The most comprehensive peace agreement to date between representatives from Yirol West and Mvolo was made at a meeting on Monday 6th June in Mapuordit, which I attended as an observer in my capacity with MRDA.
Statements of reconciliation were witnessed by communities, army, police and NGOs and commitments were made by leaders from both sides including declaration of free movement across the border. Furthermore all involved committed on both sides to administrative and legislative implementation. The meeting was pushed forward by the expert facilitation of the Mapuordit Payam Administrator Benjamin Mayor Alony and Lieutenant John Aboke of the Joint Integrated Unit (JIU), with support from Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international NGO that helps make space for dialogue to promote peace.
The conflict between combatants from Yirol West and Mvolo counties has raged since early February, a cycle of revenge resulting in the deaths of at least 50 people and displacement of tens of thousands of either side of the border. Vital health and education services, as well as the livelihoods of thousands of cultivators, have been severely disrupted. MRDA held a workshop in April for representatives of Western Equatoria and Lakes states to discuss ways forward and has continued to follow peace efforts.
The JIU, based until recently in Khartoum, under terms of the CPA, are an elite military unit made up of Northern (SAF) and Southern (SPLA) Sudanese troops , reserved for addressing internal conflicts that might undermine peace and self-determination. Upon independence the unit will be formally dissolved and troops reintegrated into their respective armies. Southern units from JIU have already returned to South Sudan. Since Mid-May the JIU have had troops stationed either side of the Mvolo-Yirol West border and patrolled in an attempt to reduce violence and increase feelings of security amongst the community. Their deployment had been requested by the Governors of Western Equatoria and Lakes states. They have also reached out to Chiefs on either side to engage them in peacemaking efforts since arriving in the area.
A successful meeting between representatives from Mapuordit and Kokori Payams on June 1st ended with a commitment to a more inclusive meeting the following week. A boost was given to preparations to mobilize when Commander Mariel Deng Nyok, the head of national security for the whole of South Sudan, visited affected areas to reiterate the commitment of GOSS to achieving peace and security in Mvolo and Yirol West and to push the communities to honor their own responsibilities.
The meeting was originally scheduled to take place in the area of Gynop. At the suggestion of the Mvolo chiefs this was changed to Mapurdit, a location also consistent with the resolutions of the Governors meeting in March and the MRDA workshop in April, both of which identified Mapurdit as an ideal location for peace talks. Though the meeting was originally scheduled for Saturday, logistic difficulties presented proceedings going ahead until Monday afternoon, by which time each delegation had had time to prepare and dialogue informally. A large thunderstorm immediately preceded the opening of events and was noted by all involved as an auspicious omen for peace.
‘Anything we had, rain has washed away’
The key message taken away was that all present wanted peace and believed that it could be achieved with their partners from the other side. Complete freedom of movement across the border was declared. The conflicts that arise because of unregulated cattle movement were clearly and honestly mentioned and there was a commitment to draft a new local legislation that provides a framework for regulating movement fairly and transparently so that people who violate agreements can be held to account. It was determined that another, smaller meeting would take place in Mvolo the following week to work on the details of this law and action plan. One chief, Door Awou of Kathier, did mention the challenge of working with youth with arms proliferation so high compared to previous times.
‘If you carry a gun you consider yourself a chief, a president even. Then who can tell you what to do?’
This may be considered as one challenge to implementation of the peace agreeent. Another challenge could arise from the behavior of particular chiefs who were absent. This was noted and they were singled out for approaching directly as soon as possible to report the agreement and involve in the process. If such a diplomatic approach was to fail it was suggested that they be referred to the security forces to be dealt with via legal or military means. Perhaps the most vehement contribution came from the only female contributor on the day, Alice Yange of Mvolo, who referred to the freedom struggle against the Sudanese government and the current troubles in the dispute border area of Abeyi.
‘Shame on us, we fought for independence so we could have development and now we are burning each other’s huts! If anyone wants to fight, the chiefs should take all their names down and send them to Abiyei to fight.’
The role of Government and NGOs in supporting implementation was strongly emphasized by chiefs as was continued the need for humanitarian assistance from NGOs to be provided for IDPs and returnees, which will present a serious logistical challenge. Overall, this community driven meeting was a resounding success and has set a strong foundation the stage for continued progress. Doubtless there will be setbacks in the journey toward long term peace but the spirit of this meeting set a great precedet for the future.
Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Friday, 31 December 2010
Cairo Dialogue
Dialogue
‘Dialogue’ refers to a set of practices employed by facilitators to stimulate conversation that flows in non-linear ways and stands apart from more formal ways of engaging groups in conversation, such as debates or discussions. The word is much abused, especially at large conferences where various Big speakers come and take the platform for ‘High Level’ dialogues where no genuine form of listening or exchange appears to occur between them, let alone the vast majority of those in the room (the audience) excluded from the talk. In Egypt, during, the GCM programme we, encouraged by all of our grounding as facilitators in Freiran methodologies, encouraged participants to think and act dialogically. We also allocated a morning session to organise subject specific dialogues. To this end we employed a simple technique called the ‘Fishbowl’ whereby two circles of participants are formed, facing inward, with the outer remaining silent and observing the behaviour of those inside and the flow of the dialogue, to feed back on the process later. At periodic intervals the opportunity is given to change circles so that everyone who has something to say can do so and that as many people as possible can watch proceedings from the outside too. The facilitator floats between the two and can input questions or reflections to try and move the conversation forward if it reaches a sticking point and nothing new is being added. The intention is that participants gain insights on the how the process itself relates to their and how they articulate them.
