By Mazhun Idris
In a sobering message heralding International Day of Peace, commemorated on September 21 each year, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, highlights how conflicts around the world are "driving a record number of people from their homes".
For Africa, as for many regions of the world hungry for peace and stability, the diversity of factors of armed conflicts, political violence, and climate crises have complicated the dynamics of building peace in different communities.
Peace doesn't fall from the sky — neither from the fighter jets of interventionist forces, the private planes of aid-dolling philanthropists, or the gun-toting tutelage of armed peacekeepers. Not even through the many protocols, conventions or treaties between warring parties.
Centuries of war-mongering within human civilisation would have taught nations that peace isn't something that can be declared, reiterated, forced, or legislated into existence.
It needs to be built with different actors working to prevent tensions from becoming violent conflicts. If we can declare a ceasefire or a peace treaty, then we must work to build peace.
Various violent conflicts in several African countries, including Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Libya, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Somalia and Senegal with different underlying factors.
New approaches are indispensable when looking at the divergent vectors of violent conflicts in Africa.
War economy
Conflict analysis is a methodology for profiling a conflict landscape — a groundwork for successful programming geared towards building peace. Before deciding on the type of intervention to address a conflict, we determine the creativity behind its triggers and drivers, whether socio-economic, political, or violent extremism.
"There is an unfettered war economy around African violent conflicts," says Dr. Maji Peterx, who has been programming and designing projects around preventing violent extremism, trauma management and resilience in the continent for 20 years.
"This issue may have arisen because many governments opt for the structural militarisation of conflict response, as their primary goal is the immediate cessation of hostility toward a semblance of order," the Nigeria-based country director of Equal Access International, a community engagement non-profit, tells TRT Afrika.
It's often counterproductive for preference to avoid counter-radicalisation, deradicalisation, and strategic communication around the push and pull factors, all of which lead to people engaging in violence for economic benefit.
"Through context analysis and consultation, we must identify internal and external victims of the conflict, key stakeholders, and community gatekeepers, and then look at the needs and challenges of each category," Dr Maji explains.
Once a conflict's beneficiaries and economic exploiters are found, the goal is to separate those who join armed belligerence due to radicalisation, intimidation, or coercion.
"Afterwards, we begin working with communities to stem further exploitation and mistrust," says Dr Maji.
Peacebuilding approach
Essentially, peace is not a passive state of absence of violence. Since conflicts are part of human existence, the best way to deal with the challenge is to transform it into an avenue for advancing dialogue and mutual understanding of individual and group differences.
"Beyond cessation of violence or hostilities, engaging community stakeholders to rebuild trust is at the core of the peacebuilding approach, and using the principle of moral equality, peacebuilding is but a consequence of deliberate and collective actions," says Dr Maji.
Militaristic or high-handed approaches to ending violence and conflicts often lead to atrocities like war crimes, human rights abuse, significant human displacements, severe environmental degradation, destruction of means of livelihood, and entrenchment of resentment.
This is where peacebuilding organisations come into play. They are specialist institutions that work to fashion out policies meeting the needs of the immediate communities they serve. One famous African peacebuilding institute is the Kofi Annan Centre in Ghana.
Unlike courts and tribunals that seek to redress and pay reparations for crimes and torts, peacebuilding centres lean toward restorative justice, conflict resolution or transformation, truth, forgiveness, and mutual reconciliation. Their philosophy is a combat-free operational procedure.
Though positively pervasive, peacebuilding organisations are mostly non-governmental and non-profit; hence, they often have limitations. Dr Maji acknowledges that "peacebuilding organisations can only do what is acceptable within the legal and socio-political context in which they operate".
Immunising communities
Conflict transformation must also assess the impact on communities and evaluate the harm meted out to them before moving on to make positive progress in terms of defusing tensions, resolving conflicts, building resilience, and imbibing social cohesion.
From South Africa to Rwanda and Liberia, collaborative peace commissions have been used to advocate dialogue, diplomacy, truth, forgiveness and reconciliation over the years. They have proved effective in pacifying and deracialising communities.
"An endemic conflict, especially one born of extremism and radicalisation, doesn’t just affect communities; it impacts them (at a generic level). And when we talk about impaction, it leaves a lasting experience that, if not processed, will manifest itself in later life," warns Dr Maji.
"That's why if you do a trauma assessment in any traumatic community, you realise that majority of the population are exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and that is going to go on unless you integrate trauma awareness."
This process will immunise the communities against the propensity for reprisals and future radicalisation. The line between victims and perpetrators could be blurry in highly complicated conflicts, as the conflict cycle is often long and reoccurring.
"To extract compelling commitment to promote and maintain peace actively, we look at issues around poverty, mistrust, division, prejudice, inequality, and injustice in the societal fabric. Next, we focus on trauma management, counselling, and therapy for victims and other affected people," Dr Maji tells TRT Afrika.
Eventually, the aggregate impact of a peacebuilding approach is the piece-by-piece manifestation of reduced tension, better relations, and collaborative concomitance, which ultimately translate into peaceful coexistence and multi-faith pluralism.
