This International Day for Tolerance, find out more about our peacebuilding programmes in West Darfur.
When conflict in Darfur forced people from their homes, they set up camps in big cities and safe villages around the region.
But their arrival placed additional pressure on already-scarce local resources, promoting tensions and even violent incidents between settlers, internally-displaced people (IDPs) and nomadic people – particularly over access to water, health and education services, land and firewood.
Peaceful coexistence
Islamic Relief talked to many people from different communities to learn more about the sources of tension.
To help resolve the conflict facing communities in West Darfur, Islamic Relief then implemented peacebuilding and conflict resolution programmes to help people overcome the problems. We aimed to promote the peaceful coexistence, tolerance and reconciliation of all the different groups of people who were trying to live in the same space.
The Darfur Community Peace and Stability Fund (DCPSF) through United Nations Development Programme funded our scheme. We began bringing issues surrounding peace and reconciliation into our programmes, running workshops on conflict resolution, then set up reconciliation committees to facilitate learning about dialogue, cooperation and acceptance.
Ibrahima Chalare Abdullah, Islamic Relief’s programme manager for West Darfur, said: “Through this reconciliation committee, all the problems are discussed, a committee action plan is developed in order to share the resources that they have, and to take ownership of their own resources, and to anticipate any kind of problem that can occur.”
Peace education
Islamic Relief also set up Community Development and Peace Centres that all members of the communities could attend to learn about reconciliation and tolerance. Run by qualified trainers, the workshops brought people together and devised ways to help them work together to solve their problems. At the same time, we worked hard to try and resolve some of the sources of tension, setting up more water tanks and increasing health and education services. We offered vocational training for women and youth from both the camps and host communities.
We also wanted to break down barriers from an early age. Teachers used sports and drama to bring children from the different groups together, and we worked with women artisans who put together a drama on the advantages of living peacefully. This was played out in concerts, with songs, and poems from the different cultures.
Ibrahima Chalare Abdullah added: “We’re proud for what Islamic Relief has been doing here in West Darfur. We hope to be able to expand our programme and reach a level where the community can be independent and live in peace without support from outside.”