Giving
Peace A Chance in the Ethiopian Millennium
Celebration
Ghelawdewos
Araia
May
8, 2007
Now
that you are an elder, drop your weapons and use
your head and wisdom instead. Maasai maxim1
Do not judge unfairly,
God abhors partiality;
This is an instruction,
Plan out accordingly.
Part of the 18th
Dynasty Pharaoh’s speech at the appointment of
the Prime Minister Rekhmire2
I am sovereign of my life;
My neighbor is sovereign of his life;
Society is a collective sovereignty;
It exists to ensure that my neighbor and I
realize the promise
Of being human.3
Zulu Personal Declaration
A commission is a
necessary exercise to enable South Africans to
come to terms with their past on a morally
accepted basis and to advance the cause of
reconciliation4
Dullah Omar, former Minister
of Justice of South Africa
The objective of this
article, as its title implies, is to advocate a
lasting peace through mediation and dialogue in an
effort to quell the seeming permanence of conflict
within
Ethiopia
and its neighbors. The article will engage and
appeal to the political regime, the opposition,
and the various institutions of learning to
implement peaceful conflict resolution mechanisms.
As we shall see below, a whole gamut of strategies
and array of concepts and methodologies are
suggested in the resolution of conflicts, and the
responsible institutions, it seems to me, must
effectively play their positive catalytic role in
order to have a relatively safe, peaceful, and
tranquil society.
Ethiopians, as a whole, in
the Diaspora and at home, individually or
collectively, should not simply wait for a miracle
to happen. They must proactively participate in
the conflict resolution processes and make sure
that it is meaningfully realized rather than
promote a sideshow of gossip and innuendo.
For those Ethiopians who want
to genuinely broker peace, say between the
political regime and the opposition, between
Somalia
and
Ethiopia
, and between
Eritrea
and
Ethiopia
, they must first fulfill a requisite element of
neutrality. I have no objection to taking sides in
politics, for it is perfectly all right especially
in a democratic process. But, the peacemaker must
transcend ideology and political affiliation so
that s/he can attain real and peaceful conflict
resolution. It is for this apparent reason that I
tried to make ‘political analyses characterized
by neutral observation of objective reality’ in
one of my articles entitled Humanizing the
Ethiopian Political Culture (www.africanidea.org/humanizing.html).
In that article, I argued, “the advantages of
neutral observation (prerequisite to a scholarly
discourse) are tremendous, and they include among
other things, sober reflection of phenomena,
unbiased collection of data, the power of
listening to all without prejudice to none, and
the objective analysis and presentation of facts
as they unfold.”5
Corroborating the necessity
of neutrality, I have put forth the following
suggestion (one of ten) in Political Culture in
the Context of Contemporary Ethiopian Politics (www.africanidea.org/political_culture.html):
“Ethiopians as a whole must liberate themselves
from faction politics although admittedly there is
‘mobilization of bias’ in all political
movements and processes. Ethiopians must have the
right of embracing their favorite parties but they
should give priority to an all-Ethiopia inclusive
common cause.”6
Based on some theoretical and
empirical studies, this paper will further discuss
indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in tackling
conflict and attaining peace by providing examples
from traditional African societies.
In many of my previous
writings, I have already discussed the ‘four
relationship patterns’ and ‘five strategies’
in enabling given communities and/or societies to
overcome conflict and enjoy relatively permanent
peace. However, instead of recycling the
‘patterns and strategies’ mentioned above, in
this paper, I will examine various conflict
resolution models, mechanisms, and workshops
fostered by many institutions on conflict
resolution and peace.
One of the leading
institutions of conflict resolution is the
International Center for Cooperation and Conflict
Resolution (ICCCR) at Teachers College, Columbia
University. The scholarship and research of the
ICCCR is focused “primarily on the
intractability of two related problems: 1) systems
of violent, enduring conflicts, and 2) systems of
dominance … [and] this scholarship is primarily
oriented to scholar-practitioners, leaders, and
policy makers working to ameliorate protracted
problems such as ethnopolitical conflicts within
and between nations.”7
It is crystal clear that the
Horn of Africa is characterized by enduring
conflicts, dominance and oppression, and as we
shall see later, scarce resources, in turn fuel to
raging conflicts among various competing ethnic
groups. The precondition to resolving conflicts
and attaining peace, of course, is behavioral
modification or change of mindset that could
minimize or altogether eliminate belligerence and
bellicosity.
Before we discuss behavioral
modification that we wish to witness and
experience in the long haul, however, lets first
enumerate important methods and procedures in
conflict resolution. Morton Deutsch of the ICCCR
discusses four component parts in his ‘Educating
for a Peaceful World,’ and they are: 1)
cooperative learning; 2) conflict resolution
training; 3) the constructive use of controversy
in teaching subject matters; and 4) the creation
of dispute resolution centers in the schools. In
‘cooperative learning’ the most important is positive
interdependence…and this can be achieved in
many different ways: through mutual goals (goal
interdependence); division of labor (task
interdependence); dividing resource materials, or
information among group members (resource
interdependence); and by giving joint rewards
(reward interdependence). In the end, cooperative
education fosters constructive relationships.8
In ‘conflict resolution
training,’ Duetsch argues that “good
cooperative relations facilitate the constructive
management of conflict,” and depending on what
type of conflict one is in, he discusses three
major types of conflicts: the zero-sum conflict (a
pure win-lose conflict); the mixed-motive (both
can win, both can lose, or one can win, the other
can lose), and the pure cooperative (both can win
or both can lose). 9
Unfortunately, the Horn of
Africa is bewitched by zero-sum conflict as
testified by the Ethio-Eritrean wars; the
Ethio-Somali conflict; the Ethiopian
Government-Opposition conflict; the Somali faction
fratricidal conflict; the Sudanese civil war that
have now waned; the wanton massacre of the people
of Darfur by the Jangaweed; and the Eritrean
conflict with Sudan, Djibouti, Yemen, and
Ethiopia. Ironically, most of the above conflicts
were precipitated and prompted by negative
competition and destructive behavior of the
parties involved. It is absolutely crucial that
this cathexis mindset changes before we can make
real progress in realizing a peaceful and tranquil
society; and changing mindsets or psychological
makeup of people requires massive, intensive, and
rigorous educational programs.
On top of knowing what type
of conflict (this is like figuring out a problem
in order to solve it), and trying to resolve it,
Duetsch further discusses his ‘conflict
resolution training’ package as in the
following: 10
- Become
aware of the causes and consequences of
violence and of the alternatives to violence,
even when you are angry. …Understand that
violence begets violence and that if you
“win” an argument by violence, the other
will try to get even in some other way.
- Face
conflict rather than avoid it…become aware
of the negative consequences of evading a
conflict, such as irritability, tension, and
persistence of the problem. Learn what kinds
of conflicts are best avoided rather than
confronted.
- Respect
yourself and your interests, and respect the
other and his or her interests. …Valuing
oneself and others, as well as respect for the
differences between oneself and others, are
rooted in the fundamental moral commitment to
the principle of universal human dignity.
- Avoid
ethnocentrism: Understand and accept the
reality of cultural difference. Be ware that
you live in a community, a nation, and a world
with people from many different cultures….
Expect cultural misunderstanding, and use them
as opportunities for learning rather than as a
basis of estrangement.
- Distinguish
clearly between interests and positions.
Positions may be opposed, but interests may
not be.
- Explore
your interests and other interests to identify
the common and compatible interests that you
share. Identifying shared interests makes it
easier to deal constructively with the
interests that you perceive as being opposed.
A full exploration of one another’s
interests increases empathy and facilitates
subsequent problem solving.
- Define
the conflicting interests between yourself and
the other as mutual problem to be solved
cooperatively. Define the conflict in the
smallest terms possible, as
“here-now-this” conflict rather than a
conflict between personalities or general
principles – that is, as a specific behavior
rather than about who is a better person.
Diagnose the problem clearly, and seek
creative new options that lead to mutual gain.
- In
communicating with the other, listen
attentively and speak so as to be understood.
…The feeling of being understood as well as
effective communication, facilitates
constructive resolution…Listening actively
and effectively entails not only taking the
perspective of the other so that you
understand the communicator’s ideas and
feelings but also communicating your desire to
understand the other and indicating, through
paraphrasing your understanding or through
questions, what you do not understand.
- Be
alert to the natural tendencies to bias,
misperceptions, misjudgments, and stereotyped
thinking that commonly occur in yourself and
the other during heated conflict. …The
ability to recognize and admit your
misperceptions and misjudgments clears the air
and facilitates similar acknowledgements by
the other.
- Know
yourself and how you typically respond in
different sorts of conflict situations…being
aware of one’s dispositions may allow one to
modify them when they are inappropriate in a
given conflict.
- Throughout
conflict, you should remain a moral person who
is caring and just and should consider the
other as a member of your moral community,
entitled to care and justice.
Some of the above conflict
resolution mechanisms and procedures were
incorporated in my article, Strategies for A
Democratic Culture that was written in 2000.
Before I wrote the article, and more so after its
appearance, the voices of peace and centers for
conflict resolutions have mushroomed in the
academia, and in some instances governments have
installed institutions of peace in an effort to
study the nature of conflict and seek resolution
peacefully rather than resorting to coercion and
violence. One such institution is Fellowship of
Reconciliation with its attendant publication Fellowship.
Coleman McCarthy, director of Center for Teaching
Peace, argues that ‘peaceful conflict resolution
is teachable’ and provides us with nine steps in
resolving disputes and/or conflicts peacefully:
11
- Define
the conflict. If defined objectively, rather
than subjectively, which is how most of us do
it, conflict means only this: We need a new
way of doing things, the old way has failed.
- List
the relationship’s many shared concerns and
needs, as against one shared separation.
- When
people have fought, don’t ask what happened.
This is an irrelevant question. They will
answer with their version of what happened,
almost always self-justifying. The better
question is, “what did you do? This elicits
facts, not opinions. Misperceptions are
clarified, not prolonged.
- Work
on active listening, not passive hearing.
Conflicts escalate when partners try to talk
more than listening and then only listen as a
timeout for verbal rearming. Listening well is
an act of caring. If you are a good listener,
you have many friends. If you are a poor
listener, you have many acquaintances.
Anatomically, we are made to listen than
speak, which is we have two ears and one
mouth.
- Choose
a place to resolve the conflict, not the
battleground itself. Armies tend to sign peace
treaties far from the war zones. Too many
emotions are there.
- Start
it with what’s is doable. Restoration of
peace can’t be done quickly. If it took a
long time for the dispute to begin, it will
take time to end it.
- Work
on a small doable rather than many large
undoables. Almost always, it’s a laughably
small wound that causes the first hurt in a
relationship. But then, ignoring the smallness
takes on a size of its own. Ignoring the
problem becomes larger than the original
problem.
- Develop
forgiveness skills. Many people of large minds
are willing to say after the conflict, “I
‘m going to bury the hatchet.” To
themselves, they add: “But I am going to
mark exactly where I bury it, just in case I
need to dig it up for the next fight.”
Forgiveness looks forward, vengeance looks
backward. Again, it’s anatomy: we have eyes
in the front of our heads, not the back.
- Purify
our hearts. This is merely an elegant way of
telling ourselves, “I need to get my own
messy life in order before I can instruct
others how to live.”
Of the above nine conflict
resolution steps, some of them like item # 4,
about the virtue of listening, are almost always
incorporated in all procedures; but for me
personally item # 8 on forgiveness is absolutely
crucial. Unless we are able to say ‘forgive and
forget’ or ‘let bygones be bygones’, we will
never be able to meaningfully resolve conflicts.
The act of forgiveness leads to a permanent
solution to seemingly protracted violent conflict.
It is with this in mind that I quoted above Dullah
Omar, former Minister of Justice of South Africa.
