Mediators Beyond Borders International

Transforming Warriors into Peace Guardians. Member Spotlight: Dorina Prech

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Dorina Prech is an active team member of the Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI), Kenya Project. She has been a member since 2012, joining after attending MBBI’s international peace conference held at her university. With a background in mediation, peacebuilding, and conflict studies, Dorina is a community mobilizer and a pastoralist people’s activist championing peace and security in conflict-prone areas of Kenya.

If there is something that breaks your heart and gives you sleepless nights, it is a sign that this is what you are meant to do. That is the duty of the mediator. For me, it is the insecurity and disempowerment of the pastoralists in the Horn of Africa.

At a youth mentorship program underscoring the importance of youth involvement in the country’s development

Northern Kenya is one of the most socio-economically marginalized regions in Kenya, resulting in glaring inequalities between its counties and the rest of the country. The ongoing instability in the Horn of Africa and the persistent inter-ethnic violence continues to threaten regional, county and local peace and cohesion. In the North Rift region, deadly cattle raids and widespread violence is common, as communities clash over water and pasture resources for their most valued source of livelihood: livestock.

Language Bridging Peace

Dorina is from a community deemed ‘one of the most violent in Kenya’, largely due to negative media perception. She felt compelled to change the conflict situation in the North Rift. As a member of MBBI’s Kenya Project, she participated in the design of the Warriors to Peace Guardians framework.  The goal of the program is to enable ethnic communities – largely the youth – in remote Baringo, Laikipia and Samburu counties to interrupt the existing cycle of violence through the adoption of conflict analysis and mediation promoting sustainable co-existence and fostering social stability environment through nonviolent resolutions of conflicts. The Warriors to Peace Guardians framework was successful as it built a broad, diverse, and inclusive network of peace guardians in the three communities.

The Warriors to Peace Guardians framework main goal is resolving the disputes between the warring communities; however, it places a large emphasis on finding common ground and shared aspects between the communities. This method, entitled the Peace Caravan, helps deescalate tension and decrease the outbreak of violence between communities with the end goal of poverty alleviation. Dorina has been a large advocate of cross-community engagement in order to facilitate a more peaceful and a prosperous Northern Kenya. The Warriors to Peace Guardians framework utilizes the influence of local professionals to educate their communities about the need to embrace peace and live in harmony with their perceived enemies. 

Holding Half the Sky

Handing over a Sahiwal bull to a Pokot herder that had won a competition for best-managed cattle during a “Herd is Wealth” celebration in Laikipia County

Dorina wholeheartedly follows the mantra women hold half the sky. She has seen an outstanding transformation of intra- and inter-community relations resulting from actively including women in dispute resolution processes. She advocates for women inclusion by emphasizing the importance to “come to the table with your ideas, not with your titles,” which makes an equity statement by everyone sitting at the same level and standing side by side.

The Warriors to Peace Guardians framework has seen significant successes in Northern Kenya as the community peace guardians report increased collaboration and friendly relations with sections of the community where the programme reached. One of its most effective uses is amplifying the voices of local women who during a Peace Caravan in 2009 said: “We are tired of being widows and losing our sons. Stop the conflict.” A program primarily focused on women Peace Guardians will start soon in Samburu County, and a Rotary Global grant to train the next cadre of Peace Guardians in Laikipia will kick off in early 2019.

A Brighter Future Awaits

A lot still needs to be done, particularly in terms of making peace dividends available to these communities, to sustain the peace. The Kenya team is thrilled about its collaboration with MBBI’s recent partner Rotary International and local partners to soon be launching a livestock improvement program in Laikipia. This program promotes livestock quotas, redistributes grazing areas, and creates a more sustainable lifestyle for the pastoralists.

Juggling between strengthening the work of MBBI’s Kenya Project and her full-time job in Nairobi, Dorina recently co-founded Twasoma, an initiative that taps into the skills and talents of schoolchildren in her home county, as a means of building and sustaining peace and development. She will soon be presenting at a webinar on balanced media reporting in conflict situations.

