My inaugural encounter with the Mennonite-affiliated peacebuilding practitioners and scholars was during my interaction with other African peace enthusiasts at the second Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) 13 years ago at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF) in Zambia. As part of my diploma studies in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, this foundation was reinforced by the valuable expertise of my brother and mentor, Mr. Babu Ayindo, MA ‘98; Dr. Carl Stauffer, then regional representative for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for Southern Africa; and DeEtte Beghtol, then MCC service worker seconded to MEF.

The formative leg of my peacebuilding journey was also “blessed” by the experiences of 91����Ƶ scholars, alumni and faculty including Mozambican brother Afiado Zungunza; Mzee John Katunga from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); Mr. George Wachira, then director at Nairobi Peace Initiative-Africa; Krista Rigalo, MA ’00, and Fidel Lumeya, MA ’00, then MCC country representatives from Angola; and Barry Hart, a member of 91����Ƶ faculty.

With great respect, the foundation these people contributed started me off and to a greater extent set me on a firmer peacebuilding journey. Globally, there is growing recognition that efforts in peace and conflict scholarships in molding a generation of peacebuilding practitioners will steer the next century into peace and stability. Thus, it’s this Mennonite exposure that drives me to claim a stake in this generation of peacemakers. Africa’s future, and certainly Zambia’s, is not anchored on undemocratic systems, and visionless and corrupt leadership, but more visionary and selfless peace-loving practitioners.

My stint at MEF was reinforced by a Winston Fellowship to attend the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at 91����Ƶ in 2003. This scholarship solidified my interaction and engagement with the Mennonites and peacemakers from other faith traditions, and provided benefits from the expertise of peace practitioners and scholars, notably professors Hizkias Assefa and Ron Kraybill. And one of my key take-aways from the 2003 SPI, particularly from these celebrated scholars, is the inspiration and renewed impetus to spread additional peacebuilding knowledge and tools. In sum, SPI gave me fresh cause to firmly contribute to cultivating positive peace in my seemingly peaceful country, Zambia.

After two months of the Winston internship with Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation, I was formally engaged as an instructor. This new appointment once again laid before me valuable opportunities to collaborate with Mennonite associates, some of whom I co-taught courses with during regular classes and the Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) courses. For several years, I served as a co-instructor during the API working with, among others, West African MCC representative and 91����Ƶ alumni, Brother Gopar Tapkida, MA ’01, from Nigeria. My firm peacebuilding foundation laid through the Mennonite tutelage and association was a precursor to subsequent scholarly engagements in Durban, South Africa and San Jose, Costa Rica.

The last several years, I have made my modest contribution to cultivating a culture of peace through trainings and workshops in Ethiopia, Japan, Rwanda, South Sudan (where I serve as an adjunct instructor at the RECONCILE Peace Institute), Uganda and Zimbabwe. Three years ago, I left MEF and joined the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at The Copperbelt University as a lecturer. Despite exposure to other peacebuilding philosophies, I continue to appreciate the indelible orientation that the MCC/91����Ƶ-CJP alumni, colleagues and associates rendered continue to shape my peacebuilding vocation.

I particularly share my subscription to conflict transformation versus conflict resolution or management. I have lately been sharing some of the resources with colleagues within the Institute, such as the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding acquired through my 91����Ƶ exposure and contact. Anchored on the foundation, as part of my doctoral ideas, I work on transformative mediation and social conflicts within my context. I am particularly interested in the churches’ interventions (intermediary roles and contributions) and the effects on ameliorating social conflicts including gender-based violence.

Descriptively, Zambia may be peaceful, but there are a myriad of socioeconomic issues including violence against women (widows and single mothers) that warrant attention. Demographic health studies shows that women suffer violence from the age of 15 and about 60% cases are attributed to violence by husbands or intimate partners. It may be disputed, but gender-based violence is a peacebuilding issue. And the need to explore transformative approaches (or assessing how transformative existing interventions are) to such conflicts is great.

Ignatius Kabale Mukunto js a lecturer and Coordinator of the Human Rights, Governance and Peacebuilding Program, under the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies of the Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia.

Within North American educational institutions affiliated with one of the three “historic peace churches” – Mennonite, Brethren and Quaker – only 91����Ƶ offers a graduate program pertaining to peace.

