PEACE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

VISION: Build a peaceful Kenyan Society from diverse communities of Kenya.

MISSION: To promote sustainable peace in conflict areas in Kenya through prevention, deterrence, dialogue, negotiation, resolution, and post-conflict stabilization.

 We define conflict as a disagreement through which the parties involved perceive a threat to their lives, needs, resources, interests or concerns. A clash of interests, values, actions or directions often sparks a conflict. We also recognise that there are many types and causes of conflicts including: community, ethnic, diplomatic, economic,  emotional, environmental resources, external, ideological, international, interpersonal, inter-societal, intellectual, intrastate  (for example: civil wars, election campaigns), intrapersonal  (though this usually just gets delegated out to psychology), organizational, intra-societal, military, religious-based conflict (for example: Center For Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict), workplace, data, relationship, racial conflict. However, in every conflict there are perpetrators and victims and dialogue process between victims and perpetrators is the foundation to solving the conflict.

However, this programme shall focus on the local conflicts in Kenya that include: community, ethnic, economic, emotional, resources, intellectual, intrastate (for example: election campaigns), organizational, relationship, racial conflict.

The Problems indentified as the cause of the 2007/8 disputed flawed presidential election and post-election violence.  Kenyans went to elections on 27th December 2007, but the process was flawed and was manipulated infavour of the incumbent. Kenyans would not afford to helplessly watch their sovereign right expressed through voting stolen by the power brokers. Citizens vote for certain candidates because of party manifesto, hopes, aspirations, values and investing their future and expectations in a political party and a personality. However after the recent skirmishes and post-election clashes conflict where 1500 people died and about 350,000 were displaced Kenyans identified causes as follows

         (1)        Flawed Presidential elections: This was one way the incumbent used State machinery and stole the people’s sovereign authority expressed through voting and fundamentally altered the destiny of our country contrary to the citizens general will.

         (2)        Poverty: Poverty perpetuated by inequitable distribution of resources, patronage and political correctness.

         (3)        Ethnic Violence: Post-election violence that saw Displacement, dispossession, murder, injuries and graduated to ethnic cleansing.

         (4)        Past injustice: Triggered revenge, settling of scores and spiral reactions includes Land disputes, Human Right abuses, injustices, Inequity, Corruption, and Mismanagement of public resources.

         (5)        Governance issues: Structure of governance that perpetuates centralization of resources, and a system where economic and political systems are based on winner-take-all, inefficiency, obsequiousness and sycophancy.

         (6)        Equity for the opportunities: We must move from winner take all and employ Kenyans without discrimination, stop political patronage.

The process of reconciliation is:

[a]   Finding a way to live that permits a vision of the future;

[b]   The building of relationships;

[c]    Coming to terms with past acts and enemies;

[d]  A society-wide, long-term process of deep change;

[e]   A process of acknowledging, remembering, and learning from the past; and

[f]     Voluntary and cannot be imposed.

We recognise that reconciliation is a long-term process and time becomes a important commodity for healing and forgiving and truth-telling is also a pre condition of reconciliation because it creates objective opportunities for people to see the past in terms of shared suffering and collective responsibility. More important still is the recognition that victims and offenders share a common identity, as survivors and as human beings, and simply have to get on with each other.

In all cases to start the process of Reconciliation the motive of the offender, the context, intention, the legal and factual nature of the offence, including its gravity; must be established and sometimes to achieve the objectives of Reconciliation through reintegration, the use of traditional justice mechanisms such as Tribal Elders Councils to facilitate “community reconciliation agreements” between the local community and the perpetrators of less serious crimes such as looting, burning and minor assault.

OBJECTIVES:

         (1)        To promote coexistence, tolerance and respect for humanity.

         (2)        To set up mechanism of solving disputes, differences between people, and groups of people, and to address the injustices of society that cause violent conflict.

         (3)        To address the underlying ethnic causes of the recent post-election violence in 2007/8 which include Flawed Presidential elections, Poverty, Ethnic Violence, Past injustice, Governance issues, Equity for the opportunities.

         (4)        To promote awareness creation on the New Constitution and legal provisions to enable communities to understand that they can solve issues of social, economic and political injustices through non-violent formal legal system rather than through violent conflicts.

         (5)        To empower community elders through Tribal Community Councils with the skills and capabilities to prevent and manage inter border conflicts.

         (6)         To offer training programs in conflict prevention, transformation and management, mediation, resolution, and post-conflict stabilization with a special focus on inter-communal dialogue and reconciliation.

         (7)        To promote trust, respect, communication, collaboration, compromise and win-win solution to conflict, although it can be time-intensive, we work together with the parties in the conflict to find a mutually beneficial solution.

         (8)        To Promote Reconciliation although we acknowledge that the state of reconciliation is a very long-term objective, which can only be reached after all the important ingredients of justice, truth, healing and so on has been addressed.

All types of Human conflicts undermine progress in health, education, economic growth, and governance; create conditions that have resulted in breeding grounds for terrorism; illegal gang groups, and requires costly humanitarian assistance. The persistent consequences of long-term poverty and warfare complicate the prospects for economic, social and political stability. These consequences include: deteriorating sanitation and health and, especially, pandemic; widespread and recurring food insecurity; destruction of property, death, and large numbers of refugee, displaced, and otherwise marginalized populations. Food insecurity, floods, droughts, and epidemics often combined with conflict complicate emergencies with devastating effects.