Reconciliation has been crucial to foster peace in post-war Sierra Leone. One organization has been instrumental in this – Fambul Tok International. The local NGOs, in spite of its name, used ground breaking alternative dispute resolution mechanism to bring victims and perpetrators together.
John Caulker, Director of Fambul Tok, spoke to Politico in this interview with Kemo Cham and Mustapha Kamara, who first asked him why did Fambul Tok intervene?
We realized that a lot of efforts were made to reconcile Sierra Leoneans but the approach was more of a western approach; the Truth and Reconciliation. And if you talk to some people they will say even the Special Court was part of the transitional justice system.
They failed to include or involve the ordinary Sierra Leoneans who suffered the brunt of the conflict. So Fambul Tok came up as a result of the gap left by the TRC and all other efforts that were made. We came up and started working in communities with people that were seriously affected.
As you know at the end of the war, Former President [Ahmad Tejan Kabba] declared that the war had ended and asked that everyone should go home, leaving the victim and perpetrators to live in the same village. So we decided that we needed to engage communities with our reconciliation program. Victims and offenders were residing in the same community. That was a time bomb!
Like in Darbu, Michael killed the only daughter of Mariam and he was leaving just next door and the woman knows that Michael was responsible for the death of her daughter but they never had a conversation for long years except when we went to the village and organized a bonfire, where Michael came out and apologized.
These were the type of stories that were all over the country so we decided to work with the people to create the space for dialogue with victims, offenders and witnesses so that as a nation we would emerge as one family.
The strategy we used was African Solution to African Problem, which means to involve Sierra Leoneans to solve Sierra Leone’s problem.
The TRC was good and the report was one of the best report that Sierra Leone has had but the process…how many Sierra Leoneans were able to look at that report and say “it is my report.” But if many ordinary Sierra Leoneans were involved in designing and in the implementation process, it may have been successful.
Dialogue
I can tell you we have thousands of such cases. In that same bonfire were Mariama and Michael reconciled, the chief who happens to be the chairman of the district was also called out by an ordinary woman in the village, whose husband was a hunter, alleging that the chief and others stole her meat during the war.
In Kono, a paramount chief gave out a land owned by a particular family to build a mosque without consulting the land owners. He never knew that the land owners were aggrieved. When they had the space during the bonfire organized by Fambul Tok, they came up and expressed their grief. They demanded that the chief should give them another piece of land and they were given another land.
We at Fambul Tok are not doing everything; we create a space for dialogue giving Sierra Leoneans the chance to find solutions to address the problems affecting Sierra Leone.
Reckless statement
My involvement in the reconciliation process came years after the war ended. I was actively involved in the conflict and finding ways to reconcile the people. I normally described the TRC as my baby because l was the first to call for a TRC and l almost lost my life.
This was in 1998. When the Tejan Kabbah-led government was reinstated, there was mob justice; so many people were indicted, and the prisons were overcrowded. The whole country was in conflict and as someone who had lived in Sierra Leone throughout the conflict, I realized that most of the people that participated in the junta, joined beyond their wish. Some were forced and for some it was a way to survive but they all had blood on their hands.
The democratic government then had blood in the hands because the instructed jets to bomb indiscriminately; the rebels, RUF, AFRC, we all know how reckless they were, so that was why l suggested that we should have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And then head of the UN human rights unit said it was a reckless statement and that I could easily have lost my life. He said that because he believed many people would misunderstand my statement. So he advised me to go underground for couple of weeks, which I did before l surfaced later to continue the reconciliation process.
Shortly after making that statement, l lost a staff, who was shot in front of my former office, the Forum of Conscience, which was situated close to Connaught Hospital in Freetown. Because of that l closed the office. I don’t think it was because of what l had said it might be the reason, but l don’t know.
The only time l got so close to be killed was the time I gave an interview to VOA on gross human rights violations that were been committed by ARFC. The following Monday, they sent a Land Rover full of military guys that came to arrest me at my office. One of the officers that came said they were looking for John Caulker and I just said he is my boss but he is not around. And as soon as they left, we closed down the office until the government was reinstated.