Which is why aspiring peacebuilders from other Christian denominations often make their way to 91����Ƶ.

It’s why Jay Wittmeyer, now executive director of global mission and service for the Church of the Brethren, completed an MA at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in 2004.

At that time Wittmeyer was fresh from running a hospital in Nepal during its civil war, when that country’s version of revolutionary Maoists said they were struggling for justice and equity for those living impoverished in the countryside.

Interviewed at a gathering of STAR practitioners, Wittmeyer said the current situation in Nigeria reminds him of the dynamics of Nepal when he was there, off and on, from 2000 to 2004. Wittmeyer had recently returned to the United States after paying a supportive visit in April to Nigerian Brethren church leaders.

He said Boko Haram, a self-described Islamic group that is using violence and fear to try to turn Nigeria into its version of an Islamic state, is tapping the same grievances as the Maoists did in Nepal – meaning that Boko Haram feels that the oil money from Nigeria’s South is mainly going into the pockets of the Christian-dominated governing group.

The school in the far northeast of Nigeria from which Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of girls on April��15 was founded by Brethren missionaries decades ago, but is now run by the government for girls of any faith, said Wittmeyer. Residents of the area in which the school is located, however, have been largely affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. He elaborated:

[Brethren] communities have been attacked and burned out. A lot of church members are staying with family members, cousins . . . we’re not seeing tent cities yet. Families are hosting others – they’ve built extensions on houses so they can house more. Some need to drill for more water, there’s so many more people.

But people can’t farm their lands – this is the time to plant. Hunger builds up through the months as you go. People get attacked at night and they just run. They literally have nothing. Do you migrate south? Do you try to stay? We are in conversation with Church World Service about help for refugees. A lot of Brethren families that have moved into Cameroon.

The recurring question is, ‘How can we help keep the Brethren Church to maintain its peace position in situations where members feel as though they are being led like sheep to the slaughter?

Wittmeyer feels the Nigerian Brethren are “teaching us about discipleship and taking seriously the words of Jesus. They are living them out in ways that we don’t typically have to do.” Notably, the theme of last year’s annual Brethren conference in Nigeria was, “They can kill the body but not the soul.”

While Wittmeyer necessarily stretches his attention to other responsibilities in Asia, Africa and all of the Americas, within Nigeria full-time is another 2004 master’s graduate from CJP, Toma Ragnjiya. He is the “peace officer” at the headquarters of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (known as EYN).

Ragnjiya has spearheaded the Christian and Muslim Peace Initiative and runs the peace-training part of the pastor training program. He is featured in an inspiring 18-minute documentary posed on YouTube with the title “Church of the Brethren in Nigeria Sowing Seeds of Peace.”

Much of Ragnjiya’s efforts go into building mutual support between Muslims and Christians, so together they can douse any sparks of violence between the groups and make space for moderates. In 2010-11 when a Muslim school was burned by Christian youths (who said they were retaliating for Muslim violence), Brethren leaders stepped forward, saying, “We recognize that Christians burning your school is wrong, and we want to make amends for that.”

They ended up providing a well to supply water to the rebuilt Islamic school. “That opened up doors for dialogue,” said Wittmeyer. “Out of that developed an interfaith peace program that is looking at micro-finance, with no interest owed. We’ve also been funding individuals to get trained across religious lines – we probably have 20 now, male and female. Maybe a Muslim does an internship or apprenticeship with a Christian welder, who could help them get started in their own business. We could do this with tailor shops.”

Wittmeyer sits on the board of Heifer International, which he would like to see add STAR-type trauma sensitivity training to its development work. ��— Bonnie Price Lofton

Another alumnus, Nigerian Gopar Tapkida, MA ’01, worked with support from Mennonite Central Committee for a dozen years in Nigeria, building bridges between Muslim and Christian communities and reducing the terrain for violence, before moving onto a new MCC assignment in Zimbabwe. Go to emu.edu/news and search for
“Nigerian grad has had huge impact.”

Decades ago, when international conflicts tended to be between neighboring countries, the United Nations’ approach to peacekeeping was primarily focused on observation and reporting. The blue-helmeted peacekeepers would sit peering through telescopes, trying to make sure people on either side of the border behaved.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, wars between sovereign states have increasingly been replaced by conflict within nations, often with meddling from proxy players. In the absence of functioning state institutions, UN peacekeeping missions have taken an increasingly hands-on role in these countries, expanding the scopes of their missions to include development, peacebuilding and state-building efforts, often in partnership with other organizations and agencies. Since the early 1990s in particular, peacebuilding and development have assumed greater importance throughout the UN system, beyond military-style peacekeeping activities.

