Supporting Peace Engagement
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Kofi Setordji: Genocide Monument. From an exposition in remembrance of the genocide in Rwanda.
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“Development is a process of liberation from hunger, poverty, disease, and from unjust power structures and unfair conditions, which violate people's dignity and rights and prevent them from control over vital resources” (EED Mission Statement). Therefore EED and its partners combine the struggle to overcome poverty with strategies of constructive conflict management and civil peace engagement.
EED contributes to its partner's efforts by
- supporting people who are engaged in local peace processes and who are strive to prevent the escalation of conflict into violence;
- arranging meetings of mediators and partners for exchange of experiences and collaborative learning
- making constructive management of conflicts and civilian peace work a key issue of its educational activities in Germany and lobby work in Germany and the European Union.
Desk for Peace and Conflict Management Issues
How can the churches and non governmental organisations (NGOs) work on development and at the same time contribute to solving conflicts peacefully? This question is relevant because the churches' development service often supports partner organizations in situations that are characterized by violent and destructive conflict.
Supporting partners in their peace efforts was the motivation for the establishment of the “Desk for Peace and Conflict Management Issues” in 1998. Increasingly, people are claiming their right to contribute to political decisions and to live a life in dignity. This unfortunately often leads to conflicts. EED's partners often in cooperation with other civil society organizations search ways to solve conflicts within the society and between states in constructive ways
In its development education and lobby work in Germany and the European Union EED emphasizes that just and lasting peace can not be established by outside actors through international diplomacy or military intervention. Peace must grow from inside the society. People build their own peace. EED wishes to support and assist people in finding their own solutions to the causes of violent conflict.
In that effort, EED works together with partner in the Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe and with international networks and specialized organisations like Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) in developing and improving approaches, methods and instruments of "conflict sensitive" development work. The Do No Harm approach is an example.
FriEnt, the Working Group on Development and Peace
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EED is networking with other organisations which are supporting peace. In 2001 EED together with six governmental and non-governmental organisations in Germany founded the network FriEnt.
FriEnt's aims are:
- to promote the issue of civil conflict resolution and crisis management in the policies of its member organizations;
- on behalf of its member organizations to organize processes of collaborative learning on concepts and principles for supporting peace in the context of developing work;
- to manage processes of exchange of experiences between the members of FriEnt and other organizations.
The aim is to qualify the work of the member organisations in the field of conflict prevention and peace building.
FriEnt works e.g. on the following topics: