief and another traditional elder from Abyei. In the end, government representatives, elected officials, elders, parish priests and peacebuilding officers from local nonprofits all came together from across the region to learn conflict mitigation and leadership skills.
Peaceful Approaches to Conflict
Meeting five times between August 2007 and April 2008, the STAR participants explored five principles that form the foundation of a peaceful, healthy society: security, conflict transformation, justice, trauma healing and identity. In addition, the final workshop focused on developing leadership abilities. Hands-on sessions let participants practice a range of new skills, including active listening, conflict mediation and the ability to see issues from multiple points of view.
Group discussion and hands-on practice ensure skills are relevant and practical. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"[Other] trainings only touch one or two points of the star. Then they try to solve a problem, and it comes back again," explains Reverend George King, a peacebuilding project officer with Lutheran World Service.
In contrast, the STAR method goes beyond basic conflict resolution to achieve conflict transformation. This involves examining the roots of a problem, analyzing the current situation, determining what's needed for healthy relationships moving forward and ensuring mechanisms are in place to prevent recurrence of the same problem.
For example, villages who raid each other's cattle typically reconcile by sitting down together. They come up with a peace agreement and sanctify it through a traditional ceremony, such as killing a bull or goat. Peace holds for a month or two, but then another raid occurs.
Conflict transformation takes resolution a few steps further. When communities sit down, they also examine the root causes of the conflict—limited grazing land, for example—and ensure the peace agreement addresses these issues as well. Communities also agree to have traditional local peace committees and new peace commission staff regularly monitor the agreement to prevent repeat outbreaks.
Such transformation doesn't happen overnight, however—one of the reasons the training program spanned eight months. This extended timeframe gave STAR participants time to reflect on new approaches to peacebuilding. Participants were also able to test and refine skills in the field between sessions, breaking into three groups to identify and resolve a conflict in Ikotos, Torit and Abyei.
"The training has affected my life so much and even helped me to understand myself better," Reverend King adds. "I can see a problem from a different angle. I don't address you; I address the problem."
Personal Learning for Communal Impact
While the training prepares participants to use conflict transformation and peacebuilding skills professionally in their communities, attendees also go through their own personal journey of healing. Most participants lost family members and friends during the civil war. Many were also forced to flee Sudan for years, even being separated from their husbands and children.
Forty participants from across southern Sudan graduated as "Leaders in Peacebuilding" in April 2008. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
"The trauma in me has been released," notes Beatrice Omony Ogak, director of child welfare for the ministry of social development in the state of Eastern Equatoria. Beatrice's child was killed during an attack by the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group that sometimes conducts raids in southern Sudan. "I had hatred built up toward the offender, but I wouldn't meet with them," she says. "Now I've forgiven them, and today I've become the example. People expected me to be down, but I raise my head. I now build my future."
"This workshop has made some changes in my life. It's given me some strength and courage and has helped me in solving my neighbor's problems," the Honorable Odwar adds. "Even in my own family, I now have the courage to talk to my husband when having problems."
CRS is expanding STAR training activities in Abyei in hopes of increasing the area's ability to prevent outbreaks of violence over contested issues. The 40 program participants, who graduated as "Leaders in Peacebuilding" in early April 2008, are also continuing their ongoing work to transform southern Sudan into a place that wages peace instead of war.
Debbie DeVoe is CRS' regional information officer in east Africa, based in Nairobi। She recently attended a STAR training in conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Ikotos, South Sudan।
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Authored by Debbie DeVoe who is CRS' regional information officer in east Africa, based in Nairobi. She recently attended a STAR training in conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Ikotos, South Sudan.
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