Peace Connect, an encounter, challenging and celebration of peacebuilding gathering 545 people from 85 countries, has fortified the long-present narrative that peace wears not only many hats, but also a lot of layered clothing, visible and invisible garments. Held in Nairobi, Kenya, in mid-October, it was an arena for questioning how we support peace, how we maintain it, and how to keep our actions genuine, not just aligned with what is “fashionable” according to any top-down demands.
With a program so rich, assembled by the organizers from Peace Connect and the community which was consulted, a process in which we also participated, the gathering required us to tailor our attendance according to needs, priorities and affinities. It is safe to say that each of us attending had a unique programmatic experience. Attending as a member of a local feminist and peace fund, as well as of Bridging Dialogues, a network of local peacebuilders, my experience and personal experiment during this event was trying to transition from focus on crises to focus on exploring what is it out there that we are and we can do well. We all already know what the problems are – from geopolitical situation, genocides and wars, to difficulties maintaining positive peace in territories without an official conflict, to deep funding multi-crisis frequently slowing us down in our on-ground activities. We know about waking up anxious wondering how long our organizations will survive. How long our friends and colleagues in occupied and attacked areas will be able to stand on their feet. We know the potential damages if our long-term efforts around conflict transformations are disrupted. We know the price is much higher than just being without resources.
The value of this encounter was precisely in going beyond the superficial panic over funding crises, and digging into the core issues we are dealing with in our contexts. These types of conversations haven’t freed us from panic – if anything, they have deepened it as we were exchanging horrifying examples from our daily lives, and those less extreme stories that still harm well-being of our societies, slowly, systematically. But they have also given us layers of other fabrics: hope, trust, imagination, unexpected alliances, alternative pathways for days when institutions and mainstream philanthropy do not have our backs. When we feel abandoned or when it is impossible to have steady external support. When we meet face to face with people from another country which suffers, among other things, because of the actions of your own country, like Palestine suffers because of Serbia’s export of weapons to Israel. To all those complex realities, it was shown how important is to stay true.
Many conversations focused on the hope in local and community resourcing, with plethora of successful examples how community leaders mobilize at the narrowest, direct level. Beyond resourcing, this idea was warmly received as additionally valued due to its relationship-building character, relational changes that are at the essence of bigger social changes, and long-term impact. The creativity in the stories shared that gets enforced through such activities is no less than impressive. But this idea was also challenged – those who threaten peace are more than well-funded, sometimes backed by some of the richest people on planet – do peacebuilding communities then have the luxury of being fully self-reliable? The answer is a sharp no, which is why there is still need for deep, trustful alliances between activists and funders, which the present funders also endorsed without a second thought. How it will be conducted in the future, it remains to be co-thinked and seen, but the general awareness of the importance of such partnerships is strong.
Pardon my optimism, I did come back with a hard sense of mutual devotion to several other essentials: internationalism; care; human-to-human connections. The latter is the seed that enables the rest. The contacts exchanged were not for boring old networking purposes only. They are for keeping each other informed, for tuning ourselves in to the voices from the ground narrating their ongoing historical moments. While the attendees were mostly local peace actors, the encounter made an enticing space for expanding our scope of care, by engaging with each other and pledging to follow each other’s struggles, hence boosting our international solidarity. Maybe our abilities to support one another are limited, but they hold at least one strong component – the connection with the goal of supporting each other internationally in combating disinformation while challenging and changing narratives on local and global affairs – and that type of currency, the narratives, the information, is nowadays more valuable than gold.
Throughout various corners of the encounter, people addressed and underlined the pressing need for tighter unification of peacework with other issues – climate, gender and racial justice, to name a few. (Here, it is fair to notice that the encounter maybe lacked a bit more structured and intentional LGBTQ+ space, with LGBTQ+ people frequently being on the frontlines while also being unaccepted by own environments and even experiencing extra oppression when joining their voices to struggles greater than our single identities.) Many conversations confirmed such intertwined practices but we yet have to overcome frequent donor-conditioned limitations reducing our struggles to isolated buzzwords. In this burning world, we, the attendees, rooted these thoughts not in questions but in requests. Not in saviorism but in deep devotion to dignity for all. Not in “professional begging of donors”, as Degan Ali once said, but in demand for fair resource distribution.
In between our connections through difficult stories, destinies and political contexts, the gathering also held a big umbrella of care, providing attendees with space for getting familiar with the local culture through arts, crafts and music, as well as through joint excursions on a resting day in the middle of the event. Well, I skipped this due to a mild cold, but the mindfulness of the need to rest in between packed sessions is a really nice practice, and it was my first time to see it operationalized. Organize a gathering with over 500 people, and you will certainly notice the consequences of not having on-site psychological support. Peace Connect was luckily generous enough to cover it, and a team from Thrive Worldwide, wonderful, gentle experts in therapy also sensitized to activism and how socio-political atmosphere shapes our mental conditions, took care of many of us who had the need to unpack some baggage. This type of care for attendees of larger gatherings of activists should most definitely be a standard item.
And then there are things that cannot be predicted in any scenario. Such was the death of a prominent Kenyan politician, which happened on the third day of our encounter. The organizers took a great care of our safety, accompanying us with precise directions and gentle approach, showing how care finds its spot even in the most critical situations, and how it alleviates that panic which paralyses us so frequently.
And there are so many reasons to panic. The world, after all, is on fire. We live within the question “when does it end”, thinking of all the genocides and wars, as well as volatile and corrupted regimes, and cosmetic democracies criminalizing solidarity. And there are so many things that we cannot do as we look up to big institutions that have repeatedly failed to end numerous conflicts. But one thing that we must not do is to lower our voices and come to terms with the violence a large part of the world is exposed to. And we cannot let our voices flow alone. If anything, that was our pledge – that we will have the eyes open for each others, so we could give our hand to the voices and help them reach those spots where they travel less.
The collective deep breath that we had the privilege to breathe during these days has been reassuring that even in the darkest of times, we are far from powerless. During the event, this cognition has given birth to new alliances and friendships, it brought some people to tears, happy and hopeful tears, and it has given many of us a lot of strength for further actions. So let’s start with continuation of our struggles!
A big thanks to Peace Direct for enabling me to attend this event.
Galina Maksimović
