Fostering Local Ownership of Peace and Democratisation
The context and rationale for the intervention
Like in other parts of the country, armed and inter-communal conflict is adversely affecting communities in the Oromia region. The situation is most severe in areas targeted by The East African Initiative for Change (I4C) – including East Shewa, East Arsi, West Arsi, Bale, and East Borana where human rights have routinely been violated over the last couple of years. Among others, the major causes of conflict are the increasing polarization of communities and groups along religious and ethnic lines fueled by political motives. The armed and intercommunal conflicts have led to atrocities including targeted killings and forced displacement among different ethnic and religious groups, such as Muslims and Orthodox Christians that previously lived together in harmony. With support from AFD (Agence Française de Développement) through the Civil Society Innovation Fund (CSIF), I4C is implementing a project that aims to help mitigate these conflicts and promote peace in the region. I4C is a not-for-profit local civil society organisation established in 2020 with a mission to promote democratic culture and multi-cultural society as well as to support sustainable development in Ethiopia through capacity building, advocacy, and research.
I4C’s project, supported through CSIF/AFD, aims to foster local ownership of peace and democratization through facilitating inter-community peace dialogues in the five conflict prone zones of Oromia region, where it works. The project supports a number of mutually reinforcing strategies including: analyzing and understanding conflict dynamics; stakeholders’ mapping and engagement; training local dialogue facilitators; establishing local peace structures; and revitalizing the role of indigenous institutions for peacebuilding and facilitation of inclusive inter-community dialogues.
Since the project started in 2022, I4C has documented context-specific evidence of local conflict dynamics to inform its interventions and provide a basis for evidence-based dialogue, engaged key stakeholders in the peacebuilding processes, trained 10 local peace dialogue facilitators, established and strengthened 32 local peace structures and facilitated 20 inclusive Inter-Community dialogues in the four districts. So far, the dialogues have engaged 540 community members, both men and women, elders and youth, from diverse backgrounds.
The changes and evidence
Although only one round of dialogues has been held so far, early changes have been observed that have the potential to prevent further conflict and build resilient peace in the target communities. The engagements with communities through the conflict analysis and the first round of dialogues have brought together conflicting parties (including different religious and ethnic groups) to identify and discuss conflict drivers, and to explore joint remedial and preventive solutions. Conflict drivers identified and discussed by participants included: lack of communication (between different groups), high youth unemployment, political instability, and the influence of social media, as well as religious intolerance and weak government security structures. Proposed solutions included addressing socio-economic factors that contribute to insecurity, as well as community policing and community level interventions for peaceful conflict resolution, such as trauma healing. As the following quote noted from a renowned community leader demonstrates, the project has started to foster a sense of community ownership for conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
““Maaltu nu galcheetu waatti nutti galcha!” Meaning “our failure to respond to matters to someone, dragged every one of us to the worst! ”
The community-based peace dialogues have broken the sustained silence and lack of communication among and between conflict divided communities, creating opportunities for discussions, exchange of ideas, each sharing their perceptions and perspectives and surfacing issues that otherwise could lead to further conflict. The early discussions facilitated by trained dialogue facilitators and community-based peace structures, have reduced tensions, fears and suspicions among the diverse communities in conflict, and laid the foundation for freer, more transparent and sustained dialogues. The peace dialogues have also created a platform for key government stakeholders (such as district administrators and zonal peacebuilding and security authorities) to listen to and understand the real concerns of communities with a potential to foster constructive government in peacebuilding and protection human rights.
Going forward and potential impact
Further rounds of peace dialogues are already planned under the CSIF project. Beyond that, I4C has the ambition to further support inclusive Inter-Community dialogues at community level and strengthen local peace structures including indigenous conflict management institutions. This will encourage the potential of local peace structures to proactively detect and prevent potential conflicts before they escalate into violence, and sustain the ongoing community-based inclusive Inter-Community dialogue initiatives. Building on these emerging changes has the potential to build resilient peace in the target areas, foster social cohesion among the conflict divided communities and generate lessons that will inform future peacebuilding programmes.