South Africans have suffered immensely under
successive brutal Apartheid regimes, but as soon
as Nelson Mandela came to power and the indigenous
South Africans begin to exercise
self-determination after they were denied for more
than three centuries, they came up with the most
ingenious and noble idea of forgiveness known as
Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This moral
commitment to others (including former enemies) is
not altogether new to South Africans; the Zulus,
as indicated in their Personal Declaration of
1825, have already recognized ‘collective
sovereignty’ for their neighbor and themselves.
Other Africans, especially those that are troubled
by incessant conflicts should follow the South
African example.
In a similar vein the Peace
Education Foundation, based in Miami, Florida,
provides us a sound package of conflict resolution
education and approaches as well as their
implementation and positive outcomes as thoroughly
examined in its Education World: 12
- Five
of the six New York City high schools
participating in Project S. M. A. R. T.
(School Mediator Alternative Resolution Team)
had a 45 to 70 percent reduction in
suspensions for fighting during the
program’s first year of operation.
- The
Clark County Social Service School Mediation
Program in Nevada, during the 1992-1993 school
year, reduced conflict among students in two
participating elementary schools and helped
prevent fights among students.
- Evaluating
of the impact of Resolving Conflict Creatively
Program (RCCP) in four multiracial,
multiethnic school districts in New York City
showed that 84 percent of teachers who
responded to a survey reported positive
changes in classroom climate. …Mediation
gave a significant tool for handling
conflicts.
‘Conflict Resolution Education’
The report offers
negotiation, mediation, and consensus of decision
making as the three essential processes of
conflict resolution. It goes on to define four
basic approaches to conflict resolution education:
·
Process Curriculum. This
approach is characterized by teaching conflict
resolution as a separate course, a distinct
curriculum, or a daily lesson plan.
·
Mediation Program. Selected
individuals (adults and/or students) are trained
in the principles of conflict resolution and
mediation to provide neutral third-party input to
assist others in reaching resolution to conflict.
·
Peaceable Classroom. This
approach integrates conflict resolution education
into the curriculum and classroom management
strategy.
·
Peaceable Schools. Built on
the peaceable classroom approach, this strategy
uses conflict resolution as a system for managing
the school as well as the classroom. Every member
of the School community, including parents, learns
conflict resolution principles and processes.
Process Curriculum
Approach
The Peace Education
Foundation (PEF) provides a grade-level-specific
curriculum for pre-kindergarten through grade 12
that has a unified sequence of content and skills.
To entrench conflict resolution in schools, PEF
programs are purposefully tied to school
improvement.
The content of the
PEF curriculum is grouped into five components:
·
Community building,
·
Understanding conflict,
·
Perception (understanding different
view points),
·
Anger management, and
·
Rules for fighting fair
Mediation Program
Approach
The core idea behind
the mediation program approach: teaching children
and adults to mediate, to help disputants find
their own solution to a disagreement. The Peer
Mediation Schools Program, developed by the New
Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution (NMCDR),
trains the staff and the entire student body in
the mediation process. The program’s components
are teacher modeling, a curriculum, and mediation,
and it is designed for use in diversified setting.
…The curriculum teaches and reinforces
communication, develops vocabulary and concepts
related to conflict, and develops problem-solving
skills at the elementary level. At the secondary
level, a 15-lesson curriculum teaches and
reinforces communication skills, problem solving,
and anger management.
Peaceable
Classroom Approach
Academic controversy
methods are used when two students disagree.
Deliberate discourse – the discussion of the
advantages and disadvantages of proposed actions
– is how controversies are resolved. Educators
for Social Responsibility (ESR), based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, fosters children’s
ethical and social development through its
programs in conflict resolution, violence
prevention, inter-group relations, and character
education. ESR defines the term peaceable as
meaning a “safe, caring, respectful, and
productive learning environment.”
The Resolving
Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), an
initiative of ESR, involves five components:
·
Professional development for
teachers and other staff,
·
Regular classroom instruction based
on a K-12 curriculum,
·
Peer mediation,
·
Administrator training, and
·
Parent training.