As a police planning advisor with the UN Office to the African Union, Kamal Uddin Tipu, MA ’04, represents one facet of the new, broader approach to peacebuilding being employed by the United Nations everywhere, but especially in Africa, where the majority of its multidimensional peacekeeping missions are. Working closely with the , Tipu helps the organization plan the policing components of its peacekeeping missions across Africa. While Tipu provides the AU with his expertise as a police officer, he has colleagues who address more than a dozen related areas, including elections monitoring, military and civilian logistics, medicine, mediation, mine action and other structures necessary for sustainable peace after violent conflict has ended in a country.

“You have to go into all these areas to resolve conflict,” says Tipu, a deputy inspector general of police in Pakistan now deputized to the UN.

Police in support of stable governance

In South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011 after decades of civil war within Sudan, Fred Yiga, MA ’06, is also working to establish a functioning police force in a country almost devoid of state institutions when it became independent.

“The greatest casualties in South Sudan’s conflict were the institutions of governance,” says Yiga, an assistant inspector general of police in Uganda now serving as the UN police commissioner for the . “Their frameworks and the whole notion of governance culture must be started from scratch.”

And so Yiga has begun doing just that, establishing police officer screening and payroll policies, conducting a needs assessment to guide planning for training and funding priorities, and developing policing models and programs such as police-community relations committees.

“There is a lot of hope that we are on the right track with police development in South Sudan,” continues Yiga, who anticipates the country having a well-trained and professionalized police force with influence in the wider region within five years. “We will definitely succeed!”

Developing a transitional justice process

Though it has not fallen into full-blown civil war like so many other African nations, Guinea has nonetheless been plagued by repeated violent conflicts over the past several decades. In southeastern Guinea, where Francois Traore, MA ’11, has worked as a human rights national program officer for the , the roots of these conflicts were the usual suspects like land disputes between farmers and livestock herders, or unequal access to natural resource revenues. Often, these conflicts have been exacerbated by ethnic and religious differences between the opposing parties.

Drawing on the “holistic approach” of ‘s and his study of restorative justice, Traore worked to develop a transitional justice process in this region of Guinea based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission model pioneered in South Africa. (Former CJP professor Ron Kraybill was involved in South Africa’s truth-and-reconciliation program at its conceptual stage, as was current professor and CJP alumnus , who lived and did peace work in South Africa from 1994 until he came to teach at CJP in 2010.)

In addition to the cultural, religious and economic aspects of these conflicts, generational divides within these communities have eroded their traditional conflict resolution methods. In the past, Traore said, elders from opposing sides used an animal sacrifice, shared a meal, and performed oath-taking rituals to resolve or prevent conflicts. Younger people in these communities, however, view such practices as outdated and irrelevant to modern life and problems – adding another layer of complexity to the violence in the region.

“Understanding these dynamics and linking them to the conflicts they generate requires a strong peacebuilding theory,” says Traore, who left the UNHCHR in 2012 for a position with the USAID Mission in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The multi-disciplinary nature of his studies at CJP, he says, has allowed him to play a leadership role in developing a transitional justice component to a nationwide reconciliation process planned for the near future.

Community-based early warning systems

Just across the border in Liberia, Nat Walker, MA ’10, is leading the development of an early warning and early response (EWER) network to respond to conflicts in communities across the country. This first entailed establishing community-based EWER networks, linking local peace committees with a network of responders that includes civil society groups, UN agencies and Liberian government agencies.

Now, Walker is setting up “rapid response centers” in the cities of Gbarnga, Zwedru and Harper. These centers figure into a larger, countrywide peacebuilding and reconciliation program supported by the and the Liberian government.

“Linking the current EWER initiative with the bigger, UN-supported justice and security framework in the country is critical to maintaining peace and security in Liberia, especially as the UN mission draws down its military strength,” he says.

Walker is a long-term consultant on the project with , an American NGO which is working in partnership with the Liberian Peacebuilding Office, the UN Peacebuilding Fund, and other governmental and NGO partners. The community-level conflict monitoring and response systems, Walker says, play an important role in Liberia, where state security institutions are weak or absent entirely.

