Kenya Taps Interpeace Experience in Effort to Achieve Lasting Peace and Cohesion
By Eric Sande
NAIROBI - Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has entered into a collaborating with Interpeace, a leading UN-affiliated peacebuilding organisation, aimed at bolstering the country’s efforts to achieve lasting peace and cohesion.
The collaboration between the NCIC and Interpeace was formalised in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in Nairobi on November 12 by NCIC Chairperson 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.
The partnership will make it possible for Interpeace to share its 20 years’ experience building peace around the world with the NCIC, a government agency that has a national mandate to catalyse the achievement of lasting peace and cohesion in Kenya, starting with a joint peacebuilding project in Mandera, a county located along Kenya’s border with Somalia that faces critical development and security challenges.
“It is important that the Government of Kenya has taken the initiative to set up the NCIC, which will work to make all Kenyans feel like stakeholders in their country. The partnership between NCIC and Interpeace aims to help facilitate dialogue for peace,” President Kufuor remarked.
NCIC Chairman Kaparo, a respected former speaker of the Kenyan parliament, acknowledged the need for a concerted effort in the search for peace in the East African country, which has intermittently suffered deadly inter-ethnic clashes for decades, and has in the last few years come under attack by terror attacks perpetrated by the Somali-based Al Shabaab insurgents.
“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 through partnership,” Hon. Kaparo said.
President Kufuor, who led Ghana for two terms between 2001 and 2009, and was Chairman of the Africa Union from 2007 to 2008, was the initiator of the mediation effort, led by former UN secretary General Kofi Annan, that eventually resolved the 2008 post-election crisis that claimed an estimated 1,500 lives and led to the formation of a national unity government and the adoption of a new constitution in 2010.
Incidentally, the NCIC and Interpeace signed their MOU at the Nairobi Serena Hotel’s ‘Amani’ Conference Room, which hosted the Annan-led negotiations. The Serena Hotel renamed the room ‘Amani,’ which means ‘peace’ in Kenya’s national language, Kiswahili, in commemoration of the success of the negotiations.
Interpeace is an independent, international peacebuilding organisation created by the United Nations in 1994 as a peacebuilding pilot project. The organisation is currently an independent non-profit organisation with a strategic partnership with the UN, at the moment supporting 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, supports peacebuilding efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Somalia. The joint NCIC-Interpeace pilot project in Mandera will be Interpeace’s first engagement in Kenya.
On November 14, President Kufuor paid a courtesy call on Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi. Elected in 2013, President Kenyatta is Kenya’s first leader under the 2010 constitution, which was written to resolve longstanding grievances that have long fuelled ethnic divisions in the country.
The NCIC is one of the constitutional structures created to help build lasting peace by addressing and reducing inter-ethnic conflicts. Its mandate also includes advocating for cohesiveness among the 42 ethnic groups in the country and preventing ethnic-based discrimination.