Lessons learnt for post-Ebola recovery
Sierra Leone has experienced two wars in this short period - the civil war and the Ebola war. So what we’ve learnt from the civil war will inform us on how to handle the Ebola war. During the civil war people were not consulted, the process was not properly done. It was like they were compensating the perpetrators during the Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration process; they (combatant) were given money and were also trained, forgetting the victims. They were pushed, some were even driven out of camps, including the amputees and war wounded. At Murray Town they were forced out of their camp because the government then wanted to give a picture that Sierra Leone was okay at the time.
That was not a good way to bring the war to an end because lots of conflicts within communities were not addressed between the perpetrators and the victims.
With the post Ebola recovery, I think everything should be community driven. Government should avoid the top bottom approach, a similar strategy which was used in the TRC process.
Government should find a way to addressing problems that has to do with day to day lives of citizens. They should consult them on how to heal their wounds.
If you work around Freetown and in other big towns you will see everything seems okay but when you go to the interior you will think that they were only emerging from that bad chapter. There were lots of things happening in communities and in families; how can we create a space for dialogue within our communities, offices and the nation.
Even the manner in which the government gave awards to people who they say were heroes during the Ebola fight; that in itself created tension. Many people were asking because they wanted to know what was the yard stick used to give the beneficiaries those awards.
The reason for which government gave the award was good but they did not look beyond the awards. Many people fought the disease during the outbreak but only the team leaders were awarded.
For Fambul Tok we believe that the community should be at the center of every discussion for development programs.
The post-Ebola recovery
I am not familiar with the post-Ebola recovery programme because the document is not well popularized. How many people were involved in developing that document?
I believe in moving forward but let us look at the past before we move forward. What Fambul Tok is doing presently is working with communities to develop a document titled “the people’s plan. A document that will catalogue how first to say no to Ebola in their communities, both as an individual and a community, and how to heal their wounds within their communities and how to recover from the Ebola.
The process will help them to identify what they want in the next two years and for them to work within the next two years to achieving what they want. If government or other NGOs come on board, that will be great.
The plan would help them to strategize how to build a community clinic, for example, how to get a land, brick and engage stakeholders to bring development. Doing so even the government will see that the communities are actively taking part in their own development and that will save government resources and it will also help them to take ownership of their own development.
This is what we are doing. We need to find a nexus between both plans so we will be able to avoid some of the mistakes made in the post war development plans.
We are already in the discussion to see how this plans can be transformed into other districts. We are now working in the sixth and seventh chiefdom, covering every village within the chiefdom and that is the difference between the post war, in which most of the projects were centralized in the big towns. NGO’s who came at that time only stopped where motorable roads stopped.
But we said everyone is important and should be involved. Inclusive peace and development process is what we need in Sierra Leone.
Government should make sure all stakeholders should be involved in development process.
The government should look at reconciliation as an inclusive approach.
Even the awarding of contract is fueling conflicts. Positions allocated is fueling the conflict; inclusive structure of space is needed to answer to some questions that will create a space for citizens to participate in the strategies to move the country forward.
Next focus of Fambul Tok
We have not forgotten about post war reconciliation; it’s a process; it’s ongoing. Fambul Tok works with communities to develop strategies that will remain in the communities. In the past we have trained community reconciliation committees, which are in communities we are working.
There are several issues still in communities…. issues that emanated from the war. We are hoping to work with other organizations within the next moths to roll out this inclusive dialogue for sustainable peace and development across all six chiefdoms and districts in the country that we operate in.
We are in three chiefdoms in Kailahun, 2 chiefdoms in Moyamba, 2 chiefdoms in Koinadugu.
Residual issues of war
In meetings with community people they always make reference to the war. There are still residual issues. They are still referring to issues that were not addressed after the war. When we talk about community inclusive process, the people’s planning process, they will say we don’t want it to be like the war, wherein structures which we did not need were built for us, we were not consulted. We at Fambul Tok don’t control the Agenda; we create the space for dialogue.
