{"id":4847,"date":"2008-08-15T14:15:56","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T18:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/?p=4847"},"modified":"2012-02-06T17:01:26","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T21:01:26","slug":"cjp-to-work-in-sierra-leone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/2008\/08\/cjp-to-work-in-sierra-leone\/","title":{"rendered":"CJP to Work in Sierra Leone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Freetown, Sierra Leone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On National Healing Process<\/h3>\n

Once the leaders, with international support, agree that \u201cWar is over.\u201d Once the borders are secure. Once the tens of thousands of militia members lay down arms. Once a government begins to seem representative and viable. Then what?<\/p>\n

What can be done to ensure that a country, raw from grief over 50,000 killed and many more maimed, stays on the path to peace? What can be done to ensure that grievances don\u2019t fester into another violent conflict? What can be done to find ways to address real problems \u2013 like unequal distribution of resources and power \u2013 without folks resorting to destruction and making matters worse?<\/p>\n

Transformation at the grassroots is one answer. The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University believes it might be able to help with this process in Sierra Leone, where a brutal 11-year war ended in 2002.<\/p>\n

With $50,000 in seed money from the Catalyst for Peace foundation, CJP will work with Forum of Conscience, a human rights organization based in Sierra Leone, to nurture the formation of local reconciliation committees in all 14 districts of the country. The committees will be made up of respected elders, women, youths and religious leaders. This grassroots reconciliation process will be called \u201cFambol Tok,\u201d meaning \u201cfamily talk\u201d in the local lingo.<\/p>\n

Over a three-year period, \u201cFambul Tok is designed to draw all members of the nation\u2019s post-war society \u2013 whether victims, offenders or witnesses \u2013 back into the Sierra Leonean family,\u201d said Amy Potter, CJP\u2019s lead organizer of this initiative. \u201cThis community- healing process of reconciliation and forgiveness is designed to address the roots of conflict at the local level and to restore dignity to the lives of those who suffered from violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armed conflict in Sierra Leone began when Sierra Leoneans from the Revolutionary United Front joined Liberian fighters and began their revolution by attacking communities in Sierra Leone close to the Liberian boarder in 1991. For more than a decade, combat devastated the social, economic and political life of the country. More than 200,000 Sierra Leone people fled to refugee camps in neighboring states, and a further 1 million were internally displaced. Thousands of civilians lost their arms or legs to brutal amputation.<\/p>\n

After the war\u2019s end, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up, as was a criminal court backed by the United Nations. But these measures did not have a direct impact on the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans, who struggle every day in their families and communities to deal with the aftermath of the war.<\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia, \u201cThe major challenge to the transition and peace-consolidation efforts is addressing the underlying causes of tension and conflict in order to\u2026avoid a relapse into a conflict situation as in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fambol Tuk is designed to help address this \u201cmajor challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On National Healing Process Once the leaders, with international support, agree that \u201cWar is over.\u201d Once the borders are secure. Once the tens of thousands… Read more about CJP to Work in Sierra Leone<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1036],"issues":[1044],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resources","tag-fambul-tok","issues-spring-summer-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4847"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4861,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions\/4861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=4847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}