Walker says his experience at the , combining “critical peacebuilding theories” and “sound practice-based education,” have given him a grasp of conflict-sensitive development and organizational development skills, enabling him lead the conceptualization and development of EWER networks in Liberia.

Once conflicts or potential conflicts are identified and reported by EWER personnel, Walker says, response activities include formulation of policy recommendations, advocacy campaigns led by civil society organizations, and community-level mediation and dialogue led by members of the community. Incidents and the responses are later analyzed to improve the community’s ability to address future conflicts.

“[This means] local conflicts are dealt with before they escalate to disrupt community and national peace,” says Walker.

EWER is by no means unique to Liberia. Working for , Gopar Tapkida, MA ’11, nurtured into existence a similar system in Nigeria, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Team, supported by 10 organizations, encompassing Muslims, Catholics, Evangelicals, women’s groups, the Red Cross, UNICEF and others committed to promoting nonviolence and peacebuilding. Team members covering 175 states use text messages to confer with each other about possible threats and rumors of attacks.

Need to build peace from bottom up

In Darfur, Sudan, Moussa Ntambara, MA ’02, spent two years, through the summer of 2013, as a manager with the . He oversaw around $10 million annually in funding provided to other UN agencies and NGOs working on grassroots peacebuilding projects in all five states of Darfur, where inter- and intra-community conflicts arose over issues such as access to natural resources.

Ntambara supervised teams of specialists and monitors who oversaw work in the field and provided technical assistance, project quality review, and feedback on project implementation. “My major role, as it relates to my education in peacebuilding, consisted in the development of engagement for peace strategies, identification of entry points, key actors and factors identification, peacebuilding methodologies and guidance on approaches,” says Ntambara, who now works in Bamako, Mali, as head of child protection for .

Abou Ag Ahiyoya, MA ’12, a former chief superintendent of police in Bamako, Mali, was one of the leaders of the civilian police force dispatched to the Darfur area of Sudan by the African Union from 2005 to 2007. For a while, Ahiyoya was the acting chief of police operations under the African Union, serving a vast refugee population and supervising almost 1,000 officers from about 25 African countries. Toward the end of his tour of duty��in Darfur, he worked as a member of��the transition team preparing for the UN’s African Mission in Darfur.

In Darfur, Ahiyoya dealt with killings, rapes, and other crimes on a daily basis. He saw children growing up without families, and tens of thousands without real homes. “I witnessed the consequences of war – I don’t want this to happen to any community or country,” he recalled in a 2011 interview at .

By 2008, Ahiyoya was deputy director of the national police academy in Mali and the director of the UN’s training program for police and peacekeepers within the Ecole de maintien de la paix in Mali. He also was a consultant and facilitator at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Canada.

When Ahiyoya was earning his as a Fulbright Scholar during 2010-12, his heart was heavy with the knowledge that his country was spiraling into bloody chaos, without the international community seeming to care. As he feared then, the situation has worsened over the last several years.

Belated intervention by the military of France on Jan. 11, 2013, did not bring peace to Mali. As of fall 2013, there was a UN-supported “stabilization mission” comprising more than 10,000 military personnel and 1,440 police, plus staff providing humanitarian assistance, but they are trying to operate in a dangerous, volatile situation.

“The AQMI [Saharan fighters inspired by al-Qaeda] are recruiting lots of our youths because they don’t have jobs,” Ahiyoya told in an . “We need to address the causes of terrorism and solve problems from the bottom up.”

UN is cumbersome��but irreplaceable

Sometimes the UN system is criticized for being a large, confusing bureaucracy that is hard for those outside of its structures to understand. As an example, the DCPSF (the UN program Ntambara worked for in Darfur, beneath the UNDP’s umbrella) partners with numerous other agencies and organizations, including UNAMID in Darfur, itself a specific collaboration between the United Nations and the African Union, which is known as UNOAU, where Kamal Udin Tipu serves as a police planning advisor.

As confusing as the system may seem, Tipu says the United Nations nevertheless has “been very active in keeping peace” around the world, and is refining, improving and strengthening its approach to peacebuilding by addressing the root causes of conflict rather than simply intervening in violent conflict. And, he says, consider the alternative: “If there’s no UN, what else do we have?”