There can be little doubt that the three weeks of events that took place in Juba, South Sudan in November 2022 took on an importance well beyond the key individuals who gathered there in person. From the continent-wide and global Africa Peace Research and Education/ International Peace Research Association academic conference — opened by the Anglican primate, Archbishop Justin Badi Arama — to the closing ceremonies of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, or IFOR, quadrennial business meeting and assembly, there were public events, internal meetings, poetry readings and nonviolence trainings. In total they marked a coming together of worldwide, regional, and grassroots networks and representatives who proclaimed a new era of African nonviolence and peacebuilding ushering in new opportunities for fellowship and collaboration.
Early in our time together we heard from the Honorable Betty Achan Ogwaro, South Sudan’s first Minister of Agriculture, a member of the Legislative Assembly, and founder of the South Sudan Women’s Parliamentary Caucus. She forcefully reminded us that “South Sudan is a very rich country. It has a lot of resources. It would not even need any aid from outside countries if these resources were mobilized properly.”
Sister Betty (as she prefers to be called) is much more than a politician. She is an activist herself, with experience as a mediator and women’s rights champion. As one of the directors of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, she is quite used to hearing history presented from suspicious and at best only partially accurate points of view. Echoing Gandhi regarding the many truths evident in any given situation, and reflecting on the consistently negative views of South Sudan easily available in the global mass media, she challenged us by asking: “Whose truth are you going to talk about?”
The weeks of interconnected meetings, organized under the overall theme “From Conflict to Beloved Communities” (co-coordinated by Moses John Monday and Matt Meyer), featured speakers including Pax Christi International Co-President Sister Teresia Wamuyu Wachira; Vice Chancellors Elavie Ndura and John Akec; South African former parliamentarian Magdalene Moonsamy; and noted poets Stella Nyanzi and Bernadette Muthien. A special gathering of still-colonized and occupied peoples included representatives from Puerto Rico and Palestine, Western Sahara and West Papua, Rojava/Kurdistan, Ambazonia, and Tibet.
A fitting finale to the week was when the Palestinian representative, Zoughbi al Zoughbi – founder and director of the Wi’am Palestine Conflict Transformation Center – was elected president of IFOR! Another memorable moment was the collective commemoration of Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu one year after his passing, as his grandson Xabiso Tutu-Gxashe told stories about his grandpa. Tutu-Gxashe informed us of the ongoing educational work of the Tutu Desk Campaign, which brings needed supplies to schoolchildren throughout the world, carrying on “the Arch’s” legacy.
The world’s largest network of peacemaking and nonviolence organizations, the International Peace Bureau, also played a key role – with one of their newest African Board members challenging us to better coordinate our work to shift the climate crisis. Input from the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network, the Quaker United Nations Office, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Spirit of Mandela coalition, the Association of Catholic Universities and Higher Institutes of Africa and Madagascar, the International Catalan Institute for Peace, and Latin America’s Servicio Paz y Justicia all made contributions to the strategic conversations about future work.
The Pan African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network, or PANPEN, originally birthed at a 2012 meeting alongside a conference of War Resisters’ International, was strengthened and renewed, as participants redoubled their commitments to work together – and with allies – to build African solutions to African problems, and grassroots people’s solutions to the world’s problems.
This grassroots orientation was reinforced at the public IFOR event, “Armed Conflicts and Peaceful Transition in Africa: Lessons Learned from South Sudan and Around the World,” which was held November 11-12 at All Saints Anglican Cathedral. IFOR representative Jean-Pierre Massamba reflected on building peace through local educational work on nonviolence in the Congo, and Ukrainian pacifist and conscientious objector Yurii Sheliazhenko spoke of people-to-people resistance to war across the Russian-Ukrainian divide.
The real glue that held the weeks and works together, however, was the Organization for Nonviolence and Development, or ONAD, of South Sudan. ONAD is a member organization of IFOR, and its team were the overall hosts of the Juba meetings. Noting that “building a peace movement with nonviolence principles is a gradual process,” ONAD reminds us that our job as peacemakers must be to promote nonviolent actions, good governance, gender equity, and community safety through training, research, and advocacy.” Through extraordinary times together in Juba, we learned anew how best to do all that.