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

‘Being Collaborative, Not Prescriptive.’ Project Highlight: Kenya

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Through its Kenyan Initiative, Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI) is unrelentingly supporting indigenous Kenyan communities in leading the charge for attaining and retaining their own peace. It is actively pursuing this goal throughout its peace efforts in that East African country by providing the framework for peace, not prescriptive models for what peace is or ought to be. This is an excellent example of MBBI’s solid commitment to collaborating with local communities through its capacity building and coaching initiatives to achieve more sustainable peace.

In 2012, pastoralist peacebuilders invited MBBI to join the local ongoing efforts directed at fostering social cohesion and peaceful coexistence among these tribal communities. Byron Nabaala, one of MBBI’s Kenyan trainers, revealed during a recent interview: We invited MBBI because:

  1. Its mission transcends all political, cultural and traditional borders.
  2. It is mediation and peace-focused, whereas other organizations are more concerned with development works. You can’t have development in the absence of peace. We didn’t want wells. We wanted peace above all,” 

Over the last six years, the Kenyan team has partnered with, trained, and mentored multiple ethnic groups in Kenya’s Baringo, Laikipia, and Samburu counties. This is transforming a protracted resource-based and ethnic-oriented conflict that lingers in these areas where predominantly pastoralist communities continue to struggle with conflicts rooted in cattle rustling—their sole source of livelihood. Today, though the guns have mostly fallen silent, these communities are yet to attain sustainable peace.

Gail (MBBI-Kenya Proj team leader) and Mama Amani

 Gail (MBBI-Kenya Proj team leader) with Kisumu Peace Committee

Building Peace from the Roots

The team’s initial response was to work to bring together existing organizations and fund local peacebuilding efforts using a peace caravan model. However, after struggling to fund such efforts based on a lack of empirical evidence of peace caravan success, an intensive participatory action research project was designed to exclusively focus on gaining an accurate and deeper understanding of the conflict dynamics as well as unearthing possible factors critical to mission success. This effort revealed that strong community engagement was critical to effective project implementation, in addition to transparency and accountability.

Serving as catalysts who support the brilliant people in their own communities, is the best approach to grassroots peacebuilding as opposed to coming in with a ‘better way of doing things.’ [Granted], we have things to contribute. But it must always be elicitive, a fundamental value of MBBI—to partner with locals on the ground, to support and catalyze. It is the best way forward. – Gail Ervin, Kenya Project team leader

Thus, the Kenya Project team functions as catalysts, providing organizational structure, grant writing, training, and mentoring, while Kenyans lead their own conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes. The work done on the ground is by Kenyans for Kenyans. “It is the communities themselves who decide who their peace leaders are,” Gail stated.

The MBBI Kenya Project team is committed to gender mainstreaming in all its activities. It encourages communities to ensure active women participation. Fortunately, the women are responding well to this new role; they feel recognized and empowered to stand up and speak for peace.

I was among the first of Kenyans that were trained by MBBI and sent back into our communities to multiply the knowledge gained. We incorporated what we learned with our own traditional peacebuilding methods and mobilized 60 people from three communities (Pokot, Tugen, and Ilchamus), 20 each. The group was a mixture of elders, men, women, and youths. We trained them on intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic mediation and peacebuilding. – Mary-Anne Lechoe, a local team leader and a trainer

Byron shares similar sentiments as it relates to gender mainstreaming: “In Africa, the elders are the ones called upon to broker peace deals. But we felt the youths and women needed to be given a voice in finding a solution to a conflict that affected everyone. We wanted diversity in our work. The women were very happy to have been presented with a chance to have a say.”

Collaborating for Peace

The Kenya Project team comprises seven MBBI members from the United States, Northern Ireland, Europe, and Kenya including one Kenyan pastoralist from the Pokot tribe. Its local team includes five Peace Guardian Core Members representing four pastoralist ethnic communities: Samburu, Tugen, Ilchamus, and Pokot.

