Timea Szarkova, our Programme Manager for Central African Republic, speaks passionately about empowering local communities to build sustainable peace.

Transcript:

Why do you work for Concordis?

The reason why I started working for Concordis is because I worked for many years in humanitarian aid and having seen people suffering and being able to help, saving lives, on a daily basis, I wanted to help in changing the reason why people actually suffer, hence I entered peacebuilding work and it has been a very rewarding field to turn to.

Why is Concordis’ work important?

The work that Concordis does is very important, not only because it serves to stabilize local relations and conflict and re-establish trust, it is also important because the way we do it is not by imposing external solutions, or a standardised solution from another context. Hence, everything is locally made, locally understood and locally agreed upon.

What have been the key achievements so far?

The regions in Central African Republic, where we work, have witnessed a lot of violence, especially linked to herder-farmer conflict. The primary area of our intervention had seen a lot more peaceful season, and although it is not solely attributed to Concordis’ intervention, we have understood that the work that we do has actually really helped in re-establishing the trust between the communities and resolving the conflict that arises in a much more peaceful way.

How does Concordis’ work benefit communities?

We often think of conflict as two groups of people picking up arms and having a go at each other or not getting along, and, basically using arms to get their way. Having spoken to them in the herder’s camps, in the villages, in very rural and so-called ‘abandoned areas’, it made me understand that they are very much aware of each other’s needs and each other’s existence. It is only the lack of trust and the lack of mechanisms that used to exist that start to deteriorate which eventually causes them not being able to resolve problems any other way. Hence, it is very interesting and important to recognise these realities

What are the challenges for the future?

In the challenges, I would say one is probably climate change and the reason for that is, working with local communities on rebuilding trust and local solutions to the conflict at the moment, they can still be exacerbated by climate change and a larger movement of cattle or people will be the result of climate change and these issues need to be anticipated. Hence, in Concordis, we try to look at the nexus between climate change and conflict and try to understand to what degree these events can be prepared for and dealt with in a much more proactive way.

The second challenge,  I would like to say, is linked to lack of state presence in the sense that locally stabilising communities still works and is still a very sustainable solution, however, with the state not having sufficient presence or strength to continue providing for its population, or to deploy and manage its own territory, will make it a lot harder to solidify the results and gains that Concordis is achieving in these communities.