June 12, 2008
Learning to craft a lasting peace
Fourteen years ago in Uganda, Franca Akello was 15 years old and scarred by bullets.
A world away at AU, Toyanath Bhattarai was studying public policy as a Humphrey fellow, unaware that his own country of Nepal would soon be embroiled in a decade of bloodshed.
This summer, Akello and Bhattarai were two of the participants in the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at the School of International Service (SIS), which draws rising leaders, nonprofit workers, AU graduate students, and government officials from some of the world’s most challenging conflict zones.
Founded in 2001 by Mohammed Abu-Nimer, SIS, the summer institute is a time for peace builders to learn from leading scholars, practitioners, and each other during intensive day-long classes on a range of topics, from religion and culture to program design to women’s participation in the peace process.
All of the participants have stories to share. Akello has gone from war victim to member of parliament.
Growing up in Uganda’s war-torn north, Akello went to a primary school whose schedule was set around the skirmishes that happened like clockwork, every morning, between government troops and rebels. Classes weren’t held in the morning, because of the fighting.
But one day when she was eight, all seemed clear, and she was sent for water.
“The rebels had an ambush. The government troops sense that ambush. When the bullets began, I started to run for my life, and just ran in the middle of the bullets.”
She touches her thigh; it’s still scarred. She points to her foot, in its light sandal. There she has another bullet scar. This one happened a few years later, on her way to her grandmother’s house.
Most of Akello’s classmates died in the war or in refugee camps of AIDS. Her sister-in-law was abducted at 13 by rebels, forced within hours to chop off the arms of an old man, and to add to the horror, made to carry them in her pockets. On their marches, if captives grew tired, the rebels would simply kill them.
Akello was the only one of her classmates to earn a college degree. “I thought, ‘What can I do to make a difference?’” She became a teacher, nonprofit worker, and political activist.
Two years ago, at 27, she was elected to parliament from a district that includes many refugee camps.
Bhattarai, too, is involved with his country’s parliament. He first came to AU in 1994 as a Humphrey Fellow, focusing on public policy. But in the time between that scholarly year and this summer, Nepal fell into a conflict that killed around 13,000 before rebels fighting to overthrow the monarchy laid down their arms and joined the political process. Bhattarai is now involved in supervising the disarmament and investigating past human rights abuses.
He’s also a secretary in the historic parliament where peaceful means achieved what violence had not, and the monarchy was abolished by a landslide vote.
Yet tensions are rampant. Will the peace hold? “We are in such a transitional stage,” says Bhattarai. “These sessions are very interesting and very relevant to me, because now, my work is basically peace building.”
For Akello, the AU program is helping her to become a strong leader. “I really enjoy this program,” Akello says. “I think it opens our way for better achievement.”
