Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 - No comments

Liberian youths and post-conflict transition

Dance, sing and speak! For the first time in Liberia’s history, the Center for Peace Education has been teaching “peace education” in grade schools through dance, art, drama, songs and drawing.

Liberia is emerging from a 14-year (1989 – 2003) brutal civil war. This included recruiting a significant number of school aged children, who were trained to become rebels and taught the art of war. This war destroyed millions of dollars worth of property, displaced millions of people, both internally and externally, and ended over a quarter million lives. In addition, children who did not participate in the war often witnessed violent acts, including death or torture of family members and friends. They were also displaced from their families and became refugees in strange lands. Some were falsely imprisoned and suffered torture and other forms of abuse.

Refugees and displaced persons are relocating to their communities. By 2005, warring factions were disarmed, demobilized, and rehabilitated. Rebel groups were transformed into political parties and contested for elected seats. By January of 2006, Liberians inaugurated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Africa’s first female president. Today, the sound of heavy military weapons has ended. Renovations, repairs, and rebuilding work have begun on damaged infrastructure, roads, and bridges. Despite these developments, youth-initiated violence persists, which continues to result in the destruction of property and needlessly ends lives.

Since the general elections in November 2005, recent youth-related violence has resulted in the burning of police stations in Nimba, Bong, and Margibi counties. In March of 2010, a 10th grade student from a Lutheran high school located in Zorzor, Lofa County went missing while visiting her family. Her friends when looking for her and found her body near a mosque four days later. The youths, predominantly Christians presumed that since their friend body was found within the vicinity of the mosque, they allotted her death to the Muslim community. Without taking the case to the police or court, the youths resolve to take the judicial process into their own hands which resulted in ending seven lives, wounding several hundred of people, and destructing property, which included a mosque and three churches.

Unfortunately, the absence of war, the disarmament of rebel factions, and holding of democratic elections, does not represent peace in Liberia. Evidence from Liberia continues to demonstrate the brutal nature of youth initiated violence, because these children have come to embrace the culture of violence as a way of life. These youths who were perpetrators and victims of violence are like ticking time bombs – waiting to explode at any time. They remain scarred from a life of unending conflict – all they have known in their short lives is killing and war. The challenge of reintegrating Liberian youths certainly holds the key to sustainable post-conflict reconstruction in Liberia. As such, there is a serious need to “reteach” these who were perpetrators and victims of war the prescripts of peaceful civility and imbue them with tools for peaceful problem-solving and peer mediation.

Since the beginning of 2009, the Center for Peace Education (CPE) has been teaching Peace Education as a subject in several grade schools in Liberia – for the first time in the country’s history. CPE conducts its lessons through a therapeutic process of dance, art, drama, songs, poems, drawing, etc so as to portray a culture of peace, reconciliation, creative self-esteem, expression, and a world of tolerance. This form of peace education is designed to focus not only on non-violence and social justice, but is a comprehensive program that stresses the rehumanization of the child. This model fuses both classroom curriculum and extracurricular components to build a comprehensive, multi-stage peace education program for Liberia.

CPE is also teaching conflict resolution and peer mediations skills in various local communities. This integrative approach seeks to use the educational system to address perceptual behavior and cognitive identity, and it also seeks to address economic, cultural, social, and the root causes of the conflict. Through CPE’s lessons, students are not only learning that peace is possible, but more importantly, how to make it possible.

Investing in peace education will reap a protracted peace in Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction. Investing in Peace Education is the best way forward, which I strongly believe is firmly needed during Liberia’s post conflict reconstruction. The Center for Peace Education is not solely about teaching peace, but showing people how to live in PEACE each day.

For more information on CPE work and activities please follow the links below:
Blog: http://peacefulliberia.blogspot.com/
Website: http:// www.peaceedu.org

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• Unity in Diversity – Liberians Unite! (one.org)
• With God All Things Are Possible Group : Liberia (socialactions.net)

The views expressed in this blog-post are solely those of the author.