Unless you Involve Women There will be no Peace: An Interview with Christine Kide.

I had the chance to sit down with Peace Canal’s Executive Director, Christine Kide, to learn about the unique role that women have to play in peacebuilding amongst the pastoralist communities in South Sudan. 

Peace Canal is a South Sudanese NGO that I work with in my role as Communications Lead for the Peace Opportunities Fund. Our mission is to establish sustainable national NGOs in the country, because locals know best. 

Here’s the interview:

Jonty:  So, Christine, let's start by finding out a bit about yourself and how you got involved with Peace Canal to begin with. 

Christine: It's something that, every time I reflect on it, I think it's an experience worth sharing to inspire the women in South Sudan to go way beyond their capabilities or to dream bigger than they think they can.

I applied for it with very little expectation because I knew it was a competitive position. 

I made it through as the Executive Director! I couldn't believe it, but here I am. My thoughts about myself changed, and I felt like if I could dream and become what I dreamt of, then anyone out there can dream and become what they wish to be.

At that time, Peace Canal was, and still is, a male-dominated institution. The male domination isn't because it's not working with women or doesn't want to work with women, but because of the circumstances surrounding the kind of work Peace Canal does and the locations they engage with communities. 

We engage directly with youth involved in conflict and face challenges with male-dominated societal structures. Traditions often don't expect women to engage in community peacebuilding initiatives, but we're seeing a slight shift. Since I took up this role, I've ensured to engage directly with these community leaders, and we've seen a shift in their willingness to work with women.

Meeting the spiritual leader, Da Kueth, and other key figures has shown that my role is shifting mindsets towards women in decision-making. The communities have been supportive, and this has been a significant part of my journey. So yeah, it's been a whole lot of a process and I think, we are, we are moving towards that shift.

Jonty: So, the brave step you took to apply for this role and to believe you could lead this organisation in a male-dominated sector has been an inspiration to women across communities in South Sudan. That's amazing. I wanted to ask about some of the acute challenges that women face in conflict communities in South Sudan because they experience conflict in a different way don’t they? Tell us a bit about that.

Christine: In most cases women have been used as a weapon of war when they are abducted, they are raped. They are, you know, forced into marriages…

At the same time, gender stereotypes restrict women in engaging in decision making, restrict women from dreaming and working with their communities closely, trying to cause a change in their communities. We have made it known to the communities that if we are discussing community issues, everyone has to be engaged, the women have to be there, the youth have to be there, the chiefs have to be there and the authorities have to be there. 

Women bear the burden of conflict because they are the most affected. They lose children, husbands, relatives, and resources, and are often left vulnerable. In the recovery process, they take on the responsibility of managing families and providing for them. This is one reason women are at the forefront of championing peace in the communities we work with. They understand their pain and want to put an end to the conflict.

Women are trying their best to ensure they live in a peaceful environment, but it's still a challenge. They battle many things, including gender-based violence, child marriage, and harmful cultural practices, in addition to inter-communal conflicts and cattle raids. These challenges inspire them to champion peace. It's true that conflict affects people differently, and bringing women to the table of peace discussions sends a signal that their voices matter.

In 2020, the Peace Opportunities Fund worked with the Dinka Agar community to address internal conflict between different clans, and established ‘Akut de Door’ peace committees where they could air the grievances and find ways forward towards working together again.

One key achievement was having women represented in the Akut de Door peace committee structures in Lakes State because these structures was specifically established, for the the cattle camp youth leaders and we engaged the cattle camp youth leaders to sensitise them on the importance of having women in these structures which they agreed. 

So they have now accepted to have at least a woman representative in all the peace committees for the cattle camp youth leadership and so we have been able to see that now women are having conversations about their needs.

Also the role of the women traditionally has been to create songs that incites the youth to go and fight, and they would also brew alcohol and offer them the alcohol so that when they are going to fight they are drunk, so they can make decisions to go and fight the other communities.

But after sitting down with the communities, the youth were able to tell them, ‘But look, you are the ones who composed these songs to incite us to go and fight.’ So the women started looking at the role they are playing in conflict. 

So in Lakes State the women said, ‘Okay, so what should we do to stop this?’ So first of all, they agreed that they will not be brewing alcohol anymore for the youth, and whoever brews alcohol to sell to the youth will be reported to the authorities and arrested. Then also they decided to, instead of composing harmful songs or inciteful songs they composed, they started composing peaceful songs that they can sing to cheer their youth, and to also share information on peace with each others community. 

Christine told me that the Akut de Door have been a ‘game changer’ in Lakes State and that there have been no significant conflicts within the Dinka Agar community since.

Christine: And so, because youths became peaceful with each other, they had to ask us like, ‘Okay, so now we have peace, but what are we going to eat? Because when we used to go and raid we will find cattle, we get resources for ourselves.’’ 

Peace Canal has now worked with the local government to establish five ‘peace farms’ with the Dinka Agar community to provide livelihoods for the community.

Jonty: I'd love to hear more about the unique challenges women face and their potential as a force for peace in their communities.

Christine: Women are now getting to know their worth and understanding their capabilities. They are searching for opportunities to lead and be heard. For example, in our Annual Cattle Camp Migration Conference, women were not initially well represented, but now they are fully a stakeholder group. We find that women now are bold enough to bring issues like child marriage into the discussions. And they have been clearly pointing out how they are struggling with the fact that their children are abducted, saying ‘Whenever you fight, we are the ones who suffer. We are the ones who who are battling the pain of of losing a loved one. We are the ones losing resources and we are the ones coming to struggle with the families after the conflict. So we as we are the center of this struggle, …and no one wants to stop the conflict.’ So I think they've have the confidence to tell their communities that this is our problem.

‘Whenever you fight, we are the ones who suffer. We are the ones who who are battling the pain of of losing a loved one. We are the ones losing resources and we are the ones coming to struggle with the families after the conflict.’

We are moving towards a society where women's voices are respected in decision-making processes. They are starting to believe that involving women in these discussions can lead to better solutions.

The Intercommunal Governance Structures (ICGS) are a series of dialogues also established by the Peace Opportunities Fund in partnership with the Lou, Nuer, Dinka Agar and Murle communities in 2020, and subsequently supported by Peace Canal.

Christine: The most important this is that these women [from the conflicting communities], have been able to establish a relationship among themselves [through the ICGS]. They have been able to build trust so that when there is a mobilization, for example, in the community of GPAA, the women in GPAA will call their counterparts in the Dinka communities in Jonglei and also the Nuer communities and tell them, 'Our youth are mobilizing, so be ready to move far so that they don't find you here’.  There was an incident that happened early this year - there were rumours of an attack in Duk. So there was communication from GPAA to Jonglei and, the communities mobilised themselves to make sure that the women, the children were moved very far away from the cattle camps. And when the attack happened, there was not much casualty. No women abduction, no children abduction. 

They have been asking us, requesting that we provide them with sattelite phones because there are some places that have limited connectivity, so that they can be frequently communicating with each other well. I have found support through different partners, so we are procuring at least one per county.

Jonty: Where do you hope to see the role of women in peacebuilding in the next ten years? 

Christine: I have a strong feeling that if it's left for women, we will not need the ten years to ensure that we have peace in these communities. 

I think the women were looking at the losses they are getting as a community because of the fights. They will think about their children, they'll think about their husbands, they'll think about their relatives, they'll think about accessibility to services and opportunities, which I think the youth do not look at.

I think [they] have the passion, they have the energy, and they have that vision of living in a peaceful community because with peace, they know they can achieve a lot in a peaceful society. 

We are also hoping to to establish, a women's circle for for the Murle, Dinka and the Nuer women because they want to work together they want to build trust among themselves because they feel that if they build this trust among themselves, their youth will not attack the other communities. The youth will not fight each other because they know their mothers, their sisters are working together to survive, you know?