Religion is important in Sri Lanka as an identity marker, a community, a spiritual focus, and a cultural way of life.  In the rural areas, religious groups tend to live, work, educate their children, and enjoy their public spaces in distinct villages with very little connection to those of other traditions. In urban areas these barriers are looser, but still fraternization is largely along religious/ethnic lines. The long civil war has only reified these divisions and added an element of distrust to the already complex issue of identity.

In our religiously mixed workshops, some participants commented that they had never spoken to, for example, a Muslim person or a Christian person. I observed a certain joy in their discovery of common ground on both mundane and theological issues. We spoke together about the root teachings of each religion and explored the similarities of all traditions in fostering peace, harmony, respect, and equality. Group members acknowledged that these abstract concepts were not necessarily practiced but that at least the aims were shared.

To deepen our understanding of the role of identity in the context of violent conflict, we looked at the reality of our multiple identities, finding those that overlap and provide a cross-cutting shared identity, such as Sri Lankan, educator, religious leader, woman, soccer player, etc. We also explored the psychology of wounded identity, which again they share because many have been targeted and harmed in Sri Lanka because of their ethnic/religious identity. How we are socialized to develop prejudices, indulge in stereotyping, and grow up to hate other groups also figured in our workshop, and participants shared somewhat honestly what they had been taught about each other and how much they had to re-learn.

This exploration led us to discussions about their special status as religious leaders and role models. Each of them made commitments to return to their communities with a mandate to develop inter-religious activities and to be visible themselves with members of other religious groups. We hope they will begin to speak out against discrimination, to become more self-aware about their own expressions of prejudice, and to develop opportunities for teaching tolerance to others.

The accompanying photos, each an illustration of inter-religious communication, represent one small step in recovery from decades of war and enmity. I wish I could post them on billboards throughout Sri Lanka, which is so much in need of inspiration, connection, and hope.

Christian religious leaders open their intra-faith workshop with Karuna Center.

The beautiful island of Sri Lanka, lying just off the coast of southern India, has endured one of the more brutal wars of the last century, lasting 26 years and claiming 80-100,000 lives. The Sri Lankan government’s military victory in May 2009 brought an end to the violence but left many challenges in its wake, as reports of civilians deaths and human rights abuses abound and the grievances of Tamil and Muslim minorities remain unmet.

In October I travelled to the eastern coastal city of Trincomalee to launch a year-long reconciliation program with 80 Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders from surrounding areas. It was deeply affected by the war as well as the 2004 tsunami. Repeated flooding has further damaged homes and infrastructure, compounding endemic poverty.

Islamic imams begin their intra-faith workshop with an icebreaker in which they examine words of peace from diverse religious traditions.

In Sri Lanka, ethnic groups tend to be regionally divided, but in the Eastern District all three groups (Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim) live in close proximity, although the Tamil-speaking minorities are in the majority. Everyone is relieved that the war is over. However, grievances, mistrust, and enmity run deep, as do the social and psychological wounds of war. Addressing ethnic tensions head-on would be too fraught in a political climate where the Sinhalese-dominated government insists that the country’s only problem is one of economic development. Religious leaders offer a more indirect route. The Buddhist are all Sinhalese and the Hindus, Tamil; while Tamil speaking Muslims identify as their own ethnic group and during the war clashed with Hindu Tamils. Christian congregations form something of a bridge, containing both Tamil and Sinhalese speakers. The program will engage all four groups of religious leaders in community-based projects to rebuild relationships. However, sustainable peace will not come without a greater degree of social justice. As the participants come to understand each other’s challenges, it is hoped that together they can also advocate for non-discriminatory government policies.

Hindu religious leaders discuss the root causes and effects of conflict in Sri Lanka in small groups using a "tree of conflict" model.

Karuna Center is delighted to be working in partnership with the U.S. based development firm ARD and Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, one of Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest NGOs that has been engaged with peace rural development and community empowerment for over 50 years. The religious leaders will be able to build on Sarvodaya’s extensive village councils to develop their projects.

