POLITICS-AFRICA: Interfaith Gathering Sets Its Sights on Conflict Resolution

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Mar 31 2004 (IPS) - The past few days have seen religious leaders around Africa take the lead in addressing violence on the continent.

In Zimbabwe, clerics from various Christian denominations gathered in Harare and Bulawayo to pray for peace in their country, which is in the throes of political and economic hardship. Colleagues from neighbouring South Africa, Botswana and Zambia travelled to Zimbabwe to join the services.

Further north, in Kenya, something similar was taking place.

Over 40 religious leaders from East and central Africa met in Nairobi over the weekend for a summit that focussed on the work the various faiths were doing in conflict situations in these regions.

The interfaith meeting, which concluded Monday (Mar. 29) was the third of its type in Africa. Clerics from West Africa came together for a similar conference last October in Liberia, while their Southern African counterparts gathered in 2002. An interfaith peace summit for North Africa is scheduled to take place in July this year.

In a communiqué released after the meeting, the Christian, Hindu and Muslim leaders pledged to make joint visits to conflict areas, and lobby governments to end violence in their regions.

“We (had) abdicated the responsibility to politicians…to be accountable in peace matters. We have therefore resolved that from now onwards, we as the interfaith community will play a leading role in engaging our governments in the search for peace,” Ishmael Noko, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, told IPS.

Said Prabhu Pattni of the Hindu Council of Africa, “It is religious leaders, regardless of their faith, who reach the grass-root populations. It is the same leaders who minister to these communities in their day to day life, and so they are rightly placed to educate communities to embrace a culture of peace.”

Of particular concern was the situation in Sudan, where substantial progress in peace talks between government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army has not stemmed violence in the western Darfur region.

In a briefing released Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said civilians in Darfur were being attacked daily as government forces, their supporters and rebel groups battled for control of the region.

OCHA warned that the humanitarian situation in Darfur was worsening, with thousands of internally displaced Sudanese experiencing water shortages and disease. About 750,000 people are believed to have fled their homes.

Somalia, which has been gripped by faction fighting since the fall of President Siad Barre’s government in 1991, was also a source concern at the Nairobi meeting – as were the ongoing clashes between government troops and rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda.

Ethiopia and Eritrea are still trying to bring a definitive end to their border conflict, which erupted in 1998, while the fragility of a December 2002 peace deal in Congo-Kinshasa was highlighted this weekend during an alleged coup attempt.

“If the government of Uganda wanted to end the war, it would have done so a long time ago because it has the capacity. But there is no political will to contain the war,” said Macleord Baker Ochola, the retired Anglican Bishop of Kitgum Diocese in northern Uganda, who has lost a wife and daughter to the conflict.

Ochola now serves as Vice-Chair of the Acholi Religious Leaders Initiative, which seeks to promote peace in the region.

The LRA rebellion, which began 17 years ago, has displaced almost two million people in Uganda. Last month, the group allegedly murdered more than 200 people in a northern refugee camp – an incident described as the worst attack in LRA history.

The interfaith meeting gained particular significance from the fact that religious differences have taken a toll on the region where it was held.

In Sudan, the Muslim north has long been at odds with the Christian and animist south. Proposals to entrench Islamic courts in Kenya’s new constitution have also raised temperatures in that country, with Christians – who make up more than 80 percent of the population – demanding that this clause be scrapped.

The Vice Chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, Alhaji Yusuf Murigu, said at the meeting that “People of different religions must learn to live peacefully with one another, accepting their religious diversity. They must embrace the gift of dialogue.”

His words were echoed by Mvume Dandala, General Secretary of the All African Conference of Churches, who said an example of interfaith harmony in Africa would “translate into (the continent’s) contribution to global peace in a world that is tearing apart from religiously motivated wars”.