Current USIP grantee Peace Direct is in the final stages of a project to empower peace committees to defuse local conflicts in communities in Southern Kordofan and Unity states near the contested Sudan-South Sudan border. Peace Direct is undertaking this project in conjunction with its partner, the Collaborative for Peace in Sudan, which includes 30 peacebuilding organizations in both Sudan and South Sudan.
At the project’s outset, two teams of peacebuilders, one in Unity state and one in Southern Kordofan state, made contact with border communities, provided basic civic education, and assisted the communities in organizing peace committees. The Southern Kordofan peacebuilding team was scheduled to travel across the border to Unity state to meet with the peacebuilding team there in November 2011, but the meeting was ultimately unable to occur as a result of the escalating conflict. As tensions have recently begun to ease slightly, Peace Direct is again beginning to plan for a cross-border meeting of peacebuilders.
The local peace committees have received conflict analysis and resolution training through the Peace Direct grant project, and are now uniquely able to indentify, understand and intervene appropriately in micro-level conflicts. An essential part of this project is a Rapid Response Fund, which provides the peace committees with small stipends to respond to conflicts quickly and prevent them from escalating. In Southern Kordofan state, one peace committee has worked to defuse a spiral of intercommunal violence sparked after a group of female Hakamah singers of the Misseriyah tribe sung a song to humiliate local herdsmen who were not able to migrate with their cattle. In Unity state, the committees have been active in Pariang, Mayom, Rubkona, and Abeimnom counties. Where possible, the Unity committees try to achieve some cross-border interaction by including individuals, such as traders, who have contact with communities in Southern Kordofan. The committees have also held meetings with representatives from oil companies, who have been increasingly receptive to the role of civil society in preventing conflict.
The project will conclude in September 2012. During these final two months, the peace committees will carry out additional microlevel interventions with support from the Rapid Response Fund. These interventions – which have been entirely generated by the committees themselves – will include mediations over land conflict, an intervention to reduce the recruitment to militias of youth who became unemployed when the oil rigs stopped pumping, and others.
USIP is pleased to support this project, which is in line with its strategic goals of empowering local communities to resolve conflicts and promoting stability along the Sudan-South Sudan border.
