Liberia

Project Team

Diaspora Dialoges

On October 11, 2011, Liberians will head to the polls to vote in Liberia's second national elections since the end of its second civil war in 2003. The Liberian diaspora, estimated at tens of thousands in the U.S., may not vote in the elections but nonetheless can wield significant influence on the electoral process and its outcomes. The diaspora's potential to encourage peaceful elections depends upon its efforts to unify and collaborate to further Liberia's peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Launched in May 2011, the Diaspora Dialogues project seeks to empower members of the Liberian diaspora through dialogue to promote a peaceful election process in Liberia. Dialogue has the ability to bring together people with different viewpoints so they may find a common understanding, strengthening trust, relationships, and collaboration. In the months prior to Liberia's elections, the project team will implement dialogues and community meetings in various cities in partnership with Liberian communities and Mediators Beyond Borders volunteer facilitators. Facilitated dialogues will help further collaboration through trust- and relationship-building. Community meetings will create spaces to develop strategies to encourage peace.

For more information about the project, please contact the project co-coordinators, Christy Cumberlander Walker and Vanessa Stevens at MBBDiasporaDialogues@gmail.com.

Project Co-Coordinators: Christy Cumberlander Walker, Vanessa Stevens
Project Team: Daniella Montemarano, Annie Zean Dunbar, Rachel Urman, Helene Vincent, Donyen Kofa, Dave Joseph, Ginny Morrison, Prabha Sankaranarayan

Partners

• National Ex-Combatant Peacebuilding Initiatives (NEPI) 
  Reintegration and community services
  
• University of Ghana, Legon 
  Provision of psycho-social services
• University of Liberia, Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation
  Partnering in graduate level instruction and peacebuilding activities in the countryside
• Pump-Aid 
  Provision of the Elephant Pump training
• Public Conversations Project 
  Dialogue training and conflict resolution capacity-building
• CENCOR
  Partnering in providing mediation skills training to Ghanaian government officials, military, traditional leaders, judiciary, attorneys and business people 
  
• RECEIVE
  Peacebuilding and trauma healing 
  
• Peace Building Resource Center
  Peacebuilding research and interventions
• Society Mission Africa Technical Vocational Training Center 
  Provision of educational services

Executive Summary

As we enter our second phase, the Liberian Initiative and its consortium of Liberian partners will work with community women, taking a step toward recovering from the effects of the brutal, lengthy civil war. Focusing on women who fought or were coerced sexual partners for troops, we will offer a program combining:

• mentoring by former fighters (women and men)
• training in sustainable agriculture techniques
  • participants will be women fighters working alongside other community women
  • the plot will be communal
  • participants will be asked to pay forward the benefit to at least one other woman through teaching the farming technique, sharing seeds, and/or sharing food
• training our local partners in dialogue methods, trauma symptoms and responses, and training techniques
• a series of dialogues among the women participants
• a series of dialogues in the community aimed at improving relations with the stigmatized women former fighters, and at increasing understanding surrounding other pressing issues identified by community members
• a series of trainings in the community to increase understanding of trauma, its effect on conflict prevention/resolution, and ways of responding supportively

This work arises out of our three-year history working in Liberia and Ghana. Mediators Beyond Borders (MBB) began its work with Liberians in 2007 and anticipates making at least a 10-year commitment, rebuilding personal and systemic capacity to coexist peacefully such that a return to the recent atrocities would be unthinkable. With each of our methods, and in each of our sub-projects, we establish relationships in communities and with a wide range of local and international partners, from all sectors from governmental to grass roots levels. We coordinate activities with the aim of increasing capacity for skillful communication, cooperation, and collaboration among Liberians, as well as the NGOs and government agencies serving them.

After an invitation by a resident of Ghana’s largest refugee camp, MBB began to contribute to the rebuilding of Liberia and its people, devastated by civil war. The invitations grew, as MBB heard from community members and leaders, the largest university, government agencies, and local NGOs and churches. MBB team members have made nine assessment and intervention visits from 2007-2009, all self-funded or through the generosity of private donors.

This project began with training and advising Liberian residents of Buduburam Refugee Settle-ment in Ghana in response to requests to set up a community and peer mediation service. 

MBB then worked with former child soldiers along-side numerous Liberian, Ghanaian and international partners, including Public Conversations Project, National Ex-Combatant Peacebuilding Initiatives, University of Ghana-Legon and Pump Aid. Research by the UN, the US Institute of Peace, and others shows that one of the critical factors of post-conflict peace is the employment and reintegration of former combatants. 

The program provided mentoring, teambuilding and conflict resolution training, construction skills, and psychological counseling to begin healing and rebuilding participants’ identity as community members. The project worked with receiving communities to build acceptance, and the group has repatriated and safely reintegrated into society.

MBB continues its work in Liberia, emphasizing: 

• Rehabilitating, reintegrating, and restoring the lives of Liberia’s former child soldiers.  Many of the former child soldiers did not participate in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process (DDR) established by and under the direction of the UN High Commission on Refugees.  MBB works, in conjunction with local partners, with these former child soldiers and their communities.
• Capacity building: to date, MBB has provided mediation and conflict resolution training, in Ghana and Liberia, to lawyers, tribal chiefs, land administrators, police and prison officials, several NGOs’ staff, and university graduate students.
• Designing and implementing interventions to address the need for trauma healing countrywide.

The team is currently evaluating the effectiveness of interventions in Liberia. The team is also exploring possible funding to help communities reconcile with young women who were soldiers or associated with the fighting forces, and are now abandoned and living on the margins.

Full Executive Summary - 2009

Video: "A Chance at Life"

"A Chance at Life" is a documentary about MBB's largest international project
The Liberian Initiative.

(You must use Mozilla Firefox, Safari or Opera to view this video.)

Slideshows

Going Back to Liberia
Life at Buduburam	Buduburam & S.M.A. Center
Buduburam Mediation Project	Buduburam Protest
Billboards in Africa	Life in Monrovia
Lofa County, Monrovia	MBB in Monrovia
Kofi Annan Institute	CENCOR

Map

Other Resources

	The Liberian Initiative: Giving a Chance at Life A letter-size, folded brochure about the 7th S.M.A. Graduation at Buduburam Refugee Settlement. Designed to accompany "A Chance at Life" DVD. Select "Flip on short edge" in printer settings under Finishing tab if printing doublesided automatically.
	The Liberian Initiative Booklet A booklet that contains all articles from the Peace & Reconciliation Report about The Liberian Initiative.
	Arrival of the elephant pump trumpets a great day for Paulo The Times (London, UK) correspondent joins a Pump Aid team as they bring clean water to an African village.