African Woman and Child Feature Service

Overview: 

This project will focus on building awareness of conflict management approaches at the community level and promoting indigenous and contemporary approaches to conflict resolution.

Community Mediation Councils will be established to strengthen community awareness of conflict prevention, mitigation, and resolution mechanisms. The Councils will also develop and enhance community members’ full and active participation in decision-making in affairs affecting peace in their communities.

The Community Mediation Councils will include respected members of each of the communities at risk, in equal numbers.  Committee size will be limited to allow committees to function efficiently.  While the specific types of members may vary from locale to locale, the committees will typically include elders, clan and religious leaders, members of the school community (teachers and/or parents), women, leaders of youth, and representatives of economic stakeholder group (such as farmers, herders or traders) who may have particular interests in the major conflicts, etc. As representatives of civil society, Community Mediation Councils will be separate from government administration.  These Community Mediation Councils will have several goals:

• To act as a proactive sounding board where incipient conflicts can be identified and, if possible, defused.
• To serve as a community structure members who have acquired awareness and skills in conflict mitigation.
• To form part of an early warning network and to act as potential intermediaries should conflicts erupt.

It is important to note that these Community Mediation Councils will not serve to replace traditional or formal conflict resolution modalities, e.g., councils of elders – indeed we envisage that many participants in traditional approaches will also be members of Community Mediation Councils – but rather to provide additional resources and cross-community authority to effect non-violent solutions. 

Criteria for selection include:

• Multiple ethnic and political groups
• Both urban and rural economies represented
• High incidence of the 2008 post-election conflict
• Potential projects that can involve all ethnic groups
• Ease of networking and inter-location exchange

Objectives

Reduced community vulnerability to conflict and the impact on livelihoods

Objectives

Communities participating in peace mitigation and documenting good case studies;

• Increased citizen knowledge and awareness on issues around peace, disseminating relevant information emerging from the TJRC and the various commissions using local languages, highlighting the benefits of pluralism harmonious living
  

• Increased support for local peace initiatives by the media and other stakeholders, community initiatives by elders, youth, women and children and other marginalized groups, highlight the role of small scale economic activity associations and community leaders for multi-ethnic joint economic, social and cultural activities                      

• Increased capacity to sustain local support for pluralistic and harmonious living through training.

OutPut:

• Access to information on peace by everyone in the country
• Effective involvement and participation of young people in post-co0nflict reconciliation issues
• Creating awareness on the successes, gaps and failures of post-conflict handling mechanism
• Coalition building on conflict mitigation and reconciliation issues in Kenya