PEF’s comprehensive
package on conflict resolution education was, by
and large, discussed in my article Designing
Continuum to Enrich Ethiopian Educational
Discourse and Debate Culture that was posted
on September 7, 2004. I encourage students,
teachers, university faculty, and other
professionals to read the article once again via www.africanidea.org/designing.html
By
the same token, Head Start Bulletin, in
anticipation of the above centers for conflict
management, brings to our attention Robert E.
Valett’s instructive and peaceful conflict
resolution enumerated items: 13
·
Respect the right to disagree.
In an effort to stop the
killings and carnage in the Great Lakes Region of
Africa, “the Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE),
based in Kampala, Uganda, has joined five other
non-governmental organizations and individuals,
including scholars and researchers, to form the
coalition Stop the Killing Campaign…. Other
organizations in the coalition include the
Pan-African Movement (PAM), based in Kampala; the
African Studies Center of Kenya; Synergies Africa
based in Switzerland; and MWENGO, an umbrella
organization for several African countries based
in Zimbabwe.”14
The culmination of all these
centers and institutions of conflict resolutions
is the University of Peace established by the
United Nations in December 1980 and headquartered
in Costa Rica. The venue of the university is
symbolic because Costa Rica is sui generis
in its refusal to use firearms for its own
defense. The University of Peace has announced
that it will sponsor a workshop on conflict
prevention, management and resolution in Africa to
be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 28 May – 1
June 2007. Themes that will be discussed in the
workshop include: 15
- Peace
and Development;
- Gender
and Peace building;
- Justice,
Human Rights and Peace;
- Non-Violent
Transformation of Conflicts
- Media
and Peace;
- Regional
Integration and Peace; and
- Endogenous
Methods of Conflict Prevention, Management and
Resolution
I am hoping that educators,
particularly university professors and other staff
members of higher institutions of learning in
Ethiopia, will participate in the workshop
organized and sponsored by the University of
Peace. The latter has come to their doorsteps;
they must use the most of it.
The last theme in the
enumeration of the UPEACE workshop conveniently
leads me to exploring the IKS mentioned earlier,
without which conflict resolutions concepts,
techniques, procedures, and experimental models
that we have discussed above could not become
effective. Therefore,
we shall now critically examine the African
traditional conflict resolution modus operandi.
I opened this article with
the Maasai wisdom of conflict management. The
Maasai maxim, however, is not uniquely theirs; it
is rather replicated throughout the continent of
Africa. Although, now violence, instability and
insecurity seem to have eroded the peace–making
fabric in some parts of the Continent, there were
times when the elders reigned supreme in settling
disputes in their respective communities. For
instance, the Shimagile (elders) of
Ethiopia (among the Amhara and Tigray) and
Eritrea; the Jarsa Biya (among the Oromo of
Ethiopia) and Guurti among the Somali had
resolved conflicts peacefully for millennia. There
were times when young boys and girls in northern
Ethiopia and Eritrea swallowed tiny pebbles, in an
oath making ceremony, to cement their friendship,
and avoid animosity and quarrel. But even when
quarrel is imminent, the parties involved don’t
go out of their way for mutual destruction. On the
contrary, they avert violence by negotiating and
settling their disputes peacefully.
The North Eastern African
ethos is to be found in most Western African
societies as well. For instance, ‘a Yoruba
proverb says that’ “the fact that we are
quarreling does not mean that we want our opponent
to die,” and a Togolese principle holds that
“if peace is necessary to preserve life, men
have to be friends if they have to survive.”
Similarly, “in the Ikwere society in Nigeria,
for instance the enemy was sent notice of war. One
dry stick and one green stick were sent.” 16
Quite obviously, the dry and green sticks
symbolically represent animosity and peace
respectively.
In most traditional African
societies, scarce commodities (for example, water
and/or grazing area) are the causes for conflicts.