During this first visit, we held separate workshops for each faith group. Each group analyzed the layers of problems their communities face in the aftermath of war as well as sources of resilience and the ways in which their faith traditions can contribute to a more peaceful and tolerant future.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to three women peacebuilders for their non-violent efforts to achieve the safety of women and realize women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work. It is also a recognition of women’s contribution to peacebuilding efforts across the world—to bring an end to the suppression of women that still exists in many countries, and to realize the greater potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.

For 17 years since its founding, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding has been fortunate to partner with many women peacebuilders who have taken brave and effective steps toward peace across divides. In celebration of the three women winning the Nobel Peace Prize, we would like to feature four women peacebuilders with whom we have worked, and celebrate all ongoing peacebuilding efforts across the world.

Dishani Jayaweera

Director of Programs, the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation: Home for Diversity

After attending Karuna Center’s Peace Dialogue session in Sri Lanka and the CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures) program at the School for International Training [Vermont, USA] in Sri Lanka, Dishani co-founded the Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation (CPBR). With a strong belief in power of individuals and grassroots communities, Dishani and her partner Jayantha began working with youth and religious leaders to contribute to building a united Sri Lanka guided by compassion, justice, and equal respect for diversity. [1]

Dishani then participated in Karuna Center’s Leadership Training for Dialogue and Reconciliation, a two-year training-of-trainers program held in Sri Lanka from 2003 to 2005.

“My work with Karuna Center gave me the confidence that I could do more than manage logistics for development projects, and inspired me to start my own organization in 2003. Karuna Center was the first organization to work with us as a partner. Today we provide facilitation, program development, and consultation for grassroots groups as well as international organizations.”

Suzanne Ruboneka

Co-founder, Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe/ Rwanda

Suzanne is one of the founding members of Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe (“Women together for women”), a network of over 50 women’s non-governmental organizations throughout Rwanda founded in 1992. Pro-Femmes aims to empower women and increase their voice in society, eliminate all forms of gender-related discrimination, promote equality and equity between men and women, and develop sustainable peace in Rwanda.

“In our culture, there are still barriers for women to express themselves in public…there are no place for women to think, to look for solutions, to play a real role. How can we motivate women, give them the chance to get together to express themselves, without fear?” [2]

Since 2003, Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe and Karuna Center have worked to help Rwandan women assume effective roles in the process of building a peaceful culture. During our four-part training series from 2003 to 2005, women participants developed non-violent conflict resolution skills, which are integral to the establishment of a more secure environment between Hutus and Tutsis, who continue to live as neighbors.

Suzanne currently leads Pro-Femmes’ Peace Program. Suzanne has been a leader in helping victims and perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 meet and reconcile, in order to rebuild communities and a culture of peace. Her program also supports agricultural cooperatives, micro-lending projects, and youth initiatives.

Emsuda Mujagic

President, Screm do Mira/Bosnia

Emsuda Mujagic is the founder and president of a non-governmental organization, Screm do Mira (“Through Heart to Peace”), based in Sanski Most, Bosnia, and they have been working for reconciliation among the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims of northwestern Bosnia. The organization also runs programs to support Muslims in the Sanski Most area, who have been forcefully displaced from nearby towns of Prijedor and Kozarac, and help their return home.

“We all have important values and ideas, things we care about and want to share. Sometimes we feel our ideas can even change the world, and we want to let other people know how they can join in and make all our lives better.” [3]

In 1997, Emsuda invited Karuna Center to Bosnia to lead peacebuilding workshops for Bosniak and Serb women, who were seeking ways of post-civil war reconciliation. Karuna Center led a series of inter-ethnic dialogues for Bosnian and Serb women, which eventually developed into a larger inter-ethnic dialogue project for educators in 1997.

