Somali peace line (SPL) and Life & Peace Institute (LPI) have jointly organized a training workshop on negotiation for almost twenty three people from elders, Imam, SWCC, SPL staff and LPI staff at Mukono, Uganda from 23-29 November 2012. The training was aimed to enhance the participants’ negotiation skills and facilitated by Camel Bell consultants. The participants were 13 elders (11 from Banadir, 1 from Middle shabelle and 1 from Bay region), 1 imam, 1 SWCC, 5 SPL staff and 3 LPI staff.
Objectives of the training
- To know how Somali’s negotiate compared with western type of negotiation.
- Supporting the Somali traditional, religious and women leaders to have chance to exchange ideas of culture of negotiation of Somalia with western type of negotiation.
- How Somali traditional and religious leaders accomplish in negotiation and peace building processes
- Find areas of diffusion of learning between two approaches and their applications
Expectations of the participants
- To learn the negotiation and it is practices
- Share experiences and views among the participants
- Understand how to make negotiations
- To learn difference between negotiation and mediation
- To comprehend the processes of negotiation in different contexts
- To absorb negotiation processes in order to take part in the conflict resolution in Somalia
- To learn more about peace building to enhance role of elders in conflict resolution
- To get new insights in negotiation which can be passed to next generation
- To have a comparison in Somali way of negotiations and western way – diplomatic methods and practices
- To learn skills and processes of negotiations used in different context
- To gain ways of women involvement in negotiation.
Proceedings & Actions
The SPL team departed from Aden Ade International Airport – Mogadishu at 1:30am and arrived at Joma Kenyatta international Airport around 3:15 pm as being transit until we were transferred to Kenya airways flight that is scheduled to departure at 10:30pm from Joma-Kenyatta international Airport to Entebbe international Airport an finally reached ourdestination of Ankara Foundation resort & Conference Complex at Mukuno Uganda at 2:30 AM.
Challenges faced
- The trip was very long and tiresome especially for the aged elders. Trip started from 8:00am from Aden Adde International Airport and reached 12:30am Ankarah foundation resort at Mukano, Uganda.
- The group restrained at Jomo-Kenyatta with no food or drink due to out of pocket money (no advance provided by the team) this resulted hectic time for the team particularly elders.
- The training participants had difficulties in using the hotel service such as toilet as there was no water to clean wastes, lack of mosque, etc
- There was no clarity at all in the program from planning up the implementation of the training
Lessons learnt
- Learnt that Somali elders had very good negotiation and mediation process.
- Learnt that Somali traditional way of negotiations is rich but requires further shaping in a written standard way to be followed.
- Learnt that the Somali problem can be solve by Somalis
- Perceptions of international community on Somalia problem and their variances of prospective on Somali politics
- Learnt that public are the power and who they support will acquire the authority
Recommendation
- Since such a negotiation /mediation training was very useful for the traditional elders to build their capacities in using on their daily routine work, in the future it would be fine to make a serious sets of trainings.
- In the future meetings, organiser should orient participants about the venue, objectives, expected results, and handouts
- In such these trainings in which the two organizations jointly organize, SPL should be consulted from planning up to the implementation
Conclusion
The workshop was very organized and facilitation was excellent, the planed objectives and goals were attained. Both the host organization and partners expose high level of endurances, teamwork and interests on the values of correlation.
Notably, at the end of the workshop the inter-council eldersdid fantastic event where they extremely appreciated to both SPL and LPI and presented certificates of appreciations for both organizations on the support given to strengthening their roles in peace building in south Somalia during between 2009 – 2012
