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Commission for Africa

Carolyn Hayman attended the Commission for Africa's Expert Seminar on Peace and Security on November 18th. Peace Direct contributed to the online consultation below and will be developing a fuller submission in consultation with COPA.

The achievement of peace and security in Africa depends on actions at all levels from the local to the international. The CFA's document emphasises the importance of Western actions in controlling arms trading and the exploitation of raw materials in Africa, and the responsibility of African governments and regional and continental organisations to work for good governance. But the CFA strategy needs to give more recognition to the importance of community level peacebuilding as an essential element in developing a more peaceful Africa.
There is a growing network of peacebuilding initiatives across Africa, in every country or area in which there is actual or developing conflict.. Local peacebuilders identify the risks of conflict often long before these are visible in national or continental early warning systems, and take action to try to bring communities together and develop non-violent approaches to resolving difference, often based on traditional approaches. In the Wajir Peace and Development, women used traditional tribal power structures to develop an early warning system for conflict between tribes, and launched a programme of peace education which is now being implemented in neighbouring countries Somalia and Ethiopia.
Peacebuilding continues throughout conflict. The Centre Resolution Conflits in the Democratic Republic of Congo trains young people in mediation, peacebuilding and trauma counselling, in order to develop a new generation whose power comes from the spirit, not from the gun. Twice the CRC has been destroyed in fighting and its staff killed - twice it has relocated, and is seeking funding to develop its work elsewhere in the DRC, including developing university level training for Francophone Africa in conflict resolution.
As 50% of conflicts are estimated to flare up from the embers of previous conflicts, post-conflict work in critically important. Peacebuilding groups use new and traditional ceremonies and structures to achieve lasting reconciliation between enemies, and to seek and achieve forgiveness for wrongs done. The Reflect programme in Burundi brings together Hutu and Tutsi participants to build trust and understanding, and also to take practical actions to persuade refugees to return home and to reintegrate them into society.
This work is everywhere. Yet for very understandable reasons it is largely invisible in policy documents, which tend to focus on large scale formal interventions by AU or western military or peacekeeping forces. The questions that the CFA need to address are:
• How can community level peacebuilding make a bigger contribution to preventing conflict?
• How can community level peacebuilding work be sustained and its impact increased, without affecting its essential nature?
• How can those engaged in community level peacebuilding contribute to national and international policy formation?

Community peacebuilders' role in preventing conflict


Prevention of conflict must be the highest priority - funds spent here will pay off many times over. What is needed here is:
• For community level initiatives to have a strong voice in the early warning system, and to create strong and permanent links between policy making and peace practitioners at all levels
• For rapid deployment of funds to run programmes bringing together different groups to the potential conflict in order to develop shared solutions

Sustaining community level peacebuilding work


Many peacebuilders struggle to find funding to keep their work going, and end up taking employment in the development NGOs or elsewhere in order to survive. Peacebuilding is thereby weakened or halted, and the relationships that have been developing, for example with police or military or within the community, fall away. Peacebuilding initiatives remain weak and localised, when the analogy of vaccination suggests that they become most effective when peacebuilding work is widespread across the whole area affected by conflict.

Recommendation
A fund of say £10m p.a. to begin with that could be administered in partnership with international and African NGOs, for example COPA, who would be able to provide a bridge between long term government funding and local initiatives.

Giving community level peacebuilding a voice in policymaking


The Peace and Development Platform (PAD) seeks to build a bridge between local communities and policy makers, so that policies particularly as regards conflict, reflect the views and experiences of those caught up in them. This work requires greater recognition, and more effective partnership so that the work of those trying to reconcile conflicting parties at a local level is not undermined by international national or regional government policies.

Recommendation
A commitment to provide a role and voice to local peacemaking initiatives in strategy development at AU and UN levels as well as in individual countries, the latter monitored through the APRM.