Mossarat Qadeem

Executive Director, PAIMAN Alumni Trust/Pakistan

Coming from a conservative Pashtun family in northern Pakistan, Mossarat dedicates her life to helping women become leaders of their own lives. As the Executive Director of PAIMAN Alumnit Trust, she develops training materials for building leadership skills and encourages women’s political participation and initiatives in gender mainstreaming across Pakistan and South Asia. Based in Islamabad, Pakistan, PAIMAN—promise in Uldu—is Pakistan’s first center for conflict transformation and peacebuilding, and has worked with 75,000 youths and women in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan. Mossarat taught for 14 years at the University of Peshawar’s Department of Political Science and served as the assistant director of the university’s Women’s Study Center, and she was also a founding member of the regional Women’s Peace Forum. [4]

In August 2009, Karuna Center’s Executive Director (then Associate Director) Olivia Dreier led peacebuilding training for PAIMAN and their partner organization in the Swat Valley and the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. In the following winter in 2010, Mossarat and her colleagues attended Dr. Paula Green’s CONTACT South Asia to enhance their peacebuilding capacity.

Reference

[1] http://www.peacedirectusa.org/peacebuilders/sri-lanka/

[2] Hamilton, Heather. Rwanda’s women: the key to reconstruction. The journal of humanitarian assistance: Online article. 10 May, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.aaw.cc/PDF_files/Rwandas%20Women2.pdf, Accessed on December 7, 2011.

[3] http://adis79202.tripod.com/index.html

[4] http://www.huntalternatives.org/pages/8236_mossarat_qadeem.cfm

Posted by Satoko Hirano

Satoko is an intern at Karuna Center for Peacebuilding since August, 2011. Satoko is an international student from Hiroshima, Japan, and studying anthropology with a focus on applied anthropology.

The absence of any means of pricing and/or limiting and taxing carbon emissions means that there is no economic incentive in the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions, the major cause of global warming, which is arguably the greatest threat we face as a global community. There is an ongoing division among environmental advocates over which form of carbon-emissions pricing should be adopted by U.S. legislation and policy. Wide public support will be required to get Congress to act, and little will happen if leading environmentalists are not all pulling in the same direction. Karuna Center was brought in tobegin a process of consensus building among environmental leaders so that they can move forward with greater clarity, unity, and impact.

Olivia leads a discussion at the Green Summit for Carbon Pricing

How can a market-based solution reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere? Three major ideas are on the table: cap-and-trade, cap-and-dividend, and a carbon tax. A “cap-and-trade” system would set a cap on carbon emissions, and then allow corporations to buy the right to pollute beyond that cap from other companies that have greener operations. A “cap-and-dividend” system would cap carbon at the source: corporations that sell oil, coal, and natural gas would buy permits to use carbon, and the revenue from these permits would be placed in a not-for-profit trust that would pay all U.S. citizens a dividend that would help offset rising fossil fuel prices. A “carbon tax” would tax the carbon content of combustible fossil fuels in order to reduce emissions, and return the revenues to the U.S. public through dividends or by reducing other taxes.

A central issue that emerged at the Summit was the need to include the communities most affected by carbon emissions in the process of advocating a solution. A number of environmental justice advocates representing communities where the major carbon-emitting factories are located (that tend to be poor and inhabited by people of color) raised concerns over mechanisms that would do little to reduce actual emissions. They also wish to be fully included in the development of new policy proposals.

The threat of global warming is real, and its affects are bound to contribute to the kinds of conflicts Karuna Center works to mitigate around the word. The Summit set in motion a very important process of dialogue among key leaders in the environmental movement, who are well versed in the techniques of advocacy but less familiar with consensus building. Karuna Center was honored to help, and we expect to facilitate follow up meetings to support policy development that represents the interests of a broad spectrum of stakeholders and to encourage efforts to build popular and political will for the passing of effective legislation. Among world nations, the U.S. emits the second-highest amount of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; it is essential that we start taking a leadership role in addressing the problem.

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.

A majority of the Peace Advocacy workshop participants also attended the festival, thus, despite the effort involved in moving quickly from one experience to the other, the kinetic energy and hope generated in Sindian carried over into the work in Oussouye. The Peace Advocacy participants were a large group (50 people), about one-half of them representatives of the local Peace Committees established by World Ed through the Peace in Casamance Project. The rest were staff of community radio stations that work in synergy with the Peace Committees, and staff from a number of NGOs.

Day one was focused on group discussion of the work of the Peace Committees in the year since they were formed, including both successes and continuing challenges. The successes described were striking examples of ways in which Committee members had intervened in both acute and repetitive conflicts to enable people to find effective solutions, for example in situations where youth routinely fight after football (soccer) matches. At the same time Committee members expressed discouragement about the tendency for their interventions to be received enthusiastically but without follow through. The purpose of this workshop thus was to further strengthen the capacity of this core of activists to affect others in their communities with a similar sense of confidence and responsibility regarding their own participation in contributing to either conflictual or peaceful coexistence.

At the conclusion of our 3-day Peace Advocacy workshop, the group met with the traditional King of Oussouye in a sacred forest not far from our training site.

With the Committee members’ reflections as a basis, the group began to explore the process of advocacy, both as an organized and coordinated set of activities, and as a process all people use in everyday life in an effort to bring about what they want. The purpose of this dual approach was to underline the value in all citizens learning to see themselves as capable of speaking up, both for themselves and on behalf of others, in ways that respect the needs and interests of others as well.

From advocacy in general we moved to advocacy for peace. A thorough presentation was made of the findings of the Do No Harm project, as well as the Reflecting Peace Practices project. Together, these two sets of very solid findings provide data of critical importance to peace practitioners. Do No Harm (DNH) offers humanitarian workers guidelines and processes to use to ensure that their work does not cause unintentional harm. Reflecting Peace Practices (RPP) applies this work to the field of peacebuilding, and in addition provides solid evidence about what effective peace practice entails. This includes the necessity for peace initiatives to assure that their work synergizes with the work of others in ways which eventually lead to impact at the level of socio-political structures, as well as impact on the values and attitudes of people. This information greatly interested participants and provided guidance for beginning to engage in the process of building a peace advocacy campaign.

The rest of the workshop was spent with participants in various work groups, actually going through each step in the process of developing an advocacy campaign, from conflict analysis to context analysis, to development of goal, strategy and action plan. An emphasis was placed on the creation of effective messages for a campaign, which were practiced via role plays. Doubtless partly in response to the impact of the festival, the group chose the area of trans-border relations as its focus, and developed two separate nascent campaigns.

At the end of the 2nd day of the Peace Advocacy training I led, a participant spontaneously got out his saxophone and people danced.

The workshop culminated in the entire group leaving our meeting room and walking through town for a visit to the traditional King of Oussouye in a sacred forest not far from our training site. This was an honor, and as Abdou Sarr (World Education’s Senegal Country Director) observed, it was transformed into an opportunity for advocacy for support of the project’s work for regional peace.

What was evident in this workshop was the extent to which the work of the Peace Committees has affected life and conflict in their communities. To say this was impressive hardly expresses how exceptional the work they have done is. The same is true for the radio staff, who take their responsibility as journalists for peace very seriously, and are generous in what they give to their work. I think a strength of this workshop lies in the way the RPP material instructs us to make sure that peace work is conceived to ultimately have an impact at the socio-political level, even if the work is primarily at the grass roots level. This impact may occur either within the project itself or through its synergies with other initiatives. Holding this focus helped immensely to support a sense of confidence that the work these Casamancais are doing may indeed affect the conditions of the lives of all Casamancais for the better. This helps to avoid the frequent experience of giving time, talent and passion to an endeavor which ultimately does not accumulate to peace in general.

The deep vibrant cultural traditions of Casamancais were in full flower during these 7 days. At the same time, the question arose of the evolution of culture as an ever-changing set of beliefs and guidelines. Traditional attitudes in the area of gender have rarely supported the equal human rights of women in any culture. Thus a question which I think presents itself currently for peace workers in Casamance is how to hold and nourish the values which truly do sustain the remarkable acceptance of multiple ethnic groups and religious traditions, and also introduce values concerning equal rights and opportunities for all groups, whether this concerns men and women, traditional leaders and new leaders who may emerge among women and youth, and other areas as well. Casamance is unique, outstanding, in my experience, in the richness and vibrancy of its human resources, and those resources seem far more than enough to both bring peace and develop patterns of living together which sustain it.

