Background: As part of the Peacebuilding Practitioners Interview Series, Jason Klocek interviewed Cosmas Martin Abugo, who currently serves as Administrator for the RECONCILE Peace Institute. In this interview, Abugo speaks to the challenges that southern Sudan currently faces, projecting how this situation will change in the future and sharing what type of work RECONCILE International has been doing to move toward a better future. He also specifically highlights reconciliation practices supported by local elders.
Mr. Abugo, can you first speak about your background and how these experiences have brought you to your current work?
I was born in 1980 in Rubeke, Sudan, a village approximately 14 miles from Yei. I am of the Kakwa tribe. My father died when I was 5 years old and I was then raised mainly by my grandmother. In 1991, when I was 11 years old, things began to get bad in southern Sudan. Many people were conscripted into the army, including all my male relatives except myself and my step-father. In 1993, things became even worse. Everyone was in hiding. Many people fled into the bush. And, there were no schools; they had closed. At this time, my step-father took me to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where he left me in a refugee camp. He said to me that I had to now look after myself. I had to find a way to survive. And if things get better in Sudan some day, then I should come back to the family. I had no idea what to do or who to stay with, but before my stepfather left he told me that I might go and try to find my aunt in Uganda.
So at the age of 13, I was living in a refugee camp in the DRC. The conditions were so bad there. Often I cried out to God, asking why he did not answer my prayers. After I was in this camp for about two weeks, I learned of a group who was traveling to Uganda by foot. I followed them and after four days of walking I finally reached the border. There I found my aunt.
We lived together in one of the temporary settlements established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I was able to register for school there and completed primary school years six and seven. After that I should have moved on to senior year one, but there were two issues. First, my scores at the end of primary school were not great. Second, my aunt and I moved from one of the temporary settlements to the more permanent settlements. There I met a Sudanese parish priest from whom I asked for help. He suggested that I join the seminary. I did this but left after three months. This same priest continued to help me, though. He helped me to pay for the first two years of secondary school, but then he was no longer able to provide any money. So I had to work myself, especially during holidays to earn money to pay for the last two years of secondary school. But I was successful and graduated.
Shortly after finishing, in 1999, I returned to Yei. By this time, the city was under Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) control. Upon my return, I opened a small photography business. I would take pictures for people, like their portrait, and provide them copies. This went well, and after not too long I was able to open a small photography studio. Because of my success, I was also able to help my relatives. No one else in my family had completed school, so I helped several step-brothers of mine, and they, too, got fair education.
In 2003 I left Yei again, this time to complete my advanced certificate in Uganda. This certificate is necessary to be eligible to go on to a college or university. In 2004, I returned to Yei, but there was a problem. I had left the studio under the care of some younger relatives, but in my absence some people in town decided to take it over. I tried to gain control of it back, and things became very ugly. There was almost fighting over this issue. But the city officials persuaded us to let things go, as things were still very sensitive, and no one wanted more violence.
In 2005 I started a new business—this time taking goods between Uganda and Sudan. I did this for two years and then went to Zambia in February 2007 for a nine-month course on peacebuilding and conflict transformation. In October of that year, I received my diploma and returned to Yei. A month later I accepted a job with RECONCILE International. I worked for three months as a sort of trial period and then was offered a contract in February 2008.
What role did faith play in your journey?
You know, I thank God for what has happened to me. I never imagined that I would be the person that I am today. But, God has made me what I am. He has made it possible for me to work and also to have enough success so as to be able to help my relatives. I always thought I would be relying on them for help, but here I am able to help them.
Can you please talk about the work at RECONCILE International? How has it helped people to understand the conflicts in southern Sudan?
RECONCILE International, as stated above, holds as its main work the mitigation of those issues that cause conflict and to make people understand why there is the conflict and the need for peace. We conduct trainings to help people understand the conflict and its impacts and ways of how to resolve it. Mainly people are trained in peacebuilding and conflict resolution skills, trauma awareness, and indeed the issues related to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between the northern and the southern governments. And, as the war has just ended, there is a lot of stress and emotional trauma. Therefore, RECONCILE is involved in conducting training on trauma awareness, human rights, good governance, and democracy.
Not too long ago we had a workshop of elders within Yei. We brought them to our compound and asked them to express their thoughts on why there were still continued conflicts in our communities, as well as how they thought we could promote peace and reconciliation.
