Kenya: National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) Signs MOU with Interpeace
By NewsfromAfrica
NAIROBI - Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) and Interpeace havesigned a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) aimed at facilitating joint collaboration in peacebuilding work in Kenya.
The MOU was signed by NCIC Chairperson, Hon. Francis Ole Kaparo, and Interpeace Director for Eastern and Central Africa (ECA), Johan Svensson, at a ceremony witnessed by President John Kufuor, former President of Ghana and Chairman of the Interpeace Governing Council, other members of the Interpeace Governing Council and Hon. Kaparo’s fellow NCIC Commissioners.
“It is important the Government of Kenya has taken the initiative to set up the NCIC, which will work to include all Kenyans to feel like stakeholders in their country. The partnership between NCIC and Interpeace aims to help people through dialogue for peace,” stated President Kufuor, Chairman of Interpeace.
This new collaboration between the two organisations will provide an opportunity for Interpeace to share its two decades of technical experience in peace building with the NCIC – a government agency with the mandate of promoting peaceful co-existence among people of different ethnic groups in Kenya.
“Bringing peace to Kenya is the responsibility of all Kenyans, and peace cannot be achieved by a single individual or body. It needs to be pursued in partnership, “said NCIC Chairperson, Hon. Francis Ole Kaparo.
Interpeace Director-General Scott Weber said “the best partners are those motivated by shared values, vision and trust.”
The NCIC was one of the government agencies created by the unity government to help build lasting peace by addressing and reducing inter-ethnic conflicts. Its mandate includes advocating for cohesiveness among the diverse groups in the country and the prevention of discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. The Commission seeks to achieve deliberate normative, institutional and attitudinal processes of constructing nationhood, national cohesion and integration as an avenue towards lasting peace, sustainable development and harmonious coexistence among the Kenyan people.
Incidentally, the MOU was signed at the Nairobi Serena Hotel’s historic ‘Amani’ Conference Room, which hosted negotiations that ended Kenya’s 2008 post-election crisis, leading to the formation of a unity government that restored peace to the country after two months of deadly ethnic violence. Following the success of the negotiations, the Hotel renamed the conference room ‘Amani,’ a word that means ‘peace’ in Kenya’s national language, Swahili.
Interpeace is an independent, international peacebuilding organisation created by the United Nations in 1994 as a peacebuilding pilot project. In 2000 the project transitioned to an independent non-profit organisation, maintaining a strategic partnership with the United Nations. The organisation currently supports peacebuilding initiatives in 21 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe and the Middle East.
The Interpeace regional office for East and Central Africa, based in Nairobi since 2006, supports peacebuilding efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Somali Region. Interpeace and the NCIC first established contact in 2011. Their relationship has over the years evolved, resulting in the formal partnership enshrined in the MOU, as well as paving the way for Interpeace’s first engagement in Kenya, in collaboration with the NCIC. The two organisations will launch a pilot peacebuilding project in Mandera, a frontier County in Kenya’s North Eastern Region that faces critical development and security challenges.