Paula Green with Vahidin Omanovic in front of the Center for Peacebuilding in Sanski Most, Bosnia

A decade later, Bosnia is both the same and different. Most of the homes destroyed in the 1992-95 Bosnian War have been rebuilt, either by their former owners or by displaced people seeking shelter because their own homes had been demolished and they no longer felt safe returning. Some housing, however, remains in its bombed-out state, serving as a stark reminder that war was recent and human beings can be destructive in the extreme.

The fields are blooming again, the pastures have been restocked with animals, the  infrastructure repaired, and the shops busy. What locals report is that the primary difference between pre-war and post-war Bosnia is a sharp ethnic separation, with Bosniaks (formerly called Bosnian Muslims), Serbs, and Croats living in different regions and no longer in neighborly relation to each other.  Not only is the dream of an ethnically mixed Yugoslavia long gone, but the dream of Bosnia as the most diverse state in the region was also shattered by war and further harmed by the postwar legal arrangements.

Words on a memorial in the town of Kozarac, listing the names of 1,266 civilians who were killed in 1992

I visited the two cities of Sanski Most and Prijedor in northern Bosnia, where Karuna Center worked on peacebuilding programs with women and with educators from 1997-2002. My visits with the individuals I knew all those years ago were richly rewarding, emotional, and affirmative of Karuna Center’s contributions and impact on their lives. My host was Vahidin Omanovic, a Bosniak educator who now runs an NGO in Sanski Most called the Center for Peacebuilding, or CIM in the Bosnian language. Vahidin has just been awarded the Bremen Peace Award from Germany in honor of his courageous and creative inter-ethnic work in Bosnia.  During our years in Bosnia, Vahidin, who is an imam, was a teacher and the only person in our project who spoke English, which he had learned from watching television as an adolescent refugee in a Slovenian displaced persons camp. Because he spoke English and took so enthusiastically to our work, we sent Vahidin to the US for our CONTACT Program at the School for International Training and then helped him complete an MA in peace and conflict.

2011: The same building, restored: now a peace center

1992: a destroyed building in the Bosnian village of Kozarac

Vahidin and I went first to visit Emsuda Mujagic, the woman who originally invited Karuna Center to Bosnia and who now runs her own successful peace center (see photos, to the right) where she offers income generation projects, legal aid, women’s groups, NGO development advice, and groups for Bosniak veterans.  Emsuda had gathered 5 members of our original 1997-2000 women’s group, all of whom spoke about the importance of our women’s circles in their individual and community healing. They especially remembered the depth, honesty, and integrity of our dialogue work, and reflected on the level of transformation that emerged from their experiences of dialogue with other Bosniaks and especially with Serb women.  Emsuda continues to be a pioneer, the first to rebuild her home in the completely destroyed village of Kozarac, setting a precedent for others to follow and now a leader in this revived and thriving Bosniak community. Relations with Serbs in the area, however, remain tense.

In conversations with the educators from Sanski Most and Prijedor we met with, we again heard how helpful the training program for educators had been for them, and how they have tried to carry on the ideals and values they internalized from our years together.  They admit, however, that they are not hopeful at present that Bosnia might be re-integrated, and they do what they can as Bosniak teachers in Sanski Most or Serb teachers in Prijedor.

Paula with Emsuda Mujagic (right)

My sense is that a national program of healing, called for from the government, would be the best way to jump-start the kind of conversations necessary for exploring the past in order to build a safe future. This divided government, however, has no interest in such endeavors and in fact, many wish to keep Bosnians apart from each other according to their ethnicity. There are no national NGOs with the status to initiate such a program, and no government units such as the department of education would have such a mandate. This lack of acknowledgment of the crimes of war worries me, as I do believe we need to learn from our past in order not to repeat it, and there is no such learning emerging throughout Bosnian society. Maybe it will come in time, and maybe the Bosnians can keep their country together and slowly repair their broken hearts and shattered communities. But so much more could happen if a concerted national effort toward healing and reconciliation was encouraged and modeled by those with visibility, especially if the roster of cheerleaders for healing was led by members of Bosnia’s rich ethnic diversity.

KCP Executive Director Olivia Dreier interviewing Orzala Ashraf in Kabul, 2007

We recently looked back to a recording made during a Karuna Center workshop in Kabul, in which Olivia Dreier interviewed an Afghani activist named Orzala Ashraf, founder of Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan. This interview, from almost four years ago, is remarkably relevant now.

