South Sudan: If We Truly Want Young People to be Peacemakers, Agents of Positive Change, Then Attacks on Education Must Stop

My name is Nandege and I am a peacemaker. I come from the village of Homiri in Chukudum county, South Sudan, where most of the population of some 150,000 people are subsistence farmers, just like my mother. When I was 24, I brokered peace between two communities who had fought each other for decades over cattle thefts that often turned violent, to the extent that people were killed. It was destroying livelihoods and the communities.

A few years back, I was working with a youth union when I came across the Youth Peacemaker Network, an educational programme that combines traditional subjects like Math and English with civic education such an conflict management and peacebuilding.

I enrolled in it, and through the trainings supported jointly by the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) and Education Above All (EAA), I learned mediation and negotiation skills that allowed me to take the first steps towards peace. Not only was I able to sit down with armed groups to end the conflict between their communities, in time I trained other young people and worked with them to facilitate peace within their communities, too.

The world often thinks of peace as treaties negotiated by officials in suits in distant conference halls and boardrooms. But for many young people like me, peacebuilding starts in our homes, families, neighbourhoods and communities. Young people are substantially affected by violence in all its forms — terrorist attacks, political fights, organised crime, and gender-based violence, to name a few. We are the ones who must bear the long-lasting human, social, and economic costs.

We are also the ones who are at the base level where the work to build sustainable and long-lasting peace must begin.

In South Sudan, cattle raiding is becoming increasingly violent because of the proliferation of small weapons among thieves. Attacks often kill dozens of people at a time and bring with them many risks for the community, including child abductions, and attacks on women and girls. The violence has also had a devastating impact on resources and has disrupted trade, leaving many in poverty.

I had learned of how cattle raiding was impacting the Logir and Didinga communities on the radio and decided to leverage my training to develop a conflict resolution plan alongside partners and community leaders. In the beginning, I would travel long distances, often to remote places with no phone signal and no running water to visit these communities and gain a better understanding of their grievances. Parents would often tell me that they were afraid to send their children to school or take their sick child to the doctor. Women would say that they were scared to fetch firewood, because the journey would mean exposure to attacks by the rival community.

After speaking to men, women, young people and the elderly, I approached the community leaders, many of whom were carrying weapons. Speaking with armed men was intimidating in the beginning, but as someone who had experienced the impact of war and violence first hand, I was able to establish a common ground and gain their trust. I would tell the leaders that I considered myself one of their daughters and implore them to look at the consequences of the violence and how devastating it is for the daughters and sons of their community.

It’s been two years since I mediated between the Logir and Didinga. Today, the cattle of the two communities graze on the same piece of green pastureland and drink from a common source of water. They trade with each other, and some have even intermarried. Children go to schools without fear. It took a village to achieve this, but it wouldn’t have been possible without having had access to education that I as a young peacemaker had.

There are countless examples like me all over the world who prove how impactful young people can be if we are allowed to access quality education and are recognized for our power and potential. We prove, beyond doubt, that quality education and skill-building can change lives for the better, in many cases by achieving what military interventions cannot: sustainable peace. To put it simply, schools and learning centres are often the shortest pathway to sustainable, lasting peace.

And yet we continue to see growing attacks on schools, students and teachers across the world. In the past year alone, we have seen schools targeted in Gaza, Nigeria and the Philippines. The situation in Afghanistan is a very worrying recent example, because girls there are facing a real risk of being deprived of their education and communities worry about a growing threat of violence.

If we are sincere in our calls for peace and the preservation of fundamental human rights, such attacks cannot be allowed to continue. The international community should reinforce its commitment to safeguarding the rights of every child and young person to quality education and should work harder to help bridge gaps in education in communities grappling with violence. This can be one of the most far-reaching ways to help communities become more resilient to divisions, extremist ideologies, and harmful practices.

Magdalena Nandege is a young peacemaker from the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI) in South Sudan

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