We used a simple consensus based decision making tool to select three topics for the dialogues with the GCM group. Number one on the list once votes had been cast was the question ‘Israel/Palestine. Two State Solution. Yes/NO?’ Being volunteered (with full consent and enthusiasm) to facilitate the dialogue on Israel/Palestine was partially poetic justice. I, having encouraged the participants who had keenly raised the issue with me to put it in the ‘car park’ and take opportunities to raise it, was tasked with working the issue through to whatever conclusions our group of 15 or so could hope to draw in 60 minutes on so from such a monumentally complex, conflicted and emotive subject. I relished the opportunity, truth be told, and didn’t regret it for a second, even as my own thoughts and feelings twisted and turned relentlessly. Surfing the turmoil and trying to effect a degree of useful objectivity…following the fast, passionate discussion and keeping an air open for ad hoc translation, felt, if not good, certainly alive!
Whilst a passion for justice was clear in the discourse and some of the contributions were rooted in real experience of time spent on the West Bank, the conditioning that Arab societies cultivate to demonise Israel was evident in many of the contributions, but so was an awareness of the hypocrisy of Arab and Western politicians whose rhetoric and policy on this subject are often worlds apart. What was most worrying for me was the repeated assertion that either Jews have no real history to speak or that, perhaps even more shockingly, the individual talking did not know that history and did not think it important to discover. Ignorance of the other is a key enabling factor in maintaining fear and dehumanising ‘enemies’. Another worrying undercurrent, but not one that went uncontested within the discussion, related to the polarisation of Islam and Judaism. The use of language…’Our’…’Us’….’They’…is intriguing in its reflection of unspoken narratives. Many people speaking seemed to exactly equate Palestinians with Arabs with Muslims. And yet there are many Christian Palestinians and Palestinians are strongly, marginalised within many Arab societies. I wonder how the dynamics of the group would have changed if their had been young Israelis participating. The dynamics of exclusion within MENA countries was not often explicitly addressed as the other was there to take the weight of criticism. Also responsibility, as in ‘they have to this…’ was often assigned to an imaginary interlocutor. When asked to name who might be able to do this, participants mostly named the USA. To me this highlights the sense of isolation that surrounds Palestine, which in turn leads me to believe that solidarity efforts in the West are not working. More and deeper work is needed to support Palestinian and Israeli Civil Society activists to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. Then maybe the feeling of helplessness some of the activists in this dialogue expressed could be transformed into a disciplined, strategic optimism.
Another learning was the danger of terms without interrogating differing interpretations of them and giving space for participants to make clear the own underlying meanings they attributed to language, which often vary wildly and yet are all too rarely aired. Some participants rejected ‘peace’ as a useful or desirable term, finding in it implications of passivity or acquiescence, what I would term ‘the absence of violence; rather than the achievement of justice. The pride of seeing Palestine (and thus at some level all Arabs) standing up to a seemingly all powerful oppressor relies on a bold dream of victory achieved by some form of retributive justice that validates and glorifies all and any violence against Israel or Israelis.
Dialogue is about pushing imaginative and creative borders by making a safe space to talk about issues that often feel dangerous to get out in the open. To do so is to invite participants to invest certain of trust and emotion in the process. If they are expecting a concrete outcome external to their own perception of the situation then they are being set up to fail and to suffer some hurt. As a facilitator being sensitive to this is incredibly important and attempting to demonstrate such a process and allow adequate time to decompress, reflect and process one’s own emotions is incredibly important. Being alive to the energy and inputs of the group and trusting as much as possible that they will steer themselves to new areas of discussion is also something I will concentrate on cultivating for future dialogues.
Taking the above into account it was pleasant that the response to the introduction and the handling of the subject was overwhelmingly positive. I hope that participants derived something from the experience not only about the nature of the tool we used for facilitation, but more importantly about their own expression and interaction in such a setting.
The UK team involved in GCM MENA was in attendance to develop an online dialogue initiative and I look forward to seeing how it develops over time.
