Youth power and peace advocacy in southern Senegal

Earlier this summer, I facilitated a training in Peace Advocacy in Oussouye, Senegal as part of our ongoing work to support the Comites de Paix (Peace Committees) and community-based radio stations in the Casamance region. As discussed in the report of my last trip, the Casamancais people have endured a civil war between rebels and the Senegalese national government for the last 25 years.

At the youth festival, there were many spiritual creatures such as this one, which play a role in the traditional religion of the region.

The three day training in Peace Advocacy in Oussouye took place immediately following a three day trans-border festival of youth culture, organized by World Education Casamance for 500 youth from Casamance, Guinea Bissau and Gambia. I attended this youth festival, held in Sindian, Casamance, April 28-30, as a guest of the World Ed team. The training I facilitated, Plaidoyer et la Gestion Sensible du Conflit (Conflict Sensitive Peace Advocacy), took place May 2-4 in the town of Oussouye, and was followed by a de-brief for future planning.

The festival of youth culture was a profoundly exciting, engaging and effective experience, including ample opportunity for youth to sing, dance and compete together, as well as an intense day of collective dialogue about both the aspirations and the responsibilities facing the youth of the three countries. The festival culminated in the formal delivery of a declaration on the part of the youth to their respective leaderships at all levels.

Weaving the fabric of grassroots peacebuilding in Senegal

Five young men and a woman file into our midst and take their seats in a row. Their teacher stands in front of them and calls the roll. He gets to one young man who’s dressed in traditional costume. He berates the student for appearing in such dress and dismisses him. The young man next to the dismissed student stands, confronts the teacher angrily and follows his fellow student out of the class. The teacher continues with the roll call. Another student stands, and respectfully explains to the teacher that the student in traditional garb is required to dress that way during his period of circumcision. In older days youth in the process of circumcision did not come to school, but now they’re required to. If he wore regular clothes he would be in trouble at home. “Please, respect his culture and allow him to return.” The teacher coughs gruffly and assents, and the roll call continues.

The scene I describe above was a role-play—the last moment in a workshop for journalists of grassroots radio stations in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, West Africa. In July, I traveled to the Casamance to facilitate workshops as a Karuna Center associate, practicing ways to weave ideas about peacebuilding into these journalists’ radio programming.