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Creating Peace OXFAMExchange WINTER 2007 CREATING PEACE OXFAMExchange Winter 2007 | STEVE LISS/OXFAMAMERICA STAND UP AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. Support the Oxfam Amerca Advocacy Fund. The Oxfam America Advocacy Fund enables us to challenge the laws that keep people in poverty—from Peru to Mali to our own Gulf Coast. Make your voice heard in Congress and beyond. Amplify the voices of the one billion people living in extreme poverty. Together, we can end poverty and injustice. JOIN TODAY AT WWW.OAAF.ORG/JOIN EDITOR Jane F. Huber BOARD OF DIRECTORS Janet A. McKinley, Chair | Raymond C. Offenheiser, President WRITERS Chris Hufstader, Coco McCabe, Andrea Perera Kapil Jain Akwasi Aidoo Michael Carter Wendy Sherman DESIGNER Jessica L. Meehan L. David Brown The Honorable James Down Gayle Smith DIRECTOR OF CREATIVE SERVICES Diane Shohet David Doniger Chester Atkins Bennett Freeman Janet Van Zandt PROOFREADER Deanna Miller Kitt Sawitsky David Bryer Kate Greswold Jonathan A. Fox | Winter 2007 OXFAMExchange Roger Widmann John Calmore Natalie Hahn Dear Frends, Happy New Year! I hope 2007 brings you happiness, health—and peace. We here at Oxfam could think of no better way to celebrate the promise of a fresh year than to take as this issue’s subject, peace. BRETT ELOFF/OXFAMAMERICA Oxfam’s work includes peace building, although you may not readily associate it with our mission. We see it as intimately related to our commitment to ending global poverty and injustice. Resource disparities—the gap between “haves” and “have-nots”—spark many conflicts around the world. In turn, conflict and violence make long-term development impossible. In Africa, for example, violent conflicts are at the root of 50 percent of the continent’s current food crises. Ten years ago, at the World Food Summit, governments committed to halving global hunger by 2015. Since then, the number of hungry people in the world—instead of dropping—has risen by 54 million. As part of our strategy to address global hunger, Oxfam has called on the inter- national community to build the capacity of national and international bodies to achieve peaceful solutions to armed conflicts. Fostering peace will not only reduce violence, it will target the root EVA-LOTTA JANSSON/OXFAMEVA-LOTTA AMERICA REBECCA BLACKWELL/OXFAMAMERICA causes of much hunger and poverty. While examining violence can be uncomfortable work, it is only through understanding that we can achieve peace. We hope that this issue of OXFAMExchange, while disquieting in parts, will ignite your imagination and highlight the responsibility we each have CONTENTS to create peace. The individuals profiled VOLUME 7, ISSUE I in this issue are just some of the many Untold Stores, Unheard Voces 2 people doing this important work. If we can draw from their experiences and tap Buldng a Culture of Peace n Senegal 4 into their sense of hope (in the face of Women as Peace Bulders 8 much greater challenges than many of us Zmbabwe: When Enough Is Enough 2 face), our new year will surely be a very good one. Indeed—more than a new Make a Difference: Darfur 3 year—it will be a new chapter for us all. Oxfam Profile: Dawit Guteta 11 Roots of Change: The Control Arms Campaign 13 Sincerely, ANNOUNCEMENT: Readers may notice some content and format changes to OXFAMExchange. We researched the associated costs carefully. Printing advances have reduced the expense of color printing dramatically; color adds less than one-half cent per copy to our cost. What’s more, in this issue we have moved from a heavy, coated paper stock to a lighter, 100% post-consumer waste stock. This decision cuts our costs by 2.25 cents per copy. Net savings on our redesign: 1.75 cents per copy, or just under $5,000 per issue! Raymond C. Offenheiser We welcome your feedback on this or other issues. Please direct letters to [email protected] or President, Oxfam America Editor, OXFAMExchange, 226 Causeway Street, 5th Floor, Boston MA 02114-2206. OXFAMExchange Winter 2007 | UntoLD StoRIes, UNHEARD VOICES This issue of OXFAMExchange is devoted to peace building. Our focus is a celebration of the efforts of our staff and local partners working in Africa. (Of course, violence is by no means an exclusively African problem; we could as easily profile violence in our hometowns.) As you read the stories included on these pages, please keep the following two things in mind. First, for each story we share, there are others worth telling—stories that might well shed light on situations little understood by Americans or focus attention on the injustice of unnamed regimes. Relating these stories, however, could jeopardize our access to the very people who need us most. So we face an uneasy calculation, weighing the benefits of speaking