DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN PEACE PROCESSES: THE COMMUNITY OF SANT'EGIDIO
Note: This section is built upon open-source material and interviews with actors directly involved in the NGO. As much as possible, we have tried to allow for self-representation as a criterion of inclusion.
Founded in Rome, Italy, in 1968, the Community of Sant'Egidio is a religious organization whose members are not paid and whose work on peace is more the result of a serendipitous series of events than a clearly stated choice enshrined in a mission statement. While the Carter Center, the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Crisis Management Initiative clearly have conflict resolution as a central focus of their work, the self-representation of the Community of Sant'Egidio - as it appears in published materials and as shared by many of its members - is actually spiritual in nature, referring to concepts such as prayer, communicating the Gospel, solidarity with the poor, and ecumenism. It is only in the last item in their list of principles that we find a reference to peace-work: dialogue. The Community of Sant'Egidio further explains that dialogue is “recommended by Vatican II as a way of peace and co-operation among the religions, and also a way of life and as a means of resolving conflicts” (Riccardi 1999).
Started in Rome by the initiative of a young student, Andrea Riccardi, the Community of Sant’Egidio took its current name in 1973 and became involved in peace work as a response to the needs of a dear friend of the community, Jaime Goncalves. Goncalves had been appointed bishop of Beira, Mozambique, after the military coup in Lisbon which allowed the Vatican to establish native, Mozambican bishops rather than Portuguese ones (Morozzo Della Rocca 2003). While the internal war that pitted Mozambique’s RENAMO (Resistencia National de Mozambique) resistance movement against the official government of the FRELIMO (Frente de Liberazao de Mozambique) party started soon after the independence of the country (Abrahamsson & Nilsson 1995), the Community of Sant’Egidio was involved in a long process aimed at reconstructing conditions for full religious freedom in the country.
For more than 10 years, the primary focus of the Community’s work in Mozambique was facilitating a constructive dialogue between the FRELIMO government, the local Catholic church and the Holy See. This effort reached its climax with the visit of Mozambican President Samora Machel to the Vatican, the visit of Pope John Paul II to Mozambique, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. When, in the late 1980s, it became clear that more had to be done to bring peace to a country ravaged by war, the Community of Sant’Egidio could count on a well-established set of relationships both in Mozambique and in Europe to engage in this work (Bartoli 2005).Mozambique is now at peace, united and independent. This achievement is a first for a country that was created by Portuguese colonialism and had never simultaneously experienced peace, independence and unity. These conditions emerged with the signing of the General Agreement for Peace in Rome 1992, which was the first agreement ever to be mediated by a team put together by an international NGO such as the Community of Sant’Egidio (United Nations 1995). Mozambique has now successfully completed two more election cycles and the newly elected president, His Excellency Emilio Guebuza, was the chief negotiator of the FRELIMO government (Hume 1994). The level of violence in the country is relatively low (especially compared to other countries in the region) as are its chances of resuming internal war (SwissPeace 2007).
Mozambique’s transformation has been extraordinary. After a 30-year war of independence and a 16-year civil war that claimed one million lives and resulted in 4.5 million refugees and internally displaced people (out of a population of 12 million in the early 1990s), Mozambique now features a multiparty democracy where political violence is not a threat (Synge 1997). Clearly, this picture cannot be replicated for Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo,Angola, or for other African countries on the verge of significant violent conflict, such as Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, or Togo.
The difference, this chapter argues, has mainly to do with the capacity of relevant actors to generate a political process able to represent people’s interests, memories and needs (Bartoli & Coleman 2003), which are not properly represented in conflict (Gurr 2000). In Mozambique, actors kept the possibility of peace alive and offered spaces in which the possibility of peace could be evaluated. They allowed Mozambique to move away from the narrow-mindedness of violence to the more generative possibilities of sustained interaction as defined by a participatory system (Fisher 1997, 2005).Truly a pluralistic society, Mozambique fought its wars in political and military terms, rather than in terms of religion. A great first contribution of the local religious communities was to refrain from attempting to follow a hegemonic path or condoning violence through religious terms. Religious communities were on the forefront of the effort to represent the victims of the conflict, their interests, and their needs, thus paving the way for new political arrangements that brought the conflict to an end (Bartoli 2001).
The community of Sant’Egidio was involved in other peace processes after Mozambique. Experiences include Algeria, Guatemala, Albania, Kosovo, Burundi, Togo, Casamance, and most recently, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Northern Uganda, and Ivory Coast. What emerges from these cases is that the community is able to offer direct connections to non-state actors, especially violent ones, that find themselves without proper connectivity to the international system. As the UN Undersecretary General for political affairs Sir Kieran Prendergast said, referring to the contacts that one officer of the community, Dr. Fabio Riccardi, had maintained with the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda: “Sant'Egidio can speak with those, we can't.” One interesting feature of Sant'Egidio's peculiar organizational structure is that, largely because the organization is rooted in religion, no one is paid for the services they provide.
Composed of professionals, scholars, and regular citizens doing regular jobs and leading in regular environments, members of the community of Sant'Egidio offer their services without requesting pay. This arrangement allows the community to be involved in relational processes of trust-building that may come to fruition in a full-fledged, well- developed peace process or in less successful yet extraordinarily bold attempts to build peace in war-torn societies (Giro 1998).The community of Sant'Egidio is able to maximize connectivity by engaging actors in a series of exchanges in which the immediate and successful response to a particular need becomes part of the larger strategy of engagement. For instance, an extraordinary meeting of socialist, nationalist, and Islamist leaders fromAlgeria, all gathered in a Catholic convent - the Sant'Egidio quarters in the heart of Rome - was an exceptional result of years of friendship built with all sectors of Algerian society (Impagliazzo & Giro 1997). The same is true in cases from Guatemala to Lebanon and from Togo to Sudan.
Athird element of Sant'Egidio's success is its ability to navigate political processes by wisely deciding when and how to participate, and when to refrain from participating (Ury 2007). This element is less an expression of Sant'Egidio's NGO status than it is the product of almost 40 years of uninterrupted commitment to world affairs. One of the most well-known cases of the Sant'Egidio community's decision not to be involved in the political process was its refusal to host a national dialogue unexpectedly offered by the former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laurent Kabila. Kabila had not consulted with the community and announced his initiative on the radio, communicating only later to the community's mediators that the event would have taken place in Sant'Egidio headquarters according to procedures that were determined by him alone. Considering this unacceptable, the community declined to support the president's overture.
Their decision won them significant political capital with Kabila's opponents and laid the foundations for constructive engagement with them in subsequent initiatives (Bartoli 2005).Connectivity, per se, is not sufficient unless it is sustainable and nourished by a bold vision. The community of Sant'Egidio seems to have the three elements aligned in an effort to seek the possible emergence of peace in very different contexts while always inquiring with all relevant actors about how this emergence could occur. Sant'Egidio in the past 15 years has become, in the words of African statesman Julius Nyerere, