The beautiful island of Sri Lanka, lying just off the coast of southern India, has endured one of the more brutal wars of the last century, lasting 26 years and claiming 80-100,000 lives. The Sri Lankan government’s military victory in May 2009 brought an end to the violence but left many challenges in its wake, as reports of civilians deaths and human rights abuses abound and the grievances of Tamil and Muslim minorities remain unmet.

In October I travelled to the eastern coastal city of Trincomalee to launch a year-long reconciliation program with 80 Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders from surrounding areas. It was deeply affected by the war as well as the 2004 tsunami. Repeated flooding has further damaged homes and infrastructure, compounding endemic poverty.

In Sri Lanka, ethnic groups tend to be regionally divided, but in the Eastern District all three groups (Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim) live in close proximity, although the Tamil-speaking minorities are in the majority. Everyone is relieved that the war is over. However, grievances, mistrust, and enmity run deep, as do the social and psychological wounds of war. Addressing ethnic tensions head-on would be too fraught in a political climate where the Sinhalese-dominated government insists that the country’s only problem is one of economic development. Religious leaders offer a more indirect route. The Buddhist are all Sinhalese and the Hindus, Tamil; while Tamil speaking Muslims identify as their own ethnic group and during the war clashed with Hindu Tamils. Christian congregations form something of a bridge, containing both Tamil and Sinhalese speakers. The program will engage all four groups of religious leaders in community-based projects to rebuild relationships. However, sustainable peace will not come without a greater degree of social justice. As the participants come to understand each other’s challenges, it is hoped that together they can also advocate for non-discriminatory government policies.

Karuna Center is delighted to be working in partnership with the U.S. based development firm ARD and Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, one of Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest NGOs that has been engaged with peace rural development and community empowerment for over 50 years. The religious leaders will be able to build on Sarvodaya’s extensive village councils to develop their projects.

During this first visit, we held separate workshops for each faith group. Each group analyzed the layers of problems their communities face in the aftermath of war as well as sources of resilience and the ways in which their faith traditions can contribute to a more peaceful and tolerant future. 

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to three women peacebuilders for their non-violent efforts to achieve the safety of women and realize women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work. It is also a recognition of women’s contribution to peacebuilding efforts across the world—to bring an end to the suppression of women that still exists in many countries, and to realize the greater potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.

For 17 years since its founding, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding has been fortunate to partner with many women peacebuilders who have taken brave and effective steps toward peace across divides. In celebration of the three women winning the Nobel Peace Prize, we would like to feature four women peacebuilders with whom we have worked, and celebrate all ongoing peacebuilding efforts across the world.

Dishani Jayaweera
Director of Programs, the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation: Home for Diversity

After attending Karuna Center’s Peace Dialogue session in Sri Lanka and the CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures) program at the School for International Training [Vermont, USA] in Sri Lanka, Dishani co-founded the Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation (CPBR). With a strong belief in power of individuals and grassroots communities, Dishani and her partner Jayantha began working with youth and religious leaders to contribute to building a united Sri Lanka guided by compassion, justice, and equal respect for diversity. [1]

Dishani then participated in Karuna Center’s Leadership Training for Dialogue and Reconciliation, a two-year training-of-trainers program held in Sri Lanka from 2003 to 2005.

“My work with Karuna Center gave me the confidence that I could do more than manage logistics for development projects, and inspired me to start my own organization in 2003. Karuna Center was the first organization to work with us as a partner. Today we provide facilitation, program development, and consultation for grassroots groups as well as international organizations.”

Suzanne Ruboneka
Co-founder, Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe/ Rwanda

Suzanne is one of the founding members of Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe (“Women together for women”), a network of over 50 women’s non-governmental organizations throughout Rwanda founded in 1992. Pro-Femmes aims to empower women and increase their voice in society, eliminate all forms of gender-related discrimination, promote equality and equity between men and women, and develop sustainable peace in Rwanda.

“In our culture, there are still barriers for women to express themselves in public…there are no place for women to think, to look for solutions, to play a real role. How can we motivate women, give them the chance to get together to express themselves, without fear?” [2]

Since 2003, Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe and Karuna Center have worked to help Rwandan women assume effective roles in the process of building a peaceful culture. During our four-part training series from 2003 to 2005, women participants developed non-violent conflict resolution skills, which are integral to the establishment of a more secure environment between Hutus and Tutsis, who continue to live as neighbors.

Suzanne currently leads Pro-Femmes’ Peace Program. Suzanne has been a leader in helping victims and perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 meet and reconcile, in order to rebuild communities and a culture of peace. Her program also supports agricultural cooperatives, micro-lending projects, and youth initiatives.

Emsuda Mujagic
President, Screm do Mira/Bosnia

Emsuda Mujagic is the founder and president of a non-governmental organization, Screm do Mira (“Through Heart to Peace”), based in Sanski Most, Bosnia, and they have been working for reconciliation among the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims of northwestern Bosnia. The organization also runs programs to support Muslims in the Sanski Most area, who have been forcefully displaced from nearby towns of Prijedor and Kozarac, and help their return home.

“We all have important values and ideas, things we care about and want to share. Sometimes we feel our ideas can even change the world, and we want to let other people know how they can join in and make all our lives better.” [3]

In 1997, Emsuda invited Karuna Center to Bosnia to lead peacebuilding workshops for Bosniak and Serb women, who were seeking ways of post-civil war reconciliation. Karuna Center led a series of inter-ethnic dialogues for Bosnian and Serb women, which eventually developed into a larger inter-ethnic dialogue project for educators in 1997.

Mossarat Qadeem
Executive Director, PAIMAN Alumni Trust/Pakistan

Coming from a conservative Pashtun family in northern Pakistan, Mossarat dedicates her life to helping women become leaders of their own lives. As the Executive Director of PAIMAN Alumnit Trust, she develops training materials for building leadership skills and encourages women’s political participation and initiatives in gender mainstreaming across Pakistan and South Asia. Based in Islamabad, Pakistan, PAIMAN--promisein Uldu—is Pakistan’s first center for conflict transformation and peacebuilding, and has worked with 75,000 youths and women in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan. Mossarat taught for 14 years at the University of Peshawar’s Department of Political Science and served as the assistant director of the university’s Women’s Study Center, and she was also a founding member of the regional Women’s Peace Forum. [4]

In August 2009, Karuna Center’s Executive Director (then Associate Director) Olivia Dreier led peacebuilding training for PAIMAN and their partner organization in the Swat Valley and the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. In the following winter in 2010, Mossarat and her colleagues attended Dr. Paula Green’s CONTACT South Asia to enhance their peacebuilding capacity.

Reference

[1] http://www.peacedirectusa.org/peacebuilders/sri-lanka/

[2] Hamilton, Heather. Rwanda’s women: the key to reconstruction. The journal of humanitarian assistance: Online article. 10 May, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.aaw.cc/PDF_files/Rwandas%20Women2.pdf, Accessed on December 7, 2011.

[3] http://adis79202.tripod.com/index.html

[4] http://www.huntalternatives.org/pages/8236_mossarat_qadeem.cfm

Posted by Satoko Hirano

Satoko is an intern at Karuna Center for Peacebuilding since August, 2011. Satoko is an international student from Hiroshima, Japan, and studying anthropology with a focus on applied anthropology.