out versus the value of being able to do our core work in politically volatile settings. Some stories therefore remain untold. Second, the courageous women and men presented here—like Nouraldeen Abdalla Nourein, below—are simply those known to us. There are many around the world who fight violence and whose words you will never hear because they live and die in relative (and undeserved) anonymity. So, as you read, think also of their unheard voices. Darfur is a dangerous and deadly place. Nouraldeen Abdalla The words are chilling, and final: A colleague—a young father Nourein probably knew that as well as anyone. It was his of four children—is dead. He was killed doing humanitarian home—and in July, he lost his life there helping people strug- work in a place so rife with violence that aid groups can no gling through the conflict. longer reach hundreds of thousands of people who need their help. And Nourein was not alone in his sacrifice. Between July His name could have been quickly forgotten by Westerners or, and September 2006, 12 aid workers lost their lives in Darfur— like nearly 200,000 others killed by this endless conflict, never more than had died in the previous three years combined. known. But Nourein’s fate was different: We knew him. He was a driver for Oxfam. “Darfur has become increasingly tense and violent, which has led to the tragic deaths of far too many civilians and aid work- For a year and a half, he jounced along the dirt tracks linking ers,” said Paul Smith-Lomas, a regional director for Oxfam, at remote villages around the town of Saraf Omra in North Darfur. the time of Nourein’s death. “A full and comprehensive cease- Dodging deep ruts and snaking along dried riverbeds, he ferried fire must be implemented immediately.” aid workers and their equipment to people holed up in far-flung villages in dire need of clean water and safe ways for disposing But three months later, no cease-fire is in place. The daily of their wastes. headlines about Darfur grow more ominous. And Nourein’s small family is now left—like innumerable others across In May, while collecting sand to construct a well, Nourein was Darfur—to struggle on its own. abducted by armed men during the hijacking of an Oxfam truck. His disappearance was complete: Neither the UN, the African Union, local authorities, nor his own family were able to secure his release. And then, about seven agonizing weeks later, the news came: Nourein was dead—caught in a flash of fighting in Helelat village near Kulbus in West Darfur as he tried to make his way back home from Chad, where it is believed that he had been taken and held. “It is with deep sorrow that I have to announce that an Oxfam staff member, Nouraldeen Abdalla Nourein, is believed to have been killed last Friday, 28 July, in West Darfur,” wrote Caroline Nursey, Oxfam’s country program manager for Sudan, in an email sent across the agency. “He will be greatly missed.” Dawit Guteta (See profile on page 13.) Nouraldeen Abdalla Nourein 2 | Winter 2007 OXFAMExchange LEARN > In early 2003, two rebel groups—the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)—both from Sudan’s western region of Darfur, launched major offensives on government bases there. The rebels claimed that Darfur had suf- fered decades of political marginalization and economic neglect from the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Government forces responded and the fighting escalated. Arab militia, commonly known as Janjaweed and widely believed to be supported by the government, attacked villages, forcing inhabitants from their homes—particularly in villages and among ethnic groups thought to be sympathetic to the rebels.Today, the situation has grown increasingly complex. The rebels have splintered into factions. Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006—by only two of the many warring parties—the conflict shows no sign of abating. MAKE A DIFFERENCE: GET INVOLVED What can you do to help stop the death and destruction that has consumed the remote western region of Darfur, Sudan, for more EVA-LOTTA JANSSON/OXFAMEVA-LOTTA AMERICA than three years? RAISE AWARENESS > Share what you know and get others talking about the crisis in Darfur. THRouGH THE PRess Though the crisis has dragged on for more than three years, it has only recently begun to receive more focused attention. Don’t let the press fall down on the job. Keep Darfur in the news by writing letters to the editor or offering to write opinion pieces for your local paper’s editorial pages. AT YOUR PLACE OF WORSHIP Write a piece about Darfur for your church, temple, or mosque bulletin. Organize an educational discussion. Or ask the leader of your congregation to make Darfur the topic of a sermon or discussion.
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