Towards Building Peace Infrastructures At The Local Level In Southern Ethiopia Actors Their Potentials And Limits

This dissertation investigates the contributions and limitations of local peace infrastructures inrncommunal conflict transformation in southern Ethiopia. The research is conceived and justifiedrnagainst the backdrop of the growing contemporary emphasis on the need to proactively rely onrnlocal peace infrastructures to mitigate and transform violent communal conflicts that ravage arnplethora of grassroots communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further justifications of therninstrumental power of local peace infrastructures are based on the recognition that grassrootsbasedrncommunal conflicts are essentially driven by local contents and actors, and therefore thernmost effective sustainable remedies for these conflicts would be achieved by having relevant localrnactors as key drivers of any conflict mediation, resolution and peacebuilding initiatives. Over thernpast 20 – 30 years, local peace infrastructures have proved quite effective in resolving varyingrnlevels of violent conflicts and building peace in many African countries. Some of the mostrnoutstanding success stories have been recorded by the Local Peace Committees (LPCs) known asrn‘Local Peace Council’ in Ghana, and ‘Village Peace and Development Committees’ in Kenya.rnMany regional and international civil society organisations have mounted strong advocacyrncampaigns aimed at replicating the success stories of Ghana and Kenya elsewhere in Sub-SaharanrnAfrica where violent communal conflicts are rife.rnThe fieldwork data collection was carried out in the profoundly multi-ethnic and heterogenousrnEthiopia’s southern region (Southern Nations, Nationalities' and Peoples' Regional State –rnSNNPRS) which has seen series of violent communal conflicts in the past two decades and wherernleading initiatives have been taken to establish local peace infrastructures to prevent and resolvernrecurrent communal violence. The study was specifically initiated with a motivation to bridge therngaps between constructive potential of local peace infrastructures and risk of their manipulation byrnthose who monopolize power. Hence, the familiar local peace infrastructures, namely, staterninitiated local peace committees and customary elders as well as their respective rival or criticalrnlocal peace infrastructures were selected and empirically analyzed.rnThe study employed a mix of qualititative methods using a comparative case study strategy as arnresearch design especially to facilitate collection of necessary data and conduct analyses. Relevantrndata therefore were collected from both primary and secondary sources using data collectionrnmethods such as interviews, focus groups discussion, observations and informal consultations.rnOver 95 participants (key informants and FGDs members) comprising local authorities, elders,rnwomen, young people, members of various local peace actors offered information in face-to-facerninterviews and dialogues.rnThe study found that local peace infrastructures that were co-owned by the primary conflict partiesrndelivered essential contributions to communal conflict transformation while at the same timernindicating a potential for further impact if some of their limits were addressed. The councils ofrnelders and state initiated peace committees specifically in the frontier areas between the Sidamarnand Oromo have been serving as essential platform for local peace-building even though they havernlimited potentials to deal with conflicts arising in the asymmetric contexts. In the asymmetricrncontexts where women and social and community groups have been exposed to violent attacks andrndiscriminations by those who monopolize power, the use of critical engagement by the victimsrnoffered a better platform for non-violent change as evident in Wondo Genet and Konso. The studyrngenerally found that the prevailing violence, power asymmetry between conflict parties andrnineffective organizational characteristics of local peace actors limit their peace potentials. Based onrnthe findings and analyses thereof, the study suggests a necessity to adapt context-specificrnmechanisms, invest adequate time and financial resources and offer legal supports to enrichrnpotentials of local peace actors to deal with actual and potentially violent communal conflicts.

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