BY MENGESHA AMARE
Unequivocally, community engagement promotes advocacy as well as makes peace deal a success, raises public awareness to make a difference. Without a shadow of doubt, citizens play an indispensible role in alleviating disagreements and disparities among one another and between each other as every aspect contributing to disagreements and clashes could by no means out of their reach. Their participation in various peacemaking treks is of paramount importance in bringing lasting serenity among the community in particular and in the entire nation and beyond in general.
This has to be well hammered especially in developing countries like ours where conflict is more likely to have taken place.
For much of human social interaction, myriads of factors make all community members peculiarly the youth highly real change engines and viable weapons to bring about change in all aspects, with a special focus on coming up with peace and tranquility.
As members of the community have had multi-faceted roles in fostering various aspects, they have been heroes and courageous ones in the midst of crisis.
This writer approached Solomon Dansa, who is a graduate of Political Science and International Relations working for a certain NGO as a social worker. He said, “Public participation is considered to be an empowerment tool in which local communities can take responsibility in identifying and addressing their own problems through collaboration with different stakeholders in the administration like local government. It enables people to realize their rights to participate in problem-solving and decision-making processes regarding issues that affect their day-to-day life in the communities in which they live.”
He also stated that within the challenging fluidity of post-conflict environments, the community members social, political and economic navigation has been a weapon in fueling transformation as well as renovating of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict settings.
As to him, what needs to be underlined is that the entire society should be conceptualized as agents of positive peace. Not only is this bold move instrumental in addressing challenges of physical violence, but it is also vital in overcoming cultural violence, and fostering broader social transformation via consolidating relationships and attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.
True, recognizing the society as socio-economic and political actors is of significantly useful in fostering peaceful approaches that aim to boost common understanding among citizens; and importance of community engagement is instrumental in driving social transformation, he underlined.
It is an undeniable fact that community participation is important as it takes action to influence concerned bodies to implement public projects and policies that primarily benefit individual communities and drive social change.
Solomon describes features of peace making which distinguish it from peace-keeping, and suggests the appropriateness of peace-building strategies in dealing with vertical conflict and with the very nature of low intensity conflict. He further stated that peace-building is ‘an associative approach attempting to create a structure of peace both within and among nations – a structure that removes the causes of war and provides alternatives to war.’
He said, “Community participation in peace building efforts is of paramount importance in reducing or resolving conflict between groups by improving communication, understanding, and relationships as well as decreasing tension, anger, fear, or misunderstanding. The importance of multi-track efforts to the success of formal peace agreements has to be well capitalized on.”
Maereg Deresse, a sociologist from Haramaya University, on his part said that public participation is one of the key ingredients of an empowered community to bring about peace and help citizens breathe a sigh of relief. It entails active citizen involvement in all aspects of strategic plan development and implementation of viable projects.
He said, “Community participation helps focus on making places vibrant, inclusive, accessible, and adaptable to meet the needs of people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. Hence, all citizens have to strengthen ties, inclusion and opportunity for all people in community and nurture creative and innovative approaches towards building a strong and peaceful community and a nation at the end of the day.”
He said, “Economic and social reconstruction is crucial to the success of the peace process. In addition to advancing human rights, social participation has a crucial role to play in rebuilding and reconstructing civil society for long-term peace and stability. Not only is societal participation important to democracy, but it also has a significant role to play in consolidating the peace process in the country making the transition from war to peace a success as the community often provides the necessary foundations for democratic institutions, agencies and non-governmental organizations to make a pivotal contribution to post conflict efforts for peace.”
Community based peace building efforts can be undertaken in support of a peace agreement with a view to providing a sufficient level of internal security to enable economic activity to recover, encourage internally displaced people to re-establish themselves, and persuade the business community to invest to strengthen the government’s capacity to carry out key activities, he stated.
As the peace deal would assist the return of internally displaced persons, he stated, support the rejuvenation of household economies, especially by strengthening the smallholder agricultural sector, assist the recovery of communities, through projects that address social and economic infrastructure as well as rehabilitate physical infrastructure of crucial importance for economic revival, such as roads, communication systems, major transport systems and promote national reconciliation, on which every citizen has to capitalize.
However, to achieve peace deal, certain dynamics must be understood which can be illustrated by examining this strategy through an ethical perspective as active community participation improves the use of local knowledge, produces a more equitable distribution of benefits, and promotes local resource and helps.
There are a number of social relationships involved in the process of peace process. The obvious relationship, which is the primary focus of peace deal, is the one between the opposing groups at the time of conflict.
The government of Ethiopia should ensure that any peace process is based on promoting, protecting and reflecting Ethiopians’ values, including human rights, rule of law, and multicultural tolerance.
Since the peace deal respects social and cultural integrity, it is of the utmost importance in dealing with problems emanating from conflicts, rivalry and hostility.
Maereg said, “There are a number of frameworks, methods, tools and processes being used by a variety of development actors to achieve and monitor such peace-building strategies. We now turn to an examination of the particular strategies and benefits that community based approaches to peace-building can entail.”
In identifying and making use of local resources and capacities, community participations are becoming instrumental in getting sources of conflict dried forever in a bid to nurture the value of cultural integrity.
As to Maereg, depending on the type of community engagement and level of influence given over public decision making process, societal participation strives towards deliberative democracy which facilitates a collaborative exchange regarding a set of policies or actions. Besides, lessons learned from wide community intervention are bearing fruits to make citizens beneficiary.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 20 NOVEMBER 2022
