Radio Miraya
2701: How Peace Building Fund Supports Peace and Nation Building Processes in South Sudan
With us today, we have a special guest from the United Nations Secretary-General's Peace Building Fund. Brian Williams, a Peace Building Fund, is in South Sudan since 2011. Now, Mr. Williams is the Chief of Financing for Peace Building branch of the Peace Building Fund headquarters in New York, and Williams is a part of the delegation that is visiting South Sudan since that has visited South Sudan since the 14th of April to see how the Peace Building Fund is supporting the peace building and nation building process in the country. Good morning, William. Thank you so much for making our time to speak to us. Good morning. Thanks for having me. I hope you can hear me okay. Yes, I can hear you very well. So now, tell us about the Peace Building Fund and its relevance to the country. Yeah, thanks. So, the Secretary-General's Peace Building Fund, it's based in New York. It works in about 40-45 countries around the world. Last year, we allocated more than $200 million to peace building projects. We're a fund. So we always work with the United Nations family here in South Sudan. For example, some of the agencies that are involved in the programs are ION, UNDP, UNESCO, FAO, also with civil society like Safer World, and of course, UNMIS is here, and everything we do, we do in very close collaboration with UNMIS, although we don't fund UNMIS itself directly. And of course, we're supporting the efforts of all development partners here in South Sudan, government, civil society, and others in their efforts. Right. So you have been visiting South Sudan over the last couple of days with a delegation from the Peace Building Fund and from various capitals across the world. What was the purpose of this visit? Yeah. So, the purpose of the visit really is to better understand the peace building context in South Sudan, to learn about some of the successes and the challenges of the specific programs that have been financed by the PBF. You know, the delegation itself is pretty interesting and reflects, you know, I think how to do peace building successfully, you need to bring in lots of different partners. We have some of our voluntary contributors to the fund, let's say the donors, Netherlands, Japan, Denmark, EU, Norway, Ireland, the UK, all of those are big supporters globally and they were here. The Secretary General, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, he has an advisory group, a direct advisory group to him, of 10 advisors and two of those advisors were here on the trip with us, Ambassador from Switzerland posted in Southern Africa and a retired ambassador from Kenya. And we also have globally, I think, called the Peace Building Commission, which is an intergovernmental body in New York. It pays a lot of attention to promoting peace building globally and we had a representative from the mission of Brazil, who this year is the current chair of the Peace Building Commission. And, you know, here in South Sudan, there's a sort of five-year engagement of the Peace Building Fund and that five-year engagement is broken into a strategic framework, sort of three big areas of work and one is building democratic and accountable institutions, one is working on durable solutions, and one is working on reducing violent approaches to resolving conflict, intercommunal violence and so on. So, the purpose of the visit here really was to understand the context, take a look at the programs, learn about how the UN and all its partners can do peace building better. Right, so from the discussions that you had with the government and your visits to various PBF projects in Juba and Malachal, what was your impression on the progress and the impact of this PBF investments in South Sudan? Yeah, well, I mean, the most exciting bit, of course, was visiting Malachal, so got to talk about that first. We were up there for a couple of days in Upper Nile State, well received by the governor at the beginning in the end of our visit and really supported by UNMS throughout our visit, so thanks to all the partners for that. We saw projects that demonstrated, as far as we can tell in a short visit, some genuine interest on the part of the citizens and the local community in all different groups to put the violence behind them, to try to reconcile with what's happened and try to move for a more peaceful future. We saw a project with youth ambassadors for peace and other young people who really were very articulate in their desire to not let themselves get drawn into a communal or ethnic based violence. They wanted to work as ambassadors themselves. They want the work of the authorities, law enforcement and so on to make sure that they're providing a safe environment is provided that's not somehow instigating that ethnic violence. We visited a project with market women, mostly mostly widows from the more recent violence, yet from all different groups who were working together, microloan activities, savings activities, a little bit of seed money, and they were able to get economic activities going in a small market and work together and really a powerful expression about how people are able extraordinarily when given the space and the support to deal with the past. A transitional justice project, we visited also up in Malachal and again, victims of violence who are being supported by local civil society organizations. I think in this case it was the Federation of Women Lawyers who were working with these victims to find ways to reconcile with the past, get a little bit of support. There's obviously a tremendous amount of work to be done in terms of trauma, healing, in terms of psychosocial support and you need to balance, let's say, the immediate support for dialogues and so on with psychosocial support and meaningful support for people. We met a number of people with disabilities as a result of the violence who explained their challenges in life and just earning a livelihood so there needs to be real programs also that follow up and support on these things. Of course, these local level activities fit into a national context and there are programs that we support that work on some of the big picture chapters of the peace agreement and some of the big institutions that are supposed to move forward. For example, the Constitution Making Body, for example, the Truth Commission and Healing Commission and as much as the community, the sense we got was that the community is ready to move forward. They're tired of the violence, they're tired of the war, it's not what they want. Their lives take place in a bigger picture and I think it's rarely critical. Sort of two main big points, one is some of the structural elements of the peace agreement need to move forward. So the establishment of some of these commissions so that they can, and the funding of those commissions by the government so that they can move forward. And then just the leadership, you know, the leadership has tremendous power to set the tone whether positive or negative and what we saw was a lot of community people that wanted that positive tone set and positive action so that they can move forward. Right, Brian, thank you so much for making our time to speak to us now. From our headquarters perspective, what is the outlook for the peace building fund in South Sudan over the next two years? Well as I mentioned, South Sudan has an engagement with us for 2021 to 2026 for a five-year period. South Sudan is a big priority in New York. So it will continue to be a priority. Our amount of funding available to us shifts a little bit every year but with whatever we have, South Sudan will be a priority. So that's, you know, message number one. We're here to support the people of South Sudan and we want to stay engaged. Civil societies enabling government and so on and the government up in Malachal I didn't mention but very interested in supporting dialogues and even a kind of inter-communal conference, peace conference of some kind. So, you know, they're committed to dialogue too up there. I should mention one other thing. So we're going to stay engaged as a joint steering committee. It's co-chaired by the government and the Minister of Peace and the Deputy Special Representative, Secretary General and Resident Coordinator. So with the development partners on that committee, civil society on that committee, they'll be looking at the priorities going forward. They meet a couple of times every year. So there's a negotiation about, you know, what's the most important thing to do? How can the United Nations help? And then the last thing I'll mention, I think we're a little over time but just the last thing I'll mention is that there is also in New York, this Peace Building Commission and South Sudan is interested in engaging there and, you know, it's not the fund directly but I think it is an important global platform where the South Sudanese government can explain to its global partners what it's trying to do, appeal for support and, you know, receive advice from peers from other countries that are that are struggling with some of the same issues. Right. Brian Williams.