Evaluating Peace Initiatives In Sudan

Tamador Khalid, one of Integrity’s lead Sudanese consultants, recently evaluated a community centred peace initiative funded by Peace Direct‘s Rapid Response Fund run through the local partner Collaborative for Peace. Tamador visited the highly insecure Southern Kordofan region in Sudan to meet with local people who have been delivering conflict resolution and mitigation through Peace Committees to conflicts ranging from the domestic level (where some domestic or family conflicts can trigger much larger scale events) to large, violent episodes.

The conflict in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state (which lies on the border with South Sudan) has been ongoing since the late 1980’s as th e region was heavily affected by the conflict between North and South Sudan between 1983 and 2005. Many of these political tensions remain which has resulted in frequent violent episodes across the entire region. Conflict in S. Kordofan is highly complicated with strong ethnic tension, natural resource competition, land disputes, oil related conflict and a backdrop of poverty, tribalism and lawlessness. The region is especially difficult for external actors to access due to a number of factors including insecurity.

Tamador was able to visit a number of Peace Committees which attempt to improve community acceptance and decision making about conflict intervention by including different groups in a more balanced membership of diverse ethnic/ tribal roots, age profiles and gender. Overall, she saw that Peace Committees supported by the Rapid Response Fund are an effective and organised means of community conflict resolution having engaged in many conflicts to date, and are generally active and well respected by the rest of the community.

Posted by: Lauren Pett, Head of Operations.