They identified several themes or conflicts. First, there is the issue of adultery in our communities. This is a major problem. When you caught with someone else’s wife you are killed, and the wife must be divorce from the husband. Sometimes these cases go through the court, sometimes not.
Second, the elders talked about the issue of rape. This, unfortunately, is also a problem for us. Similar to adultery, when the person committing the rape is caught he is usually killed. However, if he has raped a young woman who is not married, he is usually forced to marry her since there is little chance anyone else in the community will do so. His punishment usually requires a large payment to the girl’s family, such as money and a large number of cattle.
A further problem is about ethnicity or tribal issues, which are rooted in the minds of the people. People don’t share things together or help one another. The solution is that people should be encouraged to accept marrying from other tribes so that we can bridge the relationships.
Another problem is jobs, or the lack of jobs in our communities. In fact most people don’t really have jobs. So this leads to another problem—crime. Robbery in the streets is a big problem. In fact, there is a new type of robbery. There are now many people who have motorbikes and give people rides around town for a few Sudanese pounds. These criminals will tell a driver to go to some place, but waiting there will be his friends and they will either kill or beat badly the driver, stealing his motorbike.
What about farming?
Farming is a challenge to our communities. Our people use local farming techniques, mostly use simple tools, like hoes. And they can’t produce enough food that can sustain the family. The little that is extra is sometimes sold to get money for some of life’s demands. People also sometimes face natural hazards, such as droughts. And often this results in producing nothing. Finally, conflict comes from such tragedies because people begin stealing, and young children move away from their homes and end up in the street begging. We have many street children now in the town.
What are some of the other challenges to the communities in Yei?
There is also the problem of education. We do not really have enough schools or teachers. Some schools have more than a thousand pupils but the teachers equal 10 or less than that, so many leave the school because there is no proper teaching. Also, many of our teachers are not properly trained, having simply finished [secondary school], and they become teachers but never had any real training. Finally, those schools that many people can attend are often overcrowded.
This also leads to another problem. We have many young people, but without good education they will not having a job. Hence, this is a cause of much insecurity in the town. And insecurity often leads to conflict.
What are some of the ways the elders identified as reconciliation methods?
Our elders discussed several ways to promote reconciliation and peace in our communities. Many of them dealt with traditional aspects of life. For example, greetings are very important in our communities. Over the last few yeas, when people have passed by one another they haven’t greeted one another. However, even if you are a stranger you should always give a greeting. This has not always been the case in our society, but over the last few years distrust has grown among people. So greeting one another again is one way of showing peace among us.
They also talked about ways to promote interaction between different communities, different tribes. Some of these were rather simple things, such as helping one’s neighbor in planting. You would help one family plant their crops, and they could help you do the same. There also used to be a tradition of communal hunting. After work, men would gather to go out into the bush together and hunt. This, too, hasn’t occurred so frequently in recent years, but it would be a way to bring people together. And, of course, our elders talked about the need for communal prayer. We suffer many of the same hardships and share many of the same needs. We need to pray together for help.
Finally, our elders talked about one deeper way of bringing different communities together that’s through intermarriage across tribes. In this way, families are more or less forced to learn about one another and hopefully come to appreciate one another, despite the differences.
Do many people marry outside the tribe today?
Some do, but I would not say it is very common. So, this may be one way to build peace across tribes in our area. Overall, what our elders were saying was that for peace to happen we need to encounter one another, we need to build relationships. Of course, those who have done bad things in the past need to be punished for what they did, but also important is the building of relationships.
Have many people been punished?
Not really. There is really no official organization to punish things that happened in the past during the war. I mean, there are some laws about it, but these are not really functioning; they are not really enforced.
Can you speak about the work in which RECONCILE is currently engaged here in Yei?
RECONCILE, in general, has three main programs. The first two programs are outreach programs. There is the civic education program, which deals with issues like human rights, good governance, democracy, and conflict resolution. Here we conduct workshops, seminars, conferences and other types of trainings.
The second program is the psychosocial rehabilitation program. This program provides trauma counseling training to the people who have gone through difficulties, for example displaced persons or those who lost loved ones during the war. This program also brings together community and family leaders to train them on how to sensitize their communities on these difficult issues.