Lisa Rose, a training developer, is enthusiastic about the group’s dynamics and the opportunity to interact and learn from the various tribes. “We do a lot of co-sharing and co-creating with our Kenyan colleagues during the design and implementation of training materials,”’ she said.

We try to avoid any attempt that will make our Kenyan team members look at us as the experts because nobody is an expert on someone else’s world.  We are not there to prescribe formulas, we’re there to support their peace process. – Lisa Rose, Kenya Project team member

Language Bridging Peace

The Kenyan team is currently implementing its Warriors to Peace Guardians framework, a systemic approach to peacebuilding in pastoralist lands. A key component of this framework is the Peace Guardians initiatives, a program that trains cadres of women, youth and elders as community-selected peace leaders, and connects them to a network of peace guardians across county lines.  Warriors and warmongering are traditionally celebrated as protectors of their communities. However, the Kenya Project is supporting communities into shifting the roles of Warriors from violence to peace; instead of protecting their communities with weapons, they are now doing so with the language of peace.

Gail recalls that “when the peace caravan came to Laikipia, Sikukuu’s people designated him as their fiercest warrior for peace—a new role he humbly accepted.” Sikukuu is now protecting his community by waging peace, not war. He sold his cattle and bought a motorcycle to travel around the county to promote peace. This is now one key element of success and sustainability now integrated into the Peace Guardian program.

The Warriors to Peace Guardians framework was successfully implemented in Baringo County, where 60 Peace Guardians remain active today. A program primarily focused on women Peace Guardians will start soon in Samburu County, and a Rotary Global grant to train the next cadre of Peace Guardians in Laikipia will kick off in early 2019. 

Collaboration with Rotary

MBBI’s Kenyan team is thrilled about its collaboration with Rotary International on this Global Grant and is already receiving donations to expand the program into new areas of Baringo. The team believes that this is an opportunity for both sides to learn from each other. Here’s how Gail, a Rotary Peace Fellow herself, sums it:

One thing that we feel we can provide to Rotary is a deeper understanding of how communities can be empowered to sustain their own peace and development. Empowerment does not mean coming in, training, and leaving [the scene]. It is [about] building their own ownership by creating the environment for locals to voice their needs and to provide them with the tools to implement such. When people generate solutions out of their own thought processes, it is theirs. Ownership in this context is so critical.

MBBI-Kenya Project Team

with local partners- Laikipia, Kenya

MBBI-Kenya Project Team

with Baringo County Governor Stanley Kiptis

With Rotary’s partnership, the MBBI’s Kenya Project hopes to accomplish the following within five years:

  • Launch its first Rotary project focused on training peace guardians and creating sustainable access to “peace dividends” in Laikipia, and expand this program through new global grants into Baringo and Samburu counties
  • Train communities on inter-ethnic collaboration through grant writing for development projects to proactively seek available grants
  • Work with communities to improve the genetics and environmental sustainability of their livestock economy
  • Expand projects beyond the current service areas
  • Explore the area of combating violent extremism

Meanwhile, like any charitable project, funding remains a critical factor to MBBI-Kenya’s mission success. Desirable funding will enable the team to further expand its efforts across other conflict-prone communities. Also, with funding, the team is poised to further strengthen its presence on the ground by establishing a local office to sustain the ongoing work and maintain momentum.  In a nutshell, additional financial resources will empower MBBI-Kenya to further fulfill its objectives. Consider investing in the Kenya Project by donating as an individual or organization.

An article by Fatoumata Bility, MBBI Writer

A Toolbox for Conflict and Peace. Member Spotlight: Fiona White

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Fiona White is the Director of The Conflict Toolbox, an organization centered in New Zealand that provides conflict resolution skills, life skills coaching, workshops, and courses. Advanced Mediation course run by Ken Cloke in New Zealand inspired Fiona to join Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI) in 2011 and she has been a member ever since.  She found Ken’s approach to conflict resolution both refreshing and life-changing and wanted to learn more about the work of MBBI.  Fiona attended the MBBI conference for the first time in The Hague in 2017 and generally prefers to be a quiet supporter behind the scenes. 