It seems that lately, when we in the U.S. talk about the conflict in Afghanistan, the idea of peace achieved through victory – and the death of an enemy – is at the front of our minds. Yet here we have a courageous Afghani woman, who led underground efforts to educate women during the Taliban regime, saying that peace is not built so easily.

You can listen to an 8-minute version of the interview on our website, which includes her work during the Taliban years. This is a transcript of some of Orzala’s thoughts on building peace:

I think that the approach the government in this country and even the international community took [in the years since the military defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan] was not the collaborative part of our experience, as we discussed this morning. It was, rather, avoiding conflict. In order to show something to the world: “Look, we win this war,” they avoided many conflicts existing in this country. For example, there have been enormous atrocities, enormous violations of human rights; nobody discusses it.

We have this famous proverb that says “teer pa heer.” Teer means past, and heer means forgetting: we should forget the past. My strong belief is that as long as we go on with this teer pa heer ideology or policy in saying we have to forget what happens in the past, we are not going to have a really good future. And in this country the main approach was this teer pa heer approach: to say, “OK, whatever is past, we forget it.” That’s the result of returning back to a fragile situation, because we did not really resolve the conflicts existing, but rather we avoid looking at them.

One of my hopes is that we, though our own efforts at the civil society level, take lots of steps to resolve the conflicts and not to avoid them, to use negotiations, and to go countrywide, to the rural areas, to communities everywhere, and introduce to them that always, peace is an option: It is in favor of everyone in their family, everyone in the community, everyone in the district, province, and country level to use peaceful means, and not violent means, and that can be possible through peacebuilding.

The Karuna Center training in which Orzala Ashraf participated was given in partnership with our colleagues at the Institute for Inclusive Security, who recently issued an update on their continued work with Afghan women leaders.

Orzala Ashraf and other participants in the 2007 Karuna Center/Institute for Inclusive Security seminar, "Securing Afghanistan: Women's Vital Contributions" in Kabul

A woman from northern Sudan shares her vision for the future of the coalition during a workshop exercise

I recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya, where I facilitated dialogue for a coalition of 30 women from North and South Sudan. The people of South Sudan recently voted for independence, and on July 9 this largest country of Africa will become two separate nations, a result of peace talks that followed 20 years of civil war.

Karuna Center was invited to lead a workshop for these women by our colleagues at the Institute for Inclusive Security (based in Washington, D.C.), which advocates for the inclusion of women in political processes such as constitutions, parliaments, ministries, and elections. Their Sudan desk officer was a student of conflict transformation who I had the pleasure to teach at the SIT Graduate Institute. We have also received support from the Institute over the years, and are collaborating on a future program for women members of parliament and civil society in Nepal.

This coalition of women leaders from North and South Sudan has been meeting for about 5 years, offering support to each other and shared advocacy for women through all the years of the dreadful civil war. KCP was asked to facilitate a process where the women could share honestly with each other about the impending separation and its impact on their coalition. Dialogue skills, group facilitation techniques, and a peacebuilding lens on their advocacy work were new contributions to participants, and were well received. Some of the group members lead trainings at home, and they especially appreciated new tools and approaches for the design and delivery of their own workshops.

Sudanese women attend a Karuna Center/Institute for Inclusive Security training in Nairobi, May 2011

We worked very well as a team, and both the participants and my co-trainers from the Institute for Inclusive Security were pleased with the process and outcomes. The Sudanese women are determined to continue their coalition, supporting each other as their two governments write or amend constitutions and draft civic and legal structures. The government in the north may further enshrine traditional Islamic restrictions in ways that will be difficult for these activist and highly educated Northern Sudanese women. In the south, where the women fought alongside the militias, they are now sidelined while the men broker the peace.

Although I have worked with individual Sudanese women and men as CONTACT students, this was my first time with a Sudanese group, and I hope to do more with the Institute for Inclusive Security to support this ongoing program. This group of Sudanese women felt extremely warm, feisty, and outgoing, filled with music and dance in spite of the hardships. They have truly come to understand that women from the various identity groups in Sudan are not their enemies and that they need each other for any hope of establishing human rights and dignity for women in both Sudanese countries. As they say, Insha’Allah.

