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Youth Peacebuilding Initiative

AZZA is running this initiative in the Sudan to educate the youth of Internally Displaced Persons' (IDPs) camps in non-violence and peaceful conflict resolution. By involving themselves in youth groups and presenting an alternative to violence, AZZA is also disseminating a culture of non-violence through the IDP community.

Description

The Youth Peacebuilding Initiative operates throughout the Sudan except in South and West Darfur. The initiative works both with individual youths and through workshops and youth groups. It offers training in conflict mediation, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding thereby enabling the youth to undertake peacebuilding activities of their own at local, state, and national levels.

Aims / Objectives

AZZA recognises the women and youth of the Sudan as prime victims of the conflict in that country. The youth are easy prey to bad people who persuade them to become involved in the conflict. AZZA therefore aims to change this by training them and raising their awareness of peace and of peaceful methods to achieve their goals and dreams. Women are victims in the sense that they have lost husbands and sons to the conflict, they have already stood the test of the conflict and have a strong desire to see it end. AZZA can help them to achieve the end of the conflict they desire by training them. Thus through a process of training and by supporting youth groups to develop their own activities to bring about conflict resolution and reconciliation and to empower those who have been trained to assist friends or relatives in other IDP camps AZZA hopes to transform the conflict in the Sudan.

How it is Articulated

We start by informing the youth, then organising the initiative. We invite youths from Khartoum, Gadarif, the Red Sea, and the Blue Nile – around fifty in total – and seek to educate them in the perils of continuing the conflict. We seek to keep them close to the communities and societies they come from so that they can spread the learning process and prevent potential conflicts in their own communities as well as turning people away from conflict who might be tempted towards it.

Achievements / Learning Points

It is important that the experiences of this initiative are taken to other parts of the country. AZZA regards this initiative as the first phase of a three stage process. AZZA’s strategy is to take those involved in phase one with their success stories to work as ‘Trainers Of Trainers’ in another gathering of youth in the Blue Nile area. Those who have gone through phase two in the Blue Nile will then go on to work in phase three in other states.

Geographical Area of Operation

Khartoum

Funding Resources

Organisations Involved

AZZA, youth and some of the civil society organisations

Stories

Elyass Diako is from the Latouka tribe. She is one of 15 children, from two wives. When she first joined the group she was very aggressive towards the children of other tribes. The monitors started to help her to integrate with children from other tribes. She became a bright student with a particular talent for singing and learning other tribes’ songs. Now she is very happy participating in this activity. Moreover she is teaching these songs to the new children in classes, she has learnt to resolve disputes between children and has started to help organise plays and drama productions. Based on her strong personality and helped by the initiative, she has developed good leadership skills.

Taissir Othman's Story:Taissir Othman is from the Nuba tribe. She was one of the most talented kids in music, using her tribe’s patrimonial songs of peace in the class. There she learned how to create a group representing her region. Now she is democratically managing this group and participating at local events. The group’s popularity has grown, due to its smart appearance and very good organisation.

Amira Daniel and Carolyn’s quarrel: Amira is 14 years old and Carolyn is 15 years old, Amira makes pancakes and sells them. One day Carolyn visited Amira while she was cooking the pancakes in hot oil. Carolyn dropped the hat she had on – which belonged to her mother – in the oil. Carolyn started arguing and asked Amira to give her money for a new hat to give back to her mum.

Amira refused and suggested Carolyn should explain the accident to Carolyn’s mother. In fact the mother did accept the apology, however Carolyn did not. This was because, at the beginning when the incident happened, Amira, did not apologise but started telling Carolyn off.

The next day they came to the centre for their class, but Carolyn was late which was unusual. When the teacher asked for the reason of the delay, she started telling to explain what had happened between her and Amira and she expressed her anger about the fact that Amira told her off while she was a guest in her house.

The teacher asked the other students how they would resolve this problem from what they learned in peacebuilding. The children suggestions were as follows:

At that time Amira and Carolyn agreed on the suggestions and hugged with a big smile in front of everybody. All the kids were thus able to feel the direct and practical benefits of learning conflict resolution techniques.