[Individual articles from the Fall 2019 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]
In its largest humanitarian response since World War II, MCC has programmed more than US$63.4 million to respond to conflict and displacement in Syria since 2012 and Iraq since 2014. MCC’s response programming spans four countries—both Syria and Iraq, along with neighboring Lebanon and Jordan, who host large refugee populations relative to their national size. In these countries, MCC works in close partnership with church relief organizations, Islamic charitable societies, national non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations.
Staff of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) unloaded a humanitarian aid shipment that was sent in October 2018 from the West Europe Mennonite Regional Conference and MCC to MECC’s warehouse in Dara’a, Syria. The materials will be distributed in Dara’a due to the 270,000 people that were displaced in the region in June 2018 (the largest single displacement in the area since the Syrian conflict began). Names not provided for security reasons. (Photo courtesy of Middle East Council of Churches)
Through these partnerships, MCC responds to urgent and ongoing humanitarian needs of refugees and internally displaced people, including food and cash assistance, shelter rehabilitation, rent support and provision of essential household and hygiene items. While most items are purchased locally, MCC also ships in-kind hygiene items, blankets and other humanitarian assistance from Canada, the U.S. and Europe to be distributed as part of its response. Over the past seven years, MCC has shipped humanitarian aid valued at over US$11 million.
Children, ages 3-5, enjoy the magician’s rabbit trick during a magic show at their school. This is one of the schools in southern Lebanon that MCC funds through partner Popular Aid for Relief and Development (PARD). MCC staff collaborated with school staff to invite the magician to perform at all the MCC-supported schools as an extension to MCC’s kindergarten education project which includes psychosocial training. PARD has worked many years in Palestinian areas in southern Lebanon and began including psychosocial activities to give Syrian and Palestinian refugees tools to address trauma and an opportunity to express themselves and grow in confidence. Names are withheld for security reasons. (Photo courtesy of PARD)
MCC and its
partners also address the needs of people impacted by conflict beyond the
provision of food and other humanitarian support. As displacement interrupts or
limits access to education for children and youth, MCC provides support for
formal and remedial education programs. MCC also promotes positive
relationships between host and displaced communities and between different
ethnic and religious groups in order to prevent intercommunal tension and to
promote peace. In recognition of the immense trauma experienced by
conflict-affected families, MCC programs provide trauma healing support and
psychological care, along with building the skills of partners to respond to
psychological needs. As the nature of the conflict in Syria and Iraq and the
circumstances of affected people change, MCC adjusts its programming to better
address the evolving needs and situations on the ground. Now as some displaced
families begin returning to their homes, MCC explores ways to provide
empowering and sustainable humanitarian assistance.
As evident from several of the articles within this issue of Intersections, large-scale and long-term humanitarian response to conflict in Syria and Iraq has challenged MCC and its partners to develop skills for effectively responding to the differing needs of women, children and men within difficult circumstances. Although the needs continue to be immense and resources are limited, MCC’s response in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon has reached hundreds of thousands of people impacted by conflict, political instability and displacement—all in the name of Christ.
Amy Martens is an MCC humanitarian assistance coordinator, based in Winnipeg.
[Individual articles from the Fall 2019 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]
MCC Nigeria
and its partners, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Teams (EPRT) and the Ekklesiya
Yan’uwa A Nijeriya (EYN, or the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria), have found
that integrating conflict sensitivity into humanitarian assistance initiatives
is critical for the success of these projects and for promoting social cohesion
within societies torn apart by violent conflict. Conducting a careful conflict
analysis during the project design phase and then building on local capacities
for peace during project implementation help the project avoid exacerbating tensions
within the pluralistic Nigerian context in which intercommunal relationships
have deteriorated and in which suspicion between groups allows mutual mistrust
and even hatred and enmity to flourish, leading to violence.
In the last
two decades, violent conflicts in and around Jos, Nigeria (where MCC Nigeria’s
office is located), have increased, resulting in devastating losses of life and
destruction of property. These conflicts primarily stem from battles for
control of and access to resources, even as different identities (such as
religious and ethnic identities) are mobilized to enflame these conflicts.
Nearly two decades ago, MCC worked with Nigerian leaders in the Jos area to
establish an organization, EPRT, committed to nonviolent conflict prevention. A
network of Nigerian Muslim and Christian leaders in and around Jos, EPRT
undertakes proactive action to mitigate conflicts amongst peoples of differing
faiths and ethnic groups. EPRT also carries out humanitarian assistance in
Jos’s religiously and ethnically mixed context. In carrying out these emergency
humanitarian initiatives, EPRT has achieved success by incorporating numerous conflict
sensitivity practices into its humanitarian initiatives, such as: interfaith
and inter-agency collaboration, which creates a conducive environment for
program delivery and which minimizes suspicion across religious lines;
inclusion of women as part of emergency response teams, thus helping to ensure
that women in affected communities speak into project design and that the needs
of women and children are thus considered at all stages of the project cycle; and
using community-based volunteers who represent different faiths. These
strategies have decisively contributed to the success of EPRT’s work.
In developing
interventions in complex crisis situations, humanitarian actors must consider dividers
(actions we want to stop or attitudes we want to change) and connectors
(actions and attitudes we want to encourage). Humanitarian interventions in a
conflictual context become part of that context, making it essential for
humanitarian organizations to commit to a Do No Harm approach in their
distribution of relief aid. In planning its humanitarian interventions, EPRT
first analyzes dividers that drive intercommunal conflict and potential
connectors that can help mitigate such conflict and then integrates that
analysis in the design of its humanitarian responses so that they do not heighten
interreligious or intergroup tension but rather create room for peaceful
coexistence.
Humanitarian actors may have worthy goals and seek to meet basic human needs, but if they do not incorporate conflict sensitivity into project planning and implementation, serious harms can materialize for project participants.
EPRT
collaborates with 11 Nigerian organizations, with a balance of Christian and
Muslim organizations and of organizations led by women and men. This diverse
network of program partnerships strengthens EPRT’s efforts to reduce violent
emergencies in Nigeria’s Plateau State where Jos is located. EPRT’s activities
include the establishment of peace clubs in schools, leading Alternatives to Violence
Project (AVP) workshops, conducting needs assessments and environmental impact
assessments, distributing humanitarian relief and maintaining an early warning system
that mobilizes Nigerian religious leaders and peacebuilders to proactively
respond early on in preventing intercommunal tensions from turning violent.
A recent
relief distribution carried out by EPRT with MCC support in four informal camps
for displaced Nigerians as well as in the surrounding host communities of
Rawuru, Kworos, Barkin-Ladi and Kassa used participatory approaches during the
design process, so that beneficiaries were involved in all aspects of the
response. Beneficiaries actively joined in identifying family and community
strengths and capacities, prioritizing household and community needs, securing
logistical and planning support, implementing project activities (with
implementation carried out by gender-balanced, interfaith teams) and monitoring
the distribution of relief items. EPRT invests time and efforts to secure the support
of various religious and community leaders, given the fact that these critical
stakeholders have tremendous social power and capital that can be used to help
or hinder humanitarian responses. By involving beneficiaries and local leaders
in project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, EPRT enhances
local ownership and acceptance of the project. This local ownership also means
that EPRT receives timely and candid feedback from beneficiaries and local
leaders about the strengths and weaknesses of its humanitarian responses. EPRT’s
humanitarian interventions not only meet the needs of displaced persons and
vulnerable members of host communities, but also seek to strengthen interreligious
tolerance and build common ground by creating shared safe spaces for
relationship-building across ethno-religious lines. Although the violent crises
that had erupted in the Jos area were perceived by Nigerian Christians as being
driven by Muslims, EPRT based its relief distributions on need, not on
religion, creed or social status, recognizing that impartial aid distributions
have the potential to build social cohesion in a context in which some actors
seek to create and widen divisions along religious lines.
An experience of an attempted relief distribution in Gurku camp by a Muslim organization offers a second example of the importance of a conflict sensitivity approach in planning the distribution of relief items in an interfaith context. This Muslim group had planned to distribute relief assistance only to Muslims during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan within a formal camp setting that included Muslims and Christians. Given that the households in the camp were from different faith groups, the Muslim camp officials refused the relief items, insisting that until all IDPs in the camp benefited regardless of religious affiliation, the distribution could not take place. Camp leaders had participated in workshops organized by EYN on the Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC) approach from Rwanda, which had emphasized the importance of considering conflict drivers and connectors when developing humanitarian responses and thus prepared community leaders to ask critical questions about humanitarian initiatives like this one proposed by a Muslim organization that would have had negative consequences in fracturing social cohesion.
Humanitarian
actors may have worthy goals and seek to meet basic human needs, but if they do
not incorporate conflict sensitivity into project planning and implementation,
serious harms can materialize for project participants. Care must be taken to
ensure that cultural norms and religious doctrines do not disrupt the
distribution of humanitarian assistance and that the project does not create
more conflict by ignoring cultural norms.
Issa Chung, a local Emergency Preparedness and Response Team (EPRT) member in the Bukuru community of Jos, Nigeria, presents at a meeting in March 2018. Local EPRT teams, a collaboration between MCC and JDPC (Justice Development and Peace CARITAS) seek to build and promote sustainable peace, resulting in the reduction of election violence, community conflict and emergencies/crises in Plateau State creating a culture of harmony and acceptance among secondary school age children throughout Plateau State. (MCC Photo/ Allan Reesor-McDowell)
For decades, MCC in Nigeria has worked alongside partners like EPRT and EYN to meet basic human needs, address injustices and rebuild communities that were previously segregated along religious lines. Through these efforts, MCC and its partners have discovered that integrating conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding into the heart of every project, promoting social cohesion across differences and building interreligious capacities for peace are essential for the success of humanitarian interventions.
Hyeladzira Balami is administrative and finance assistant for MCC Nigeria.
Intersections 