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Civil society pulls northern Ghana back from the abyss

Can NGOs offer added value to official reconciliation initiatives in the aftermath of conflict? How should donors support local peace-brokering, peace-facilitation training and conflict early warning mechanisms?

A report from Oxfam GB looks at a rare success in African peacemaking - northern Ghana’s recovery from an orgy of ethnic bloodletting in 1994-1995. A detailed analysis of the role played by civil society in bolstering a government-brokered peace process has implications across Africa.

The roots of conflict in the Northern Region lie in government neglect of development needs, simmering ethnic tensions around land issues and disputes over traditional political leadership. This most sparsely populated of Ghana’s regions has 15 percent of the population but attracts only 5 per cent of central government spending. Literacy rates, particularly among rural inhabitants, are well below national averages. Democratisation and decentralisation have sparked conflict as the region’s 15 ethnic groups lobby for influence. Partisan missionary and development organisations have added to Muslim-Christian tensions.

A marketplace squabble about the price of a guinea fowl led to an explosion of violence. Fifteen thousand people were murdered as 441 villages were destroyed. An estimated 200,000 people were displaced. Markets and schools were burned down; agriculture was disrupted for several seasons bringing nation-wide food shortages and a severe strain on Ghana’s budget. The government won praise for its dispatch of peacekeeping troops, coordination of relief and rehabilitation programmes and distribution of tools and other inputs to get farming restarted. A government task force compelled protagonists to get round the table to sign a peace treaty.

An informal network of NGOs realised that a grass-roots process of genuine reconciliation was needed. The consortium worked with an outside facilitator, Kenya’s Nairobi Peace Initiative, to recognise ‘voices of reason’ within the warring factions, facilitate peace workshops and promote and disseminate examples of inter-community cooperation to get the Northern Region back on its feet. The warring factions came together to sign the Kumasi Peace Accord two years after the government-imposed pact. A new multi-ethnic NGO, the Northern Region Youth and Development Association (NORYDA), has emerged from the peace initiative and continues to defuse tensions and lobby for development initiatives.

The report highlights:

Peace is still fragile. Two major groups are still locked in a land dispute and the second largest ethnic group still feels unsafe entering the regional capital, Tamale.
The replicability of such pan-African sharing of civil society-led conflict analysis and peace facilitation experience.

Among the recommendations are:

Donors should continue to assist NORYDA’s capacity building and peace and development work.
The consortium should do more to involve women, keep donors informed and be pro-active in preparing plans to cut short further flare-up of conflict.
The Ghanaian government must do more to address inter- and intra-regional imbalances in development expenditure, clamp down on arms dealing, defuse religious-based tensions and get under-represented ethnic groups into the political areba.

Source(s):
‘Building sustainable peace: conflict, conciliation, and civil society in northern Ghana’ by Ada van der Linde and Rachel Naylor, Oxfam Working Papers, Oxfam GB, 1999 Full document.

Funded by: Oxfam GB

id21 Research Highlight: 23 November 2001

Further Information:
Helen Bowers
Oxfam Publishing
274 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 7DZ
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 311 311
Fax: +44 (0)1865 313 925
Contact the contributor: publish@oxfam.org.uk

Oxfam GB

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