Fiona has gained a plethora of skills on her journey through life.  She credits her parents for teaching her the essentials of compassion, listening, non-judgment, equanimity, and pragmatism; and noticed from an early age that people were drawn to her to talk through their problems.  She has had a wide variety of jobs, including zookeeping, retail, factory work, and marketing, as well as 12 years as a teacher (and later, management) of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Her experiences in the classroom – managing diverse groups of individuals – prompted her to learn even more valuable ways to communicate. 

With a lifelong passion for language, her attention turned to Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a Diploma in Dispute Resolution (with a focus on Mediation), and mediator accreditation.  Following a training course in Conflict Coaching, Fiona felt that she had the tools to follow her gut instinct, quit teaching, and start her own business in 2010.  Originally known as Mediation Matters, after a few years Fiona realized that her particular strengths lie in Coaching, Training, and Consultation, and changed the name to The Conflict Toolbox, which better reflected the essence of what she provides. Since then, she has added Advanced Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner to her resumé.

Fiona’s work these days mostly centers around Self-care: the knowledge, tools, skills, and behaviors (including ways of thinking) that are most valuable for each of us.  She has created a Little Book of Self-care with some of these useful tools and ideas which she has shared as a free download on her website.  This work includes resolving intra- and inter-personal conflict (which has always fascinated Fiona), as well as helping people to heal from past traumatic events, resolve phobias, and create more internal peace. 

Her clients have included people from all walks of life, and Fiona’s mission is to share this knowledge and these tools with as many people as possible, to empower them to make even more useful choices (ones that ultimately create more positive peace).  In the future Fiona would like to take her Toolbox into teacher training colleges and into prisons, to equip the individuals with understanding and skills that will improve the quality of their lives and choices (and that they can pass on to their respective communities).  Her dream is to focus on creating even more peace within society, in particular through the vehicle of language: “Language is so critical in all aspects of our life, especially how we use it and its intention,” she emphasized.

One of Fiona’s favorite mantras relevant to the field of conflict resolution is: “Behind every behavior is a positive intention” (the NLP version), or “Behind every behavior is an attempt to meet a need” (NVC version).  She says that this is equally relevant to intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict and that when we take time to find out what that intention/need truly is, we gain compassionate understanding and can discover new, more useful ways of achieving that.

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI writer

Bridging Peace Through Empowerment-Member Spotlight: Klubosumo Johnson Borh

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Klubosumo Johnson Borh
Klubosumo Johnson Borh

Today’s ever-changing, multi-layered conflict dynamics demand robust actions such as the empowerment of both victims and perpetrators to become key partners in building and sustaining their peace. This strategy has proven to be exceedingly effective in fostering sustained social cohesion, community resilience, and integration. One peacebuilder that is taking full advantage of this approach is Klubosumo Johnson Borh, a Liberian social justice activist and peace advocate.

Like many contemporary conflict resolution practitioners, Johnson has narrowed his focus to empowering Liberia’s ex-combatants to become strategic change agents within their communities. He terms it “from destruction to construction”—a proactive effort directed at transforming ex-combatants into meaningful citizens rather than threats.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with MBBI on November 16, 2018, Johnson stated that Liberian ex-combatants are still in dire need for trauma and psychosocial healing. Liberia, Johnson’s native land, is recovering from a 14-year civil war that destroyed its socio-political and economic fabrics to unimaginable limits. It is a small state located on the West coast of Africa. From 1989-2003, one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars was fought in Liberia, claiming the lives of more than 250,000 Liberians and dispatching a million others to refugee camps in neighboring countries.

