People across South Sudan are being made refugees due to ongoing conflict. Even though the country’s government and opposition forces signed a peace agreement in 2018, conflict has reignited, with 2.3 million people from South Sudan currently living as refugees. One million of these refugees live in Uganda.
One organization working to support peace in South Sudan and Uganda is the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding (RPCP). RPCP works to provide relevant, timely training and events, and foster connections between various peacebuilding organizations in order to build a translatable model for communities worldwide.
As part of its Restorative Justice (RJ) Africa initiative, RPCP has started the Refugee Resilience Project, focusing on transformative justice work in four major refugee settlements in northern Uganda’s West Nile region as well as Kajo-Keji, South Sudan.
RJ Africa’s director Muresuk Joseph, himself a South Sudanese refugee living in Uganda, spoke to Peace News Network (PNN) about how the Refugee Resilience Project is working to build peace in South Sudan and Uganda.
Tell us a bit about the Refugee Resilience Project and how it works.
We believe that when people of different backgrounds effectively collaborate to address social issues for mutual benefit, real peace results and that in turn leads to prosperity and a better future for all. The Refugee Resilience Project focuses on fostering peaceful coexistence and non-violence among refugees and returnees by equipping communities with skills and creating safe spaces to constructively address harmful conflicts and promote dialogue among different groups (ethnicities/tribes). Primarily, we do this through the training of Trainers (ToT) model, where we train community members who are then able to train others who can train more others to facilitate the processes that build sustainable peace within their communities.
What are restorative justice and transformative justice? How do these concepts tie in with the refugee resilience project, and how do they relate to peace in the context of the project?
Restorative justice (RJ) is an approach which fosters healing, repair and prevention of harm caused by wrongdoing. It focuses on addressing the needs of people negatively impacted by harmful behavior, and assists those who impacted others to take responsibility for their actions, potentially taking meaningful steps to repair harm and prevent such incidents from happening again. A good example comes from Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, where a community peacebuilder trained by Restorative Justice Africa (RJA) and the RPCP through their Training of Trainers (ToT) program helped address a case in which a woman’s house and household belongings were destroyed by fire during repair work carried out by two young men. Through a restorative justice circle, the two young men acknowledged the harm caused and committed to cultivating at least half a hectare of land to help meet the woman’s food needs.
RJ focuses on building and restoration of relationships, non-violence, and community led solutions. This fits into the project’s goal by helping individuals and communities work together, despite differences to create peaceful coexistence through prevention and repair of harm through restorative processes.
Tell us about the four pillars of the project, and how they each relate to peace.
The four pillars of the project are:
- Social Cohesion and Conflict Resolution: This promotes peaceful coexistence among refugees and returnees by addressing conflicts nonviolently, building trust, and strengthening relationships across cultural and ethnic differences.
- Community Capacity and Sustainability: RJA and RPCP, Equip refugees and returnees with skills, knowledge, and leadership capacity to resolve conflicts independently and sustain peace within their communities.
- Engagement and Outreach for Positive Peace: Encourages active participation of refugees and host communities in inclusive activities that build unity, address divisions, and promote lasting peace.
- Strengthening Peacebuilding Across Schools, Institutions, and Organizations: Integrates peacebuilding practices into schools, institutions, and organizations to foster nonviolence, mutual understanding, and peaceful relationships among refugees, returnees, and host communities.
Muresuk, you yourself are a South Sudanese refugee. How did you come into contact with RJ Africa and the Refugee Resilience Project? Has working with the project had an impact on you personally?
In 2023, I attended an RJ training by RPCP in the Uganda refugees settlement conducted by Jeffrey [RPCP’s founder and executive director] and organized by Mansuk, also a refugee and an IREX fellow. Later I became a co-founder of RJ Africa with Jeffrey and Mansuk to continue the work with the refugees resilient project.
Seeing different ethnicities that previously hated one another collaborating together with the goal to create safer and better communities for all strengthened my hope, in a practical sense that peaceful coexistence is possible despite differences, whatever they may be, religious, ethnic, tribal, gender, or otherwise.
Part of the Refugee Resilience Project’s work is the training of trainers (ToT) model. What areas is this training in, and how does it relate to peacebuilding?
The ToT program deals with restorative justice where we equip participants to be able to apply RJ at different levels, to facilitate RJ circles and also to train others to be able to train many more practitioners, hence spreading the tools to hundreds of thousands of people across Africa.
The concepts of RJ have diverse applications from restorative mediations to conflict resolution circles in both formal and informal ways. All this enhances positive human relationships, healing from past harm, and preventing harmful behaviour.
South Sudan is on the brink of civil war reigniting, so its peace is very fragile. Can you tell us how working in this context impacts the work you do?
Yes, it is unfortunate that the situation on the ground seems to offer little hope. There is no trust between different ethnicities. Obviously, this is challenging to our work, particularly in facilitating RJ circles which must be voluntary and in safer environments.
Yet this is where the opportunity lies, because relative peace offers a chance to share the approaches of restorative practices and justice as better alternatives to handling disputes, promoting peaceful coexistence, and building safer and better communities and countries.
What are some of the challenges the refugee resilience project faces? Have there been any difficult lessons to learn or things you’ve had to change? Are there any limitations to the work you’re able to accomplish?
Due to reduction in funding to support refugee activities, many families can’t afford basic needs of food, education, and health care. This indirectly affects the project because many of the participants in training and conflict resolution sessions are psychologically unable to engage constructively due to these pressing needs, which are now unattended. Also some trainees are unable to continue virtual training due to poor internet connectivity and sometimes funds to access internet and smart phones. Through the partnership and support of RPCP, we had to include a budget to help our ToTs access the internet, for example.
Is there anything else you would like to add about RJ Africa or the Refugee Resilience Project?
Restorative Justice Africa will expand these successful tested approaches of restorative justice and other peacebuilding tools in coming years across the whole continent, to reach hundreds of thousands of peacebuilders across Africa. This will empower communities across the continent to constructively address conflicts, and build inclusive society characterized with shared prosperity and peaceful coexistence.
Keywords: South Sudan, Uganda, restorative justice, transformative justice, justice, peace, peacebuilding, refugees, resilience
Muresuk is a South Sudanese refugee living in Uganda, he is a trained restorative justice facilitator and the director of RJ Africa. His hope for the future is to see a peaceful and prosperous Africa where everyone feels included. He believes that instead of being the largest producer of refugees in the world, Africa will one day produce peace to the world.
Tara Abhasakun is Peace News Network (PNN)'s managing editor. She is journalist based in Christchurch, New Zealand, and formerly in Bangkok, Thailand. She has reported on a range of human rights issues involving youth protests in Thailand, as well as arts and culture. Tara's work has appeared in several outlets, including Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post.