Practical Action studied traditional conflict
resolution mechanism among the Pokot, Turkana,
Samburu, and Marakwet communities in northern
Kenya. “The communities under study have evolved
over time and institutionalized an elaborate
system and mechanisms or resolving conflicts
whether intra-community or inter-community. The
elders in the three communities form a dominant
component of the customary mechanisms of conflict
management. The elders command authority that
makes them effective in maintaining peaceful
relationships and community way of life. The
authority held by the authors is derived from
their positions in society. They control
resources, marital relations, and networks that go
beyond the clan boundaries, ethnic identity and
generations. The elders are believed to hold and
control supernatural powers reinforced by belief
in superstitions and witchcraft. This perhaps is
the basis of the legitimacy of traditional
conflict resolution mechanisms amongst the
pastoralists.”17
Practical Action’s study is
entitled Indigenous Democracy. In a similar
vein to the latter and with focus on Indigenous
systems of conflict resolution in Oromia, Ethiopia,
Desalegn Chemeda Edossa, Mukand Singh Babel, Ashim
Das Gupta, and Seleshi Bekele Awulachew, based on
studies by Flintan and Imeru, argue that
“resources are the major sources of conflicts
between clans and ethnic groups in both the Awash
River Basin and the Borona Zone, while territory
is another important source of conflicts in the
former. Consciousness of clan ‘territory’ is
more intense nearer to the Awash River, whereas
exclusive rights to land are less important
farther from the river. This indicates how water
resources are important to the community and their
connection to this particular river. The Alledeghi
Plain, for example is considered open grazing land
for all Afars. However, since traditional rules to
restrict resources use have broken down, the
Alledeghi Plain has been heavily overgrazed.”18
Furthermore, Edossa et al,
based on an earlier study made by Watson, E (Inter
institutional alliances and conflicts in natural
resources management: Preliminary research
findings from Borana, Oromiya region, Ethiopia)
tell us that “a pond is the property of an
individual or his direct descendants who initially
excavated it and the person is called abbaa
Konfi…although the property of the abbaa
Konfi, the pond is administered by the local
elders.”19 This kind of individual
ownership of waterholes or land was unknown in
northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, for land was
collectively owned and communally administered.
But even in the latter case, land becomes scarce
due to excessive parceling over many generations
as in Seraye, Eritrea, for example that became the
source of conflict and rendered the society a
litigant community. The Tora’a conflict with
Tsina’Degle in Eritrea was also related to
scarce grazing area that forced the Tora to
encroach on the Tsina’Degle’s grazing and farm
areas. Another good example of scarcity of land is
clearly demonstrated by the gradual loss of
topsoil and hence arable land in Agame, eastern
region of Tigray (northern Ethiopia). A
significant number of the people of Agame resorted
to a different life style and became merchants,
businessmen, and technical people. This way, they
avoided conflict or prevented it by default.
Going back to the Oromo
conflict resolution, we can really appreciate how
the abbaa gadaa (higher echelon in the
Gadaa hierarchy) plays an important role. Again,
Edossa et al quote Watson as in the following:
“The abbaa Gadaa is seen as
the figurehead of the whole Boran [Borana], and is
often described as the President. As well as
performing rituals, matters are referred to him
and his council when a decision cannot be reached
at a lower level. When conflict breaks out between
ollas (the smallest unit of settlement consisting
of 30 to 100 warras – households) or araddaas
(small group of ollas, usually two or three only,
who may cooperate together on their grazing
pattern), or maddaas (area surrounding one water
source), then the abbaa Gadaa will rule on the
case. As the abbaa Gada is responsible for dealing
with matters of concern to the Boran, and as
matters of concern are often related to access to
the resources (water, land, and forests), the
abbaa Gadaa is the highest level of institution of
natural resources management in Borana.”20
“I am self-controlled before the angry,
patient with the unlearned in order to quell
conflict. I am calm, free from hasty acts,
anticipating the outcome, expecting what occurs. I
am one who counsels in situations of strife.”21
‘Self-control’ in effect
is ‘anger management’ that was clearly
stipulated by the Peace Education Foundation (PEF)
curriculum, without which the conflicting parties
could not meaningfully translate dialogue or
preliminary reconciliation meetings into durable
conflict resolution mechanism.
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