Resources
Introduction to Paulo Freire
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm
A fantastic report compiling reflections on different tools for dialogue.
http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/papers/pioneers_dialogue/00_all.pdf
A set of resources based on the work of Physicist David Bohm, a trailblazer in the field.
http://www.david-bohm.net/dialogue/
The Art of Powerful Questions
http://www.theworldcafe.com/articles/aopq.pdf
‘Dialogue’ refers to a set of practices employed by facilitators to stimulate conversation that flows in non-linear ways and stands apart from more formal ways of engaging groups in conversation, such as debates or discussions. The word is much abused, especially at large conferences where various Big speakers come and take the platform for ‘High Level’ dialogues where no genuine form of listening or exchange appears to occur between them, let alone the vast majority of those in the room (the audience) excluded from the talk. In Egypt, during, the GCM programme we, encouraged by all of our grounding as facilitators in Freiran methodologies, encouraged participants to think and act dialogically. We also allocated a morning session to organise subject specific dialogues. To this end we employed a simple technique called the ‘Fishbowl’ whereby two circles of participants are formed, facing inward, with the outer remaining silent and observing the behaviour of those inside and the flow of the dialogue, to feed back on the process later. At periodic intervals the opportunity is given to change circles so that everyone who has something to say can do so and that as many people as possible can watch proceedings from the outside too. The facilitator floats between the two and can input questions or reflections to try and move the conversation forward if it reaches a sticking point and nothing new is being added. The intention is that participants gain insights on the how the process itself relates to their and how they articulate them.
We used a simple consensus based decision making tool to select three topics for the dialogues with the GCM group. Number one on the list once votes had been cast was the question ‘Israel/Palestine. Two State Solution. Yes/NO?’ Being volunteered (with full consent and enthusiasm) to facilitate the dialogue on Israel/Palestine was partially poetic justice. I, having encouraged the participants who had keenly raised the issue with me to put it in the ‘car park’ and take opportunities to raise it, was tasked with working the issue through to whatever conclusions our group of 15 or so could hope to draw in 60 minutes on so from such a monumentally complex, conflicted and emotive subject. I relished the opportunity, truth be told, and didn’t regret it for a second, even as my own thoughts and feelings twisted and turned relentlessly. Surfing the turmoil and trying to effect a degree of useful objectivity…following the fast, passionate discussion and keeping an air open for ad hoc translation, felt, if not good, certainly alive!
Whilst a passion for justice was clear in the discourse and some of the contributions were rooted in real experience of time spent on the West Bank, the conditioning that Arab societies cultivate to demonise Israel was evident in many of the contributions, but so was an awareness of the hypocrisy of Arab and Western politicians whose rhetoric and policy on this subject are often worlds apart. What was most worrying for me was the repeated assertion that either Jews have no real history to speak or that, perhaps even more shockingly, the individual talking did not know that history and did not think it important to discover. Ignorance of the other is a key enabling factor in maintaining fear and dehumanising ‘enemies’. Another worrying undercurrent, but not one that went uncontested within the discussion, related to the polarisation of Islam and Judaism. The use of language…’Our’…’Us’….’They’…is intriguing in its reflection of unspoken narratives. Many people speaking seemed to exactly equate Palestinians with Arabs with Muslims. And yet there are many Christian Palestinians and Palestinians are strongly, marginalised within many Arab societies. I wonder how the dynamics of the group would have changed if their had been young Israelis participating. The dynamics of exclusion within MENA countries was not often explicitly addressed as the other was there to take the weight of criticism. Also responsibility, as in ‘they have to this…’ was often assigned to an imaginary interlocutor. When asked to name who might be able to do this, participants mostly named the USA. To me this highlights the sense of isolation that surrounds Palestine, which in turn leads me to believe that solidarity efforts in the West are not working. More and deeper work is needed to support Palestinian and Israeli Civil Society activists to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. Then maybe the feeling of helplessness some of the activists in this dialogue expressed could be transformed into a disciplined, strategic optimism.
Another learning was the danger of terms without interrogating differing interpretations of them and giving space for participants to make clear the own underlying meanings they attributed to language, which often vary wildly and yet are all too rarely aired. Some participants rejected ‘peace’ as a useful or desirable term, finding in it implications of passivity or acquiescence, what I would term ‘the absence of violence; rather than the achievement of justice. The pride of seeing Palestine (and thus at some level all Arabs) standing up to a seemingly all powerful oppressor relies on a bold dream of victory achieved by some form of retributive justice that validates and glorifies all and any violence against Israel or Israelis.
Dialogue is about pushing imaginative and creative borders by making a safe space to talk about issues that often feel dangerous to get out in the open. To do so is to invite participants to invest certain of trust and emotion in the process. If they are expecting a concrete outcome external to their own perception of the situation then they are being set up to fail and to suffer some hurt. As a facilitator being sensitive to this is incredibly important and attempting to demonstrate such a process and allow adequate time to decompress, reflect and process one’s own emotions is incredibly important. Being alive to the energy and inputs of the group and trusting as much as possible that they will steer themselves to new areas of discussion is also something I will concentrate on cultivating for future dialogues.
Taking the above into account it was pleasant that the response to the introduction and the handling of the subject was overwhelmingly positive. I hope that participants derived something from the experience not only about the nature of the tool we used for facilitation, but more importantly about their own expression and interaction in such a setting.
The UK team involved in GCM MENA was in attendance to develop an online dialogue initiative and I look forward to seeing how it develops over time.
Resources
Introduction to Paulo Freire
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm
A fantastic report compiling reflections on different tools for dialogue.
http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/papers/pioneers_dialogue/00_all.pdf
A set of resources based on the work of Physicist David Bohm, a trailblazer in the field.
http://www.david-bohm.net/dialogue/
The Art of Powerful Questions
http://www.theworldcafe.com/articles/aopq.pdf
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