The third program is called RECONCILE International Peace Institute (RPI). It just began this year and is a three month training program in which people earn either a certificate in peace studies and conflict resolution or community-based trauma healing. This program happens once a year, this past year running from February to May. Thirty-two people were selected from five states in southern Sudan to participate. We also see it as a way of training people outside of Sudan, and so one person came from Uganda. Selected people were those already doing some sort of community work, but who could benefit from more training. This year pastors, teachers, and government officials were invited.
What do the two certificate programs involve?
Each one involves six sections, or models. For the peace studies and conflict resolution certificate, the sections focus on how to identify and analyze conflict in communities: non-violence and faith-based peacebuilding; people-to-people peacebuilding; an overview of trauma counseling; leadership, good governance, and peacebuilding; and community education and mobilization for peace.
The community-based trauma healing certificate includes sections on recognizing trauma; understanding the journey of trauma; people-to-people peacebuilding; how to respond to trauma; trauma healing with specific populations; and community education and mobilization for peace.
I notice that people-to-people peacebuilding and community education and mobilization for peace are a part of both certificates.
Can you please talk a bit more about those two sections?
Well, people-to-people peacebuilding is about how one starts building peace in the first place. You to have first start with yourself; you have to implement the ideas of peace in your own life. Then, people can start to learn from your example. From this, more and more people will learn about peacebuilding.
The section on community education and mobilization for peace is important because we hope that the students at RPI will go back to their communities and share what they have learned. We hope that the will do trainings and workshops in their communities on many of the topics we cover during RPI. So this is a way of preparing them to go back and share their experiences.
What are some of the challenges for RPI as you plan for your second year?
We very much would like to train many more people. We recognize that the more people we train, the more results we will see. Also, we want to be able to follow up with those who have attended this year’s RPI. It would be helpful to them to have additional trainings, but this is difficult. Both things are difficult, actually, because it requires more funding.
From where do you receive your current funding?
It comes mainly from churches in the United States or other countries. From other Christians who recognize our need in southern Sudan and decide that they want to help us. As we grow, we would like to also apply for government grants, like from the American government, but we have not done that yet.
Finally, what do you see as the major challenge or challenges for southern Sudan in the near future?
One of our biggest problems is poor leadership. There is very little leadership training here. What is leadership? I see one important part of it involving the ability to pass over the reigns to someone else when it is time. It is about letting other people compete for authority and letting them take over if they win. It is about good governance.
Mr. Abugo, thank you very much for your time today.
I was born in 1980 in Rubeke, Sudan, a village approximately 14 miles from Yei. I am of the Kakwa tribe. My father died when I was 5 years old and I was then raised mainly by my grandmother. In 1991, when I was 11 years old, things began to get bad in southern Sudan. Many people were conscripted into the army, including all my male relatives except myself and my step-father. In 1993, things became even worse. Everyone was in hiding. Many people fled into the bush. And, there were no schools; they had closed. At this time, my step-father took me to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where he left me in a refugee camp. He said to me that I had to now look after myself. I had to find a way to survive. And if things get better in Sudan some day, then I should come back to the family. I had no idea what to do or who to stay with, but before my stepfather left he told me that I might go and try to find my aunt in Uganda.
So at the age of 13, I was living in a refugee camp in the DRC. The conditions were so bad there. Often I cried out to God, asking why he did not answer my prayers. After I was in this camp for about two weeks, I learned of a group who was traveling to Uganda by foot. I followed them and after four days of walking I finally reached the border. There I found my aunt.
We lived together in one of the temporary settlements established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I was able to register for school there and completed primary school years six and seven. After that I should have moved on to senior year one, but there were two issues. First, my scores at the end of primary school were not great. Second, my aunt and I moved from one of the temporary settlements to the more permanent settlements. There I met a Sudanese parish priest from whom I asked for help. He suggested that I join the seminary. I did this but left after three months. This same priest continued to help me, though. He helped me to pay for the first two years of secondary school, but then he was no longer able to provide any money. So I had to work myself, especially during holidays to earn money to pay for the last two years of secondary school. But I was successful and graduated.
Shortly after finishing, in 1999, I returned to Yei. By this time, the city was under Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) control. Upon my return, I opened a small photography business. I would take pictures for people, like their portrait, and provide them copies. This went well, and after not too long I was able to open a small photography studio. Because of my success, I was also able to help my relatives. No one else in my family had completed school, so I helped several step-brothers of mine, and they, too, got fair education.
