RECONCILE together with IRC and Practical Action with partners both in Uganda and Kenya were awarded a two year grant by the European Union’s Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights to implement a Cross Border peace project that focuses on strengthening civil society in Karamoja, Turkana and Pokot to prevent and mitigate conflict. This project is implemented in partnership with five organizations from both countries. It is part of a wider process towards engaging communities in these areas to appreciate peace for sustainable development.

RECONCILE however, believes that to realize sustainable development, resource dependent communities and their institutions must have adequate capacity to be custodians of their resources and thereby defining the kind of peace and development. One means of promoting such increased engagement with stakeholders is through capacity building for the community based institutions. In the context of this project, such institutions include the District Peace Committees, Village/local Peace Committees. The project also appreciates the need to engage government institutions such the police, provincial administration, local CSOs and Human Rights groups within and across the region. In this connection, RECONCILE has been undertaking capacity building trainings which has been informed by the results of the baseline survey conducted at the beginning of the project

The second level of capacity building is around the policy advocacy and the practice of peace building by peace builders to promote a better understanding and application of such skills to the project by CSOs and Human rights organizations. Report

The third category is the coalition building; peace building is an all inclusive process which embraces different actors and their skills and knowledge. This project therefore is building alliance through a regional coalition building that allows different institutions to engage to share and learn. Such coalitions are built on the understanding that many actors are involved in peace building but have focus with and around their respective countries. This has had implications on the cross border conflict and groups of raiders have exploited this window.

The last part of this project is the micro project initiative; again the main source of conflict is the struggle for resources and other livelihood. The Cross border peace project is undertaking to implement the micro project through organized groups of Peace Committees and other community based structures. This initiative shall also piggyback on the developed resource thereby creating a sustainability framework.