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International Congress on Demobilized Soldiers In December 1996, the Government of Mozambique and the director of the UNESCO office in that country were responsible for another major fiasco for the culture of peace: the cancellation of the International Congress on Demobilized Soldiers: Their Social Reintegration and Role as Peace Promoters. To understand the background, our story has to go back a few years. In 1993, when conceiving the idea of training peace promoters, one of the inspirations came from a group in Nicaragua working with demobilized soldiers: the Centro Etudos Internacionales (CEI), led by the husband and wife team of Alejandro Bendana and Zoilamerica Ortega, and inspired by the approach of John Paul Lederach which is mentioned above. I first heard of the work of CEI through Elise Boulding, retired Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association who had organized an informal network of information on what was called "international peace teams". Like us at UNESCO, she had seen the weakness of UN reliance on military peacekeeping operations. The proposal of her network was to send civilian "peace teams" to war-torn countries instead. As an aside, this illustrates how the early 90's was a period of hope and ideas not only for UNESCO but for peace activists throughout the world. By 1995, the CEI initiative in Nicaragua had trained over 1200 community leaders and ex-soldiers, including a core of about 100 ex-soldiers, both men and women, who have formed their own Peace and Development Network as peace-promoters at the local level. The ex-soldier peace promoters came from both sides of the previous civil war in Nicaragua. Those who had been killing each other were now working side by side for peace! As one of the ex-soldiers in the core group explained: "When I was at my first Workshop, it was an incredible thing - Contras and Sandinistas - here together! Someone said 'What's this?' We had to talk with and have relations with our former enemies - the truth is that we felt strange. But after three workshops together, it has changed. Now we feel differently. We have confidence in each other. Now we are part of a great network of peace promoters. We work together for development because without reconciliation there can be no development." With help from UNESCO and other agencies, CEI began to expand their programme to include ex-soldiers from other countries where there had been civil wars. At a workshop in 1996, ex-soldiers came to be trained from Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It is the latter that is key to the story. Back in 1994 when I was on mission in Mozambique, Noel had introduced me to the leadership of the two main organizations of veterans of the Civil War: AMODEG and ADEMIMO. One might have expected the two organizations to represent the two sides of the conflict, FRELIMO and RENAMO, but instead they represented veterans from both sides. AMEMIMO represented veterans from both sides of the conflict who had been severely wounded and whose main need was medical benefits; while AMODEG represented all others for whom the main need was reintegration into the economy and social structure of the country. In fact, the President of AMODEG had fought on one side and the Secretary-General on the other side! Here was culture of peace in action! Recognizing the great potential of this kind of work for our priority of peace promoter networks, Noel supported meetings between the Mozambican veterans and the CEI initiative in Nicaragua, and he helped obtain the funding to send the Mozambicans to Nicaragua for training. Surprisingly to us, at the 1995 General Conference, without any consultation with CEI, with Noel or with our office, the head of the Maputo office and the Mozambican government delegation to the Conference called for an International Congress of Demobilized Soldiers. The proposal was accepted by the General Conference and put into the budget and programme for 1996-1997. Although in principle this seemed a good idea, had we been consulted, we might have raised some practical questions. In fact, CEI told me later that had they been consulted, they would have raised the same questions. But the decision was made. Plans called for the demobilized conference to take place in December 1996 in Maputo. The planning should have been done by the Maputo office with support from us in Paris. Early on, I hired a consultant to prepare an overview of the reintegration experiences of various countries and international agencies so that we would at least have background data. I was fortunate that the consultant, a young woman named Elisabeth Sancery was very competent and highly motivated as she was preparing for a career in the United Nations. Information about her report is included here. But little was done by the Maputo office and time passed without proper preparation. Noel, as usual, was hampered in his work by the office chief. By September, when Mozambican veterans went to the above-mentioned training session in Nicaragua, I spoke with Alejandro Bendana on the telephone and he said that neither he nor the Mozambicans had been involved by the Maputo office in any planning for the conference and were not sure it was taking place. They had not even been informed of the dates! We had been told by the Maputo office that they were in touch with the government, but the governmental accord, which had been sent in September, was still not signed as we came to the end of November. Rumours arrived that the Government of Mozambique might not sign the agreement to hold the Congress. Then, on November 26, just 2 weeks before the Congress was to take place, the President of Mozambique announced that he had decided not to support the Congress. Among other reasons, he indicated that he was afraid it would lead to the formation of a trade union or association by veterans that would challenge the Government on its payment of veterans benefits. Veterans and government representatives from a dozen countries had to be told at the last minute to cancel their travel plans. And in one case, due to lack of communication, veterans from Angola went to Mozambique and arrived only to learn that there was no Congress. Once again, UNESCO and the Culture of Peace Programme was made to look foolish and ineffective. |