wfn.org | Churches help make peace a reality in post-war Angola

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 29, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-31-71BP{329}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report at
http://umns.umc.org/currentphotos.html.

By Paul Jeffrey*

LUANDA, Angola (UMNS) -- After decades of war, Angola is struggling to make
peace with itself. Yet in the wake of a war in which brutality often took
precedence over rights, constructing a culture of peace and mutual respect
will take a while.

Reconciliation won't be easy. But most Angolans, tired of so much suffering
and convinced the war is definitely over, are eager to turn themselves to
learning the ways of peace.

Action by Churches Together, an international alliance that includes the
United Methodist Committee on Relief, is providing critical material aid to
the victims of Angola's conflict. At the same time, it is helping construct
a new culture of reconciliation.
 
Working closely with the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Office
in Angola, ACT has made it possible for pastors and church leaders from
several war-torn provinces to be trained as human rights counselors or peace
and reconciliation counselors. In cooperation with local government
officials and traditional village authorities, they have created local and
provincial human rights committees that are reinventing ways to peacefully
resolve conflicts within families, among neighbors and between former
enemies.

In many areas of the country, this peacemaking takes place in a vacuum.
After the studied neglect of Portuguese colonial rule and 27 years of
post-independence warfare, most provinces have no judicial or penal system.
According to a U.N. survey in 2001, only 13 of 164 municipalities had
functioning municipal courts. "They don't take many prisoners in the
provinces," said Patrick Hughes, deputy chief of the United Nations' Human
Rights Division in Angola.

To construct a working legal system, Hughes' office is training judges and
prosecutors and providing computers to track cases. Hughes says a major
problem with the existing court system is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that
simply loses cases. "A poor guy could steal a bag of cement and spend years
in jail because they lost his case," Hughes said.

Training lawyers to do their job is another element of remaking the judicial
system. "That's a massive task," said Hughes. "Lawyers here have been
trained to obey the police and judges. We're teaching them how to be
lawyers, that working for their client is their main job."

In a July 3 report, Human Rights Watch claimed that the Angolan legal system
- or lack of one - is particularly harsh for the 4 million Angolans who have
been displaced by the war. 

"Many of the displaced lack identity documentation, facilitating harassment
by the authorities, especially the national police. Arbitrary beatings and
arrests occur when the displaced are unable to present personal
identification documents to the police and are unable to bribe their way
out," the report said.

"Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to assaults, including sexual
violence, by policemen and soldiers located in road control posts when on
their way to and from isolated agricultural areas or when collecting water.
Additionally, without documentation, the displaced, and especially children,
are unable to access social services.

"The sobas (traditional authorities) routinely demand bribes to include
people on lists to receive assistance. Local landowners regularly exploit
the internally displaced as a source of cheap labor for cultivation; those
that manage to find work as agricultural laborers are regularly subject to
extortion at military and police checkpoints when they return from the
fields. Soldiers that guard access to the camps also 'tax' the residents and
steal food and non-food relief items," the report stated.

Such human rights violations could not be redressed quickly enough by only
changing formal structures. What was needed was the cultivation of a culture
of complaint among the people affected. Aid workers, having witnessed two
periods of quasi-peace during the 1990s dissolve into bloodshed, believed
that empowering civilian leaders could help break the cycle.

"It's much easier to distribute food and blankets, but this work of building
peace and reconciliation is extremely important. One of the reasons that
past cease-fires didn't succeed was that no one was speaking up about human
rights violations," said Carl von Seth, the Angola representative for the
Lutheran World Federation, the lead ACT agency in Angola. 

During much of the 1990s, the U.N. mission in Angola was sharply criticized
by rights activists for failing to include human rights education in its
work. This time around, people like Hughes are determined to do it
differently.

In cooperation with the U.N. Office in Angola, ACT began workshops last year
in the war-torn eastern province of Moxico. The Angolan constitution and
several international legal documents, like the United Nations' Declaration
of the Rights of the Child, served as texts.

According to Moises Gourgel, the ACT director in the provincial capital of
Luena, the workshops focused on "encouraging people, especially the
displaced, to know their rights and obligations, and then speak up. If
people don't demand their rights, it makes it easier for the government not
to assume its responsibility."

At the same time that church leaders are being trained as human rights
activists, the United Nations is conducting seminars on conflict resolution
for the sobas, the traditional village leaders. 

According to Emilio Cesar, the Moxico coordinator for the ACT program on
rights, reconciliation and peace, the work of the church-based counselors
became even more urgent with the April cease-fire that followed the death of
Jonas Savimbi, who led the rebel group UNITA. "With these people emerging
from the bush, there cannot be room for revenge or rancor," Cesar said. "And
the church is in a unique position to help create this culture of peace. The
church is a bridge. It's present in every village, and it's willing to get
involved without fear."

Yet von Seth says the workshops, and a variety of related skits broadcast in
six languages on provincial radio stations, often focus more on peacefully
resolving conflicts within the family than on larger political tensions.
"You don't have to talk specifically about conflicts with UNITA to get your
point across," said von Seth. "Angolans need to learn new ways to resolve
conflicts at every level, and it may be easier to start at a family level."

The lingering political gaps aren't ignored. ACT helped organize a June 29
ecumenical worship service in the UNITA demobilization camp at Chicala.
Gourgel says it was an important moment for local leaders of churches and
other civil society groups to dialogue face to face with the former UNITA
combatants.

In the northern province of Uige, another ACT member, the Evangelical
Reformed Church of Angola, co-sponsored a May workshop where 59 peace
counselors were trained. One of those trained was Armando Mabaia, a Reformed
Church pastor in the provincial capital. He says police abuse of civilians
was a main topic addressed in the workshop. "These things happen because the
police don't know the laws, and the people don't know their rights and how
to defend themselves against the police," Mabaia said.

To educate both civilians and government officials, the provincial human
rights committee broadcasts a live, 45-minute program every Saturday on the
local government radio station; the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
picks up the tab for the airtime. Committee members discuss a different
theme on each program, and citizens are invited to call in with their
complaints. 

A test of the radio program's effectiveness came when someone called to
denounce the case of two police officers who had raped a woman and yet not
been punished. Appeals to the officers' superiors were going nowhere. A
phone call to the radio program led to the eventual jailing and prosecution
of the two officers.

"People have a right to know that they can expect certain things of the
government, but it's clear we have to struggle for those things. If we wait
on the government to make change, we'll be waiting a long time," said Kula
Romanos Jose, a Baptist and secretary of the provincial committee. 
# # #
*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America. He was on
assignment in Angola for ACT International.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org