Also there is a serious issues that is ongoing at the local governance level. Some chiefs who were appointed during the war because they were close to influential rebel leaders are still chiefs in some villages and because they are not performing well people are now questioning the process of their appointment. But they don’t know how to unseat the chiefs, to move forward with the chiefs and community as a whole and that is still a problem, and this has the potential to create chaos.
I am still seeing things that showed that Sierra Leoneans have not learnt from the brutal civil war that the country suffered. I am seeing everything that led to the war. We have not learnt at all.
I can see injustice; how many people can afford justice in Sierra Leone.
If you’re in the village you will have to travel couple of kilometers to access a police post and when they get there people still pay for papers at the police station. They still pay for certain things within the police stations.
The police stations in the big towns are relatively okay. The police still have their tricks. Even the military; to me we have not learnt from the past and the reason is as a nation we have not had the opportunity to recount the bad deeds. The TRC report is available, but how many people have access to that report.
The TRC should be like a Bible for Sierra Leone; all of the recommendations are yet to be implemented. The youth quota, the justice, political parties, have not been addressed, and millions of dollars was spent to write that document. So what have we learnt as a nation….what we should learn now is the importance of inclusivity.
As civil society we have a role not only to criticize but to engage stakeholders in constructive development process. The government should also see CSOs as partners, but unfortunately all of us, civil society, we either have been bought or about to being bought. What we have to do as CSOs is to work very hard to reclaim our lost dignity.
We all saw the roll of civil society in fixing democracy in Sierra Leone. But that is not the same civil society we now have in the country. It’s not the same.
We are not moving forward, things are just the same, two steps forward and three steps backward. If previous governments were building from what we achieved we should have moved forward.
The paramount chiefs, district officers are in limbo, there are genuine mistakes about their positions these are called conflict prone issues. When the councils were set there were no districts officers but now we have a district officer. It was a kind of reverse; the Acts was developed before the policy.
The role of the paramount chief was not clearly defined in the Local Government Act. The Paramount chiefs were left out or they feel left out.
This is what we are working on at the moment; because we believe that at the district level if we are to talk about reconciliation, sustainable development, inclusivity, let’s set up districts inclusive development committers which should comprise paramount chiefs, district officers, the councils and the community people and CSOs come together. We have started that in Koinadugu, Moyamba and it is working perfectly.
Moyamba has just had a meeting on their own about two weeks ago, and the lesson learnt is that NGOs should not work in communities and allow the people to depend on you. You should capacitate them to take ownership of the program.
We initiated the process in Moyamba in December; we had a second meeting on the 29 of January, after that they had their first meeting on their own, two weeks back. They have created a structure on their own and they are now tackling a major problem in their community.
And they are working collectively with their paramount chiefs, sections chiefs, DMO’s and community people; this is what we need in Sierra Leone.
We are working so hard to replicate such structures across the country.
I have worked on reconciliation for over twenty years and I am a member of the regional committee, helping to shape the discussion on reconciliation in Africa.
Fambul Tok has made me proud. It has given me the opportunity to be recognized in countries around the world because of the work l do. That has given me the opportunity to lecture at universities around the world. I’m looking forward to handing over to the team now and maybe return to my village and do some farming.
We are working in 30 sections and in over one thousand villages across the country.
It’s a way to allow civil society to learn when to back out having spent years working as a civil society activist.
As we are about to remember [the civil war], I have a very sad moment. I remember when a document complaining the government when the 24 soldiers were executed. I made a submission to the Africa Commission. For two years l argued and l won and the court ruled in favor of the Forum of Conscience [his former organization].
It was during President Kabbah’s government and Solomon Berewa was the Attorney General and Minster of Justice at the time.
The case is there, Forum of Conscience versus Sierra Leone. And the government was found guilty of violation.
But when l was asked, what do you want the government to do? I recommended that the families of those that were executed be compensated.
I didn’t know any of them. I did it out of my conviction.
For the records, they were wrongfully executed.
The commission also asked me to engage the government so that convicted soldiers at court martial should be given a right to appeal. The military now has a right to appeal.
But my sad moment is when l think how many people could have been saved if the due process had been followed.
But lm happy I’m able to make my contribution.
(C) Politico 23/03/16
