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El Salvador: Political Problems Among the 23 projects prepared through workshops with both the Government and the FMLN, there was one which I felt to be central - the training of "peace promoters." The idea of peace promoters came in part from traditions in Latin America of literacy promoters and community organizers. They were to be people in the various projects of the Programme as well as others already engaged in development work at a grass-roots level, who would train together in methodologies of conflict transformation and mediation, using both universal methods and traditional methods. Although it was not spelled out, it was implied in the proposal that the training would be similar to that developed by John Paul Lederach and the Mennonite Central Committee which they call "elicitive" because it assumes that each person brings to the training a unique and valuable set of experiences with conflict transformation which can be shared with others in order to work out an appropriate methodology. It was proposed that these "peace promoters" should become a permanently growing network of mutual learning and support with periodic reunions by which their field experiences would inform and further develop the training process for new promoters and for the programme as a whole. However, the Government of El Salvador refused to submit one of the projects when it came time for them to submit the set of 23 projects to the international funding agencies. It was the proposal for peace promoters. Publicly they gave no reason. Privately, they told us that "we have had our fill with revolutionaries. We don't want you creating any more of them." This was a pattern we were to see again in other cases - for those in positions of government authority, the culture of peace is seen as threatening to their power. The international donor community was not responsive. It was never clear to me, however, if the UNESCO service in charge of fundraising at the time - BER - really did a proper job of attempting to raise the funds. They held donors meetings, but did not get concrete results. During those years at UNESCO, one frequently heard colleagues saying that BER was incompetent, but I had no way to judge at the time. Eventually, we obtained financing for only one of the remaining 22 projects - the project of radio programmes for rural women. Some blamed the lack of financing on the way we had prepared the proposals. Others blamed the man in charge of UNESCO's extra-budgetary fund-raising. Although there may have some truth in this, it cannot explain the fact that other projects, equally important but coming from other agencies, were also not funded. In particular, when the UN helped the Government and the FMLN achieve the peace agreements at Chapultepec, the UN had promised to finance land and judicial reform in the country. In particular, money was to be made available to buy land from the 17 or so families who own almost all of the good land of the country and to distribute it to the landless peasants. In this way, it would be possible to address one of the fundamental sources of the armed conflict which had led to the previous civil war. Time and again, it has been possible for the UN to find funds for military operations, but when it comes time for peace-building activities, it becomes impossible to find the money from the member states. This perversion of priorities must be seen as a fundamental problem in the world today. There is always money for war but not for peace. |