As the war progressed, warlords began recruiting children into fighting forces. They exploited the fact that children are exceedingly obedient and do as instructed. And it worked. [Unfortunately], children that grew up under such circumstances became staunch loyalists and were used to carry out atrocities against the peace of the state.

Firsthand Experience

PCL-MBBI Dialogue Training for Local Partners

A former child soldier, Johnson recalls that “young children that were conscripted were mentally destroyed. They were dehumanized beyond measures. They were made to believe that violence was an acceptable way of life. They were told that the guns in their hands were their mothers and fathers—their sole source of livelihood. They were also told that they could use guns to get whatever they wanted.”

Johnson was conscripted into the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) of former warlord and president, Charles Taylor.  He was captured and compelled to join the NPFL in early 1990:

I am one of those young Liberians who lost their youth to the war. I was conscripted at age 19. I encountered NPFL fighters in Kakata, Margibi County. It was a quiet evening. I had walked up the street in search of food when the soldiers drove by. They immediately threw me into the back of their pickup truck. According to them, I was on ill-war—meaning, I was a soldier who had abandoned his post. I was physically abused, starved, made to sleep in the cold and took bath in filthy water. Warlords believed these were the only way to prepare for the frontlines. I left the group when I got injured on my left arm in February 1993.

Network for Empowerment and Progressive Initiative, NEPI

With such a firsthand experience, Johnson was fired up to help other young Liberians that were trapped behind frontlines and being brainwashed to commit violence. In 2000, he established the Network for Empowerment and Progressive Initiative (NEPI). NEPI’s sole goal at the time was to discourage young Liberians from allowing themselves to be exploited by fighting forces.

Following the completion of the UN-run disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) program in Liberia, NEPI swiftly focused its mission to empowering ex-combatants to become economically self-reliant; a strategy aimed at breaking the bond between warlords and ex-combatants. NEPI successfully achieved this mission through the provision of capacity development opportunities, while paving the way for smooth rehabilitation (trauma and psychosocial healing) and reintegration.

And while communities resented the reintegration of ex-combatants, Johnson’s approach helped them realize need to accept these young men and the danger communities may further face if former fighters were rejected, such as the possibility of them preying on their communities as armed robbers.  While such efforts helped communities enjoy an extended tranquility and stability, there was one thing that had to be done before the full reintegration of ex-combatants.

They were exposed to traditional cleansing rituals as a way of ensuring that everyone was on the same page. During the cleansing process, ex-combatants acknowledged their wrongdoings, confessed, took full ownership of their actions and sought forgiveness from their victims. Traditional leaders served as chief peace brokers during these exercises.

Meanwhile, NEPI is currently on a mission to reduce abject poverty and violence among Liberian youths through economic empowerment. It currently serves five of Liberia’s 15 counties: Montserrado, Nimba, Grand Bassa, Bomi and Lofa counties. Plans are also underway to further expand into other counties once desirable funding becomes available.

Johnson has developed a transformation program that offers rigorous evidence and innovative models focused on reducing violence and organized crimes among former child soldiers, ex-combatants and at-risk street youths. The 8-week psychosocial and cash transfer program also facilitates the rehabilitation and reintegration of beneficiaries into mainstream society.

NEPI Sustainable Transformation for Youth in Liberia (STYLE)

Brief Bio

A global peace researcher, Klubosumo Johnson Borh’s peace and development works transcend Liberia’s borders into other parts of the world, including Asia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, and the United States.  As a budget and Truancy Assessment Program (TAP) program manager at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development, Johnson has blended rigorous academic theory with real-world practical knowledge of conducting cutting-edge research and developing innovative solutions to support governments and organizations around the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. He has developed and implemented youth empowerment projects in India and Uganda. The TAP is a new prevention and intervention program designed to reduce chronic absenteeism with the use of a simple biometric tracking system, attendance, paired with a table and a fingerprint scanner. Johnson is a seasoned peace facilitator and trainer. He is a husband and a father.

Article by Fatoumata Bility, MBBI Writer