Nepali political leaders at Karuna Center training, Feb. 2011

Until recently, we were not able to engage a key element: the Maoists, who hold 38% of seats in the multi-party parliament. This is far and away the largest proportion of any party, but complicated political reasons prevented any of them from participating in Karuna Center initiatives last summer and fall.

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly was elected in 2008 as the new republic’s first parliament, following a 10-year civil war between Maoist revolutionaries and the monarchy. Advocates for democracy allied with the Maoists to bring about the fall of the kingdom in 2006. Now that the war is over, Maoists party members represent the interests of many previously marginalized members of Nepali society, including ethnic minorities, excluded castes, and rural women. But the legacies of armed conflict, and a political culture steeped in authoritarianism, have made it difficult for political parties to cooperate enough to form a stable government and write a new constitution.

Nepali political leaders participate in Karuna Center training, Feb. 2011

After months of trying and failing to incorporate Maoist participation in our workshops, we began to pursue a “Backchannel Group” that would meet parallel to our peacebuilding trainings and engage various party members more informally around their differences. In February, twelve people from the top rung of Maoist leadership joined 10 other high-level parliamentarians from other parties who were also new to our workshops.

It was difficult to get everyone to actually stop and listen to each other, but eventually they did, reaching past their usual stance of positional bargaining to a deeper understanding of each other’s real concerns and fears.

Four of the Maoists then joined the Backchannel Group for an intensive day and a half retreat, which also went surprisingly well. Somehow the moment seemed ripe, with the Maoists and others all recognizing that they need to move towards compromise if they don’t want to totally alienate the public who elected them with a high hopes for a new, democratic Nepal—a public now increasingly disillusioned with their politicians and impatient with a stalled process.

Through our three sets of trainings, funded by the U.S. State Department, we have now trained 75 leaders within the Constituent Assembly in interest- based (or “principled”) negotiations and collaborative (or “adaptive”) leadership.

The Backchannel Group delved into some deep, substantive issues, notably forms of federalism and the integration of Maoists cadres into the Nepalese army. They did an exercise in which they met in party groups and listed out what they thought the interests, concerns, and fears were behind the positions of each of the other parties. They then had to check with each party to see if they understood accurately and revise accordingly. It was a real exercise in listening. The subsequent understanding of each other’s fears was particularly revealing. A “systems analysis” of the kinds of self-reinforcing binds of mutual suspicion between parties led to a deep and honest dialogue.

The Backchannel Group in Nepal

There was a palpable, collective sense of a new dynamic occurring in real time, that the Backchannel Group, now comprised of all parties, was born as a body that could actually achieve something. Participants see the Backchannel as a space for reaching a deeper understanding of what lies behind each other’s positions, where they can generate a variety of new options on the tough, divisive issues to bring back to their respective parties and the “front channel,” or formal negotiations.

We hope that a follow up trip to Nepal in early April will bring new progress. The process has confirmed for us the immense value of creating safe space for relationship building between conflicting parties, whether in the halls of parliament or in local communities fractured by legacies of violence.

CONTACT students visit a TIG (Travaux Interet Generale, or “Work in the General Interest”) camp, where those who have confessed to genocide crimes may perform community service instead of serving prison sentences.

One of the more remarkable testimonies we heard was from a young man who joined the Hutu militias in the Congo in the late ’90’s and participated in attacks that included rape and plunder on Rwandan villages. On one of these raids he was severely wounded by Rwandan government soldiers. To his great surprise, rather than being killed, he was treated in a Rwandan hospital and then sent to a demobilization camp. After returning to his village, he decided to participate in a local reconciliation training led by Karuna Center’s long-term partner ProFemme, a national network of women’s organizations. The experience dramatically changed his outlook, and he in turn now co-leads reconciliation trainings together with survivors.

We witnessed post-genocide work on many levels. We heard from a panel of survivors working with the Quaker-led Friends Peace House on a trauma healing program (which Adin helped to develop) that engages survivors and perpetrators together, recognizing that all were emotionally wounded by the violence.  We also held a dialogue with staff at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre who teach the history of the genocide to high school students of mixed ethnicity.

