the story of the friends church peace team
TRANSCRIPT
The story of the Friends Church Peace Team in
Kenya
On 27 December 2007, Kenyans go to the polls to elect a new president
As the announcement of a winner is inexplicably delayed, the vote counting process loses credibility and tension mounts in the country.
Youth begin to gather in the streets for “peaceful protest”.
When the result is finally announced, it is considered by many to be rigged.
Young people take to the streets in protest. Their actions are destructive of property, but not (at that stage) violent against people.
Youth burn tires and throw stones. Police respond with live bullets.
Homes and shops are looted and burned, primarily those belonging to ethnic minority communities in that location
Transportation is cut nationwide
Homes of ethnic minorities are burned
Internally displaced people are chased from their homes and dumped on the roadside – more than 300,000 are displaced nationwide
Kisumu city center is completely ransacked, looted and burned. Much of this is done by the police.
Many thousands are injured
1,133 people are killed, the majority of them by the police
Some IDPs are organized in camps
Many are left to fend for themselves
Friends begin doing what they can to help, in their own locations
Kenyan Quaker leaders meet 24-27 January 2008 to discern a common response. The Friends Church Peace Team is created.
Strategies are agreed
Priority #1 is humanitarian assistance to IDPs
We find groups of IDPs who are not in organized camps and are not being served by any other agency
The need is enormous and we struggle to focus on what we can do
We learn “on the job”
27 February 2008 – Kofi Annan brokers a power-sharing agreement that ends the violence. There is a commitment to address root causes.
The government orders all IDPs to leave the camps and return to their “ancestral homes”. People continue to be dumped in places where they have no resources.
We choose Turbo Division as the locus of our work, focusing on reconciliation between the “receiving” and “returning” communities
We carry out a house-to-house survey in Turbo
We bring the Christian and Muslim leaders in Turbo together to form an interfaith peace task force
Young people from diverse ethnic groups in Turbo are trained as AVP facilitators
We spend time on training and reflection as a team
We hire Getry Agizah to serve as the FCPT Coordinator
Our programme settles into a long-term strategy for peacemaking in Kenya, including:•Alternatives to Violence Programme (AVP)•Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC)•Transformative Mediation•Turning the Tide (TTT)•Sporting events•Interfaith events•Advocacy and public policy
We form international partnerships
The five-year term of the coalition government ends in 2013 and the country heads to another general election
We focus on prevention of election-related violence
Citizen reporters
Civic education
The election in March 2013 is (mostly) peaceful and (mostly) credible
The new President and Deputy President are on trial at the ICC, accused of masterminding the 2008 violence
Kenya is a “frontline” state in the war on terror
Friends continue to witness and work for peace in their own context and globally
Friends are still working for peace, justice and reconciliation in Kenya. The need continues, long after the
headlines move on. Support the Friends Church Peace Team with a
donation today.www.fum.org