Processing Peace

In 2002, arms deliveries to Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa constituted 66.7 per cent of the value of all arms deliveries worldwide, with a monetary value of nearly US$17bn; the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council accounted for 90 per cent of those deliveries.

The misuse of arms can further impede development. Irresponsible arms
transfers may: encourage unaccountable and poorly trained military forces to suppress human rights and democratic development; facilitate brutal resource exploitation; contribute to environmental degradation; and to an increase in violence against women. In these cases, the development needs of the country continue to go unmet, and in some situations may increase still further. Poverty may deepen, inequalities may widen, access to basic services be further compromised, and livelihoods be threatened.

in order that arms transfers do not undermine development,
they must have sustainable development and the goal of human
security at their core. The security benefits to be derived from
arms transfers must be carefully weighed alongside the wider
development needs of the importing country and against exporter
profit. Article 26 of the UN Charter makes this clear, setting out the
responsibility of states to promote the establishment and maintenance
of international peace and security with the least diversion for
armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.

Irresponsible arms transfers may encourage unaccountable and
poorly trained military forces to deny human rights and suppress
democratic development. While stronger military and police forces
may provide better security, research has shown that transfers to military regimes are more likely to serve the interests of the regimes than those of human development and security.

For example, the abuse and proliferation of small arms is often
characteristic of suppression of pressure for democratic change.
The threatening use of such arms by security forces, armed groups,
or others in positions of authority against political activists,
journalists, trade unionists, and peaceful demonstrators has been
well-documented for a number of developing countries, as well as
for some developed countries.


The people to people peace process

The world’s longest running civil war has pitted the largely Arab northern half of Sudan against the black African south on and off for over 40 years. More than two million people have been killed and over four million displaced. However conflict in Sudan is older than the independent state. Individual tribes have fought over cattle and grazing land for centuries, settling scores at the point of a spear. Pre modern conflict in southern Sudan was characterised by restraints and obligations. The casualties were almost always men. Fighting for water points, grazing, fishing grounds, food supplies and cattle took place far away from villages. Children, women and the elderly were not targeted. Women were permitted on the field of battle to retrieve the wound and could gather food and water from enemy territory. Enemies raiding food stocks would not take everything. Unarmed opponents were spared.

According to tradition, causing a death created spiritual pollution. A bit of the blood of any man speared to death was thought to be in the slayer and had to be bled out of the upper arm by a spiritual leader. Ghosts were believed to haunt anyone who killed in secret. However, death by bullets carries no such sanction. When one kills with a foreign weapon the ghosts of the dead will not haunt you. Rebel commanders argued to chiefs that a gun death carried no individual responsibility. Once removed from its moral consequences, killing became easier. Traditional cultures and livelihoods in the south have been devastated by modern warfare, conflict induced famine, armed militia groups and proliferation of small arms and light weapons. When the southern rebel movement, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, fragmented in the early 1990s inter factional and inter ethnic conflict erupted over much of southern Sudan. Weapons used against the northern army were turned on fellow southerners. Cattle raids spiralled into a cycle of attack, retaliation and revenge. Arguments formerly settled by fighting with sticks were decided with assault weapons. It is estimated that women now comprise 80% of the victims of conflict.

Since the late 1990s the Nariobi based New Sudan Council of Churches NSCC and the Khartoum based Sudan Council of Churches which operates in government controlled areas, have worked together to promote local peace building. NSCC has a deep religious commitment to justice and peace and believes that there is no conflict, whether latent or violent, which is so small that it can be ignored. The people to people peace initiative is a locally owned process based on traditional methods of reconciliation in an environment where formal institutions are non existent. Since the late 1990s locally convened conferences have resolved a series of ethnic and communal conflicts and brought hope and stability to some of the areas most affected by hostilities. Formerly hostile communities have realised that peaceful coexistence promotes the establishment of sustainable livelihoods that create hope for a better future where the economic, political, social and cultural contribution of every citizen is valued and treasured. The first success came in Nov 1999 after six months of intensive work by NSCC to challenge the Nuer and the Dinka to resolve their internal defaulters. Following a seven day conference in Wunlit, peace was established between them. A peace and governance councils was formed to rebuild the civil administration and police system, empower the traditional court system of chiefs, demobilise all children under 15 and establish water resources, schools, health facilities and food security to enable communities to sustain themselves. To symbolise commitment to peace and unity a white bull I slaughtered at the beginning of each conference. The bull is believed to take a message to the spirit world announcing peace between the tribes. Spiritual leaders dance as they point sharp spears and shout directions to the animal about its mission. Dialogue, ceremonies, prayer, story telling, exchange of riddles, singing, dancing, cooking sessions, feasting and recounting of atrocities and violence continue for several days. All those who h ave been wronged are given time to share their story. Prior to departure, another bull is slaughtered. The peace village is left standing as a symbol of reconciliation. After each conference, local abductions and raids have stopped, stolen goods and abducted people have been returned, trade between ethnic groups has resumed and intertribal courts have been set up to deal with treaty violators. Conferences, and the ongoing work of the peace councils they have spawned, have fundamentally contributed to the renaissance of notions of restorative justice, reconciliation, forgiveness and ethnic co existence in southern Sudan. In African jurisprudence you must restore harmony including the ritual calling on God and our ancestors to restore the relationships. When you fight with strangers you forget and go on. But when you fight with family it is very bitter. People to people peacemaking is a peace and reconciliation process between peoples with oral traditions which incorporates elements of Christianity and modern techniques of diplomacy and problem solving and reconciliation. It differs from arbitration, litigation and the formal court system as it:

- Prioritises restoration of broken relationships and rejects modern methods of coercion, imprisonment and execution.
- Does not permit a small elite group of representatives to articulate problem on behalf of aggrieved parties.
- Gives people affected by the conflict an opportunity to personally articulate their concerns in the presence of a facilitator who guides them to a mutually agreed outcome to restore broken relationships.
- Does not condemn law breakers to jail or death but provides them space for introspection and self analysis .
- Provides a ritual environment which people in conflict can use to interact physically and emotionally and empathise with the world view of the other.
- Commits offenders to providing compensation, paying fines and remaining outside the community until cleansed of wrong doing.
- Provides powerful constraints on future breaches of agreements, individuals fear being expelled and ostracised by councils of elders and spiritual leaders.

There are now many committed individuals and civil groups articulating the significance of social harmony and peaceful coexistence among various and diverse communities southern Sudan. Peace constituencies have played a major role in bringing southern and northern leaders round the peace table in the Kenyan city of Naivasha. The violent intra and inter ethnic conflicts that have decimated the social, economic and cultural foundation of south Sudanese communities have been transformed into spaces for mapping out opportunities for peace.

Oxfam’s story:

Displaced by one of Africa’s most violent civil wars, Hassanat (originally from the Nuba mountains) and Christina (a Nuer woman from Bahr El-Ghazal region) both arrived in the shanty towns of Port Sudan over a decade ago. Like 40,000 other displaced Southerners, the women and their families tried to cobble together simple shacks and shelters out of corrugated tin, mud bricks, and plastic sheeting. Neither had an education, a prospect of a job, or much hope for the future. Growing up as an orphan, Christina had never seen the inside of a school building, while Hassanat was too busy trying to make a little money through odd jobs to stay in classes. Then an early marriage to a (mostly unemployed) soldier kept Christina out of school and busy bringing up nine children – until her husband walked out three years ago and left Christina to fend for herself.

So when she heard that a group of displaced women like her and Hassanat were getting together, with Oxfam's support, to improve their lives, Christina decided to change her fate by joining them. With some initial funding from Oxfam, these women were able to start a credit project that allows each group member to take out a small loan to start a local business.

With an initial loan of 25,000 Dinar (approximately £55), the two women’s businesses were born. Christina set off to buy a jerry-can of oil and some flour to make biscuits and cakes to sell in a tea stall at the market. Hassanat purchased some flour, a few eggs, and a spaghetti-making machine, and began making and selling dried pasta from house-to-house on the streets of Habila.

A mere ten months later, Christina was seeing her profits increase handsomely at the tea stall, and Hassanat had started supplying not only local households, but also small businesses. Both women had paid back their original loan – and Hassanat almost immediately applied for a second one.

“With the money we have earned, we have been able to build ourselves proper homes, made out of concrete. We can pay our children’ school fees and buy medicines when they get sick. Every single one of my nine children is in school,” Christina says proudly, leaning back in her seat to survey the small collection of bright plastic stools lined up in front of her tea stall. Her two oldest boys are now getting ready to graduate from high school, a significant achievement in Christina’s poverty-stricken neighbourhood.

“I am more confident now than I was before, and I have decided to improve my own education,” she adds. “Because my parents died when I was young, I never had the chance to go to school. For the past year, I have been attending free evening classes at one of Oxfam’s night schools, and I am even learning some English.”

Hassanat, who also attends the adult literacy classes, insists that a business like hers can turn a woman’s life around. “The women’s group showed me that I was not alone; that there was a lot I could achieve even with just a little bit of support. Today, I work as a group leader and manage the loans for other women who are trying to open small businesses. I know they look up to those of us who have made it, and I am here to tell them that they can succeed just like I did.”

It may seem like an unlikely career path for two women from one of the poorest pockets of the African continent, but Hassanat and Christina illustrate that with the right motivation and initiative, a little bit of support from Oxfam can go a long way towards building a brighter future.




Extracted from:

Oxfam, Iansa, Amnesty Intl; Guns or Growth, Control Arms Campaign; Assessing the impact of arms sales on sustainable development, June 2004

Bennett, N., Oxfam GB, A little loan goes a long way in Port Sudan, 24 August 2005

Ouko, M., From Warriors to Peace Makers, Oxford University, Refugees Studies Centre, 2005

Intergovernmental Authority on Development, www.igad.org, Member states include: Djibouti Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya