Forty community peace ambassadors in Yei River County, Central Equatoria State, completed a five-day training to strengthen grassroots peacebuilding, promote reconciliation and prevent community conflicts in Yei Town last Friday.
The training, organized by a national NGO, Centre for Democracy and Development (CEDED), brought together representatives from five Boma Peace Committees, Payam and County Peace Committees, and local government structures in Yei Town Payam.
Speaking during the closing ceremony, Dara Felix, the CEDED program manager, said the training was designed to strengthen the capacity of community peace structures to address conflicts and promote peaceful coexistence.
“This training is specifically for conflict analysis and resolution. It targeted the bomas of Yei Town Payam with the hope of extension to other payams. We did mapping and discovered that there were no boma peace committees, but that they only exist at the county and payam levels,” he said. “The existence of boma peace committees facilitates local reconciliation and healing processes in conflict resolution.”
He said it is important for the committee members to have skills in facilitating dialogue, mediation, and reconciliation in the bomas.
Meanwhile, Joseph Brown Lo Mose, the chairman of the Yei County Peace Committee, said the training equipped participants with practical skills to resolve community disputes through dialogue and locally driven solutions.
“We have been here for five days, completed the training, and I am hopeful that these members are capable of solving conflicts at the community and family levels,” he said. “They should put the knowledge they have acquired into practice, especially when it comes to handling divorce issues, community conflicts, land disputes and other issues courts do not solve.”
Emerida Sunday, a boma peace committee member, said the training had strengthened their ability to identify and address social problems at the community level before referring serious cases to the police.
“We have been taught about conflict resolution in our families and communities,” he said. “So, for married people, you do not have to go straight to the police because we, and local leaders, can mediate your disputes. We are working to promote peace in our families and communities.”
For his part, Yakani Goodwill, Yei Town Payam Inspector for Planning, welcomed the initiative, saying it will strengthen grassroots structures’ capacity to handle disputes and other community-related conflicts.
According to CEDED, similar trainings have been conducted in Juba and Terekeka counties as part of broader efforts to strengthen grassroots peacebuilding structures.
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