Conciliation Resources - March 2010

Mary Dobbing, Conciliation Resources

Dear Friends,

In December I recounted my experience of the first three months at Conciliation Resources and was anticipating the publication and London launch of the latest in the series ‘Accord: a review of international peace initiatives’. The 2009 edition of Accord called: ‘Whose peace is it anyway? Connecting Somali and international peacemaking’ was launched at the House of Commons on 15th December. It includes over thirty articles, ranging from interviews with Somali elders and senior diplomats from the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the United Nations; to contributions from Somali and international peacemaking practitioners, academics, involved parties, civil society and women’s organizations. As I joined the Accord project team, the publication was in its final stages and I was able to help with the finishing touches such as researching the ‘further reading’ pages which involved detailed and painstaking checking of references according to a standard referencing system. As well as this, every page has to be checked and checked again for typographical errors which became a team effort for this substantial production.

Finding a suitable venue for the London launch near to Christmas was quite a challenge and was resolved with being invited to use a House of Commons committee room by a member the All Party Parliamentary Group on conflict issues. The House of Commons staff were very helpful and arranged for a screen and projector for us to show an excerpt from a film about traditional Somali peace-making. It was satisfying that on a night so close to Christmas there was a huge attendance for the launch, with many having to stand. Alongside the Members of Parliament, there were academics, civil servants from Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, international diplomats and representatives of the Somali diaspora community in Britain and visiting Somalis invited for the event. Everyone was very appreciative of CR choosing to focus on the small but positive chinks of light which local peacemaking initiatives represent and which are described in this Accord.

Since then there have been launches in New York and Washington, and soon in Nairobi. Part of my work has been researching suitable contacts and compiling guest lists of key policy makers from governments and intergovernmental organisations in all these places and centres of power to press CR’s key policy messages from the Somalia project. It is gratifying for me and very generous of CR to include my name and ‘QPSW Peaceworker’ in the list of acknowledgments. In the Somali translation I have learned that the Somali for a ‘Peaceworker’ is ‘Masuulka Nabbadda’. Not a lot of people know that!

As well as the publication of a main Accord edition every year, previous Accords in the series are updated to give the latest information about the peace processes covered and where they have got to. Alongside bringing the Somalia Accord to completion, we have been working on an update of the Accord about Northern Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Juba peace process called: ‘Initiatives to end the violence in northern Uganda’. I helped with proofreading and researching the photographs which would accompany the articles and the biographies of the contributors and main actors. I was pleased to be able find the photo which has gone on the front cover. The task was to search photo libraries and find a suitable picture which represented peacemaking, and which was positive and inclusive. The photograph I found shows Ugandan internally displaced persons, men and women, raising their hands in support of traditional justice systems during a consultation meeting with members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Most of the pictures from this period are of grim looking armed fighters or men in suits sitting around tables. Our colleagues in the East and Central Africa Programme at CR will be circulating this publication in their region affected by the LRA, including Southern Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central Africa Republic as well as Northern Uganda, and it is being translated into French.

Another resource which CR’s West Africa Programme has produced is a short film in two local languages called ‘Crossing Borders’. In what seems like a very short time, the film has been made using local actors from Sierra Leone; it has been edited, English subtitles added and numerous emails and tapes sent between the film makers and CR staff who have been variously in Sierra Leone, Haiti, New York and London. Twenty first century technology and communications have been used to the full and today we received the DVDs which we had to put into the specially designed and printed cardboard sleeves within half an hour of the courier coming to take the package to Freetown in Sierra Leone for the launch on 10th March. The film will be shown in the Mano River border areas to support security sector reform. The theme came out of 300 interviews with women cross-border traders, local border police and ex-fighters about security and the problems of life in the border area far from the centre of governmental control and accountability. The film takes dominant themes from the interviews and puts them into a script for the actors representing these three protagonists; a woman describing her problems crossing the border to trade goods and experiencing harassment and ‘taxation’ by the border police and the policeman describing his problems being poorly equipped and trained, low paid and distant from a command structure – and also having to keep a wife and family. The ex-fighter is a now model community leader and exhorts the people to work together to reduce corruption and violence for the sake of peace and the prosperity of the border communities and the greater good of the country.

These resources, made by CR, bring together the best research and practical experience of conflict transformation from its own programmes and other regions. Through having the services of your Quaker Peaceworker, the Accord and West Africa programmes have had help in realising their objectives in extending the reach of these resources. If this has stimulated your interest you can view them online, or download them free from the Conciliation Resources website: www.c-r.org.

In Friendship,
Mary Dobbing
March 2010