We met with the Women’s parliamentary caucus on the gains and remaining challenges for Rwandan women (at 57%, Rwanda now leads the world for the highest number of women parliamentarians)—and the Rwandan Men’s Resource Center, which leads trainings on positive images of Rwandan manhood.  We also talked with staff of Radio La Benevolencija, an NGO that leads radio soap operas with a theme of reconciliation and has a listenership of over 90% of Rwandans (and with which Adin consults).  Yet more of our community visits are detailed in SIT’s blog about the trip.

We were surprised with a rare opportunity to witness a Gacaca trial relating to the 1994 genocide.  Though Gacaca trials have been drawing to a close, we were invited to attend an appeal.  The Gacaca trials are a system of community justice, inspired by traditional methods, in which perpetrators of the genocide are tried within the communities where the crimes were committed.  Those who confess receive reduced sentencing.  One of the CONTACT Graduate Certificate students in our group, Derek Miodownik, wrote up his impressions of the Gacaca process he witnessed:

Upon arrival, we could see a man approximately in his 50’s clad in a pink shirt and long shorts that, as we came to find out, is the standard issue prisoner attire in Rwanda. The man in pink who I will call Bertrand was appealing his original Gacaca Court conviction of rape and violent attack at a roadblock for which he was currently serving a life sentence.

The judges took their seats behind a table at the front of the room and put on sashes that said Inyangamugayo, meaning “Person of Integrity.” The process seemed to follow a loose structure whereby the judges first took testimony and asked clarifying questions of witnesses from which they derived questions for Bertrand, and his responses would often be refuted by either the witness or anyone else who claimed to have pertinent and contradictory information. Once all the listed witnesses had been deposed, the floor was open for anyone else who wanted to come forward with information, and this same clarifying and questioning process ensued. This discovery phase often turned up names of other people who were not present at the hearing, but who could provide critical testimony if summonsed.

Spectators assemble near the building in which the Gacaca trial was held.

The site of the hearing on the second day was under a large tree at the base of a slope where it flattened out to meet the road. By the time we arrived many villagers had already assembled, and it was then that I truly understood why it was called Gacaca (Grass) Court.

The second day of the hearing brought new witnesses, and the questions from the judges got increasingly detailed and investigatory. They would hone in on questions such as, “What did you buy at the store?”, “What time were you there?”, “What were you carrying?”, and the responses would spark many doubtful snickers for community members in attendance. Once again, the judges’ highly investigatory

approach led to new names and details being surfaced, and, accordingly, new summonses issued for another session.

The third day of the hearing brought additional witnesses who contended that they did not see Bertrand at the roadblock or participating in any of the violent attacks that occurred there as Tutsis tried to flee and take shelter outside the village.  The day was marked by more sounds of disbelief or contempt among those present, with several community members becoming visibly shaken and upset.  Bertrand was given a final chance to make a statement and delivered an impassioned insistence of his innocence.

Gacaca judges who heard the appeal stay to answer CONTACT students' questions after the appeal.

The entire process was truly fascinating to witness: The thoroughness of the judges; The open forum approach to participation; The spontaneously unfolding content and responsive line of questioning; The myriad pieces of a jigsaw puzzle picture held by community members and assembled by the judges, themselves volunteers.

I heard it remarked several times that the genocide happened in broad daylight, so people must have seen what happened. This notion that the truth is discoverable through the pooled knowledge that inherently exists in communities seems to drive the Gacaca Court process. While so many people perished, there are still survivors who bore witness, or know someone who did, or carry pieces of critical information. And in much the same way that the Gacaca Court judges piece together their cases question by question, the Gacaca Court process itself has seemingly pieced together the fractured image of Rwanda, relationship by relationship.

This is the reason I lead this trip to Rwanda.  Out of the most horrific violence, Rwandan people have developed new methodologies for transforming conflict and promoting healing and reconciliation. While many justifiably criticize the lacks in open political space and freedom of the press and there is undeniably a long way to go, we have much to learn from what is happening in Rwandan communities.