In 2003 I left Yei again, this time to complete my advanced certificate in Uganda. This certificate is necessary to be eligible to go on to a college or university. In 2004, I returned to Yei, but there was a problem. I had left the studio under the care of some younger relatives, but in my absence some people in town decided to take it over. I tried to gain control of it back, and things became very ugly. There was almost fighting over this issue. But the city officials persuaded us to let things go, as things were still very sensitive, and no one wanted more violence.
In 2005 I started a new business—this time taking goods between Uganda and Sudan. I did this for two years and then went to Zambia in February 2007 for a nine-month course on peacebuilding and conflict transformation. In October of that year, I received my diploma and returned to Yei. A month later I accepted a job with RECONCILE International. I worked for three months as a sort of trial period and then was offered a contract in February 2008.
What role did faith play in your journey?
You know, I thank God for what has happened to me. I never imagined that I would be the person that I am today. But, God has made me what I am. He has made it possible for me to work and also to have enough success so as to be able to help my relatives. I always thought I would be relying on them for help, but here I am able to help them.
Can you please talk about the work at RECONCILE International? How has it helped people to understand the conflicts in southern Sudan?
RECONCILE International, as stated above, holds as its main work the mitigation of those issues that cause conflict and to make people understand why there is the conflict and the need for peace. We conduct trainings to help people understand the conflict and its impacts and ways of how to resolve it. Mainly people are trained in peacebuilding and conflict resolution skills, trauma awareness, and indeed the issues related to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between the northern and the southern governments. And, as the war has just ended, there is a lot of stress and emotional trauma. Therefore, RECONCILE is involved in conducting training on trauma awareness, human rights, good governance, and democracy.
Not too long ago we had a workshop of elders within Yei. We brought them to our compound and asked them to express their thoughts on why there were still continued conflicts in our communities, as well as how they thought we could promote peace and reconciliation.
They identified several themes or conflicts. First, there is the issue of adultery in our communities. This is a major problem. When you caught with someone else’s wife you are killed, and the wife must be divorce from the husband. Sometimes these cases go through the court, sometimes not.
Second, the elders talked about the issue of rape. This, unfortunately, is also a problem for us. Similar to adultery, when the person committing the rape is caught he is usually killed. However, if he has raped a young woman who is not married, he is usually forced to marry her since there is little chance anyone else in the community will do so. His punishment usually requires a large payment to the girl’s family, such as money and a large number of cattle.
A further problem is about ethnicity or tribal issues, which are rooted in the minds of the people. People don’t share things together or help one another. The solution is that people should be encouraged to accept marrying from other tribes so that we can bridge the relationships.
Another problem is jobs, or the lack of jobs in our communities. In fact most people don’t really have jobs. So this leads to another problem—crime. Robbery in the streets is a big problem. In fact, there is a new type of robbery. There are now many people who have motorbikes and give people rides around town for a few Sudanese pounds. These criminals will tell a driver to go to some place, but waiting there will be his friends and they will either kill or beat badly the driver, stealing his motorbike.
What about farming?
Farming is a challenge to our communities. Our people use local farming techniques, mostly use simple tools, like hoes. And they can’t produce enough food that can sustain the family. The little that is extra is sometimes sold to get money for some of life’s demands. People also sometimes face natural hazards, such as droughts. And often this results in producing nothing. Finally, conflict comes from such tragedies because people begin stealing, and young children move away from their homes and end up in the street begging. We have many street children now in the town.
What are some of the other challenges to the communities in Yei?
There is also the problem of education. We do not really have enough schools or teachers. Some schools have more than a thousand pupils but the teachers equal 10 or less than that, so many leave the school because there is no proper teaching. Also, many of our teachers are not properly trained, having simply finished [secondary school], and they become teachers but never had any real training. Finally, those schools that many people can attend are often overcrowded.
This also leads to another problem. We have many young people, but without good education they will not having a job. Hence, this is a cause of much insecurity in the town. And insecurity often leads to conflict.
What are some of the ways the elders identified as reconciliation methods?
Our elders discussed several ways to promote reconciliation and peace in our communities. Many of them dealt with traditional aspects of life. For example, greetings are very important in our communities. Over the last few yeas, when people have passed by one another they haven’t greeted one another. However, even if you are a stranger you should always give a greeting. This has not always been the case in our society, but over the last few years distrust has grown among people. So greeting one another again is one way of showing peace among us.
They also talked about ways to promote interaction between different communities, different tribes. Some of these were rather simple things, such as helping one’s neighbor in planting. You would help one family plant their crops, and they could help you do the same. There also used to be a tradition of communal hunting. After work, men would gather to go out into the bush together and hunt. This, too, hasn’t occurred so frequently in recent years, but it would be a way to bring people together. And, of course, our elders talked about the need for communal prayer. We suffer many of the same hardships and share many of the same needs. We need to pray together for help.
Finally, our elders talked about one deeper way of bringing different communities together that’s through intermarriage across tribes. In this way, families are more or less forced to learn about one another and hopefully come to appreciate one another, despite the differences.
Do many people marry outside the tribe today?
Some do, but I would not say it is very common. So, this may be one way to build peace across tribes in our area. Overall, what our elders were saying was that for peace to happen we need to encounter one another, we need to build relationships. Of course, those who have done bad things in the past need to be punished for what they did, but also important is the building of relationships.
Have many people been punished?
Not really. There is really no official organization to punish things that happened in the past during the war. I mean, there are some laws about it, but these are not really functioning; they are not really enforced.
Can you speak about the work in which RECONCILE is currently engaged here in Yei?
RECONCILE, in general, has three main programs. The first two programs are outreach programs. There is the civic education program, which deals with issues like human rights, good governance, democracy, and conflict resolution. Here we conduct workshops, seminars, conferences and other types of trainings.
The second program is the psychosocial rehabilitation program. This program provides trauma counseling training to the people who have gone through difficulties, for example displaced persons or those who lost loved ones during the war. This program also brings together community and family leaders to train them on how to sensitize their communities on these difficult issues.
The third program is called RECONCILE International Peace Institute (RPI). It just began this year and is a three month training program in which people earn either a certificate in peace studies and conflict resolution or community-based trauma healing. This program happens once a year, this past year running from February to May. Thirty-two people were selected from five states in southern Sudan to participate. We also see it as a way of training people outside of Sudan, and so one person came from Uganda. Selected people were those already doing some sort of community work, but who could benefit from more training. This year pastors, teachers, and government officials were invited.
What do the two certificate programs involve?
Each one involves six sections, or models. For the peace studies and conflict resolution certificate, the sections focus on how to identify and analyze conflict in communities: non-violence and faith-based peacebuilding; people-to-people peacebuilding; an overview of trauma counseling; leadership, good governance, and peacebuilding; and community education and mobilization for peace.
The community-based trauma healing certificate includes sections on recognizing trauma; understanding the journey of trauma; people-to-people peacebuilding; how to respond to trauma; trauma healing with specific populations; and community education and mobilization for peace.
I notice that people-to-people peacebuilding and community education and mobilization for peace are a part of both certificates.
Can you please talk a bit more about those two sections?
Well, people-to-people peacebuilding is about how one starts building peace in the first place. You to have first start with yourself; you have to implement the ideas of peace in your own life. Then, people can start to learn from your example. From this, more and more people will learn about peacebuilding.
The section on community education and mobilization for peace is important because we hope that the students at RPI will go back to their communities and share what they have learned. We hope that the will do trainings and workshops in their communities on many of the topics we cover during RPI. So this is a way of preparing them to go back and share their experiences.
What are some of the challenges for RPI as you plan for your second year?
We very much would like to train many more people. We recognize that the more people we train, the more results we will see. Also, we want to be able to follow up with those who have attended this year’s RPI. It would be helpful to them to have additional trainings, but this is difficult. Both things are difficult, actually, because it requires more funding.
From where do you receive your current funding?
It comes mainly from churches in the United States or other countries. From other Christians who recognize our need in southern Sudan and decide that they want to help us. As we grow, we would like to also apply for government grants, like from the American government, but we have not done that yet.
Finally, what do you see as the major challenge or challenges for southern Sudan in the near future?
One of our biggest problems is poor leadership. There is very little leadership training here. What is leadership? I see one important part of it involving the ability to pass over the reigns to someone else when it is time. It is about letting other people compete for authority and letting them take over if they win. It is about good governance.
Mr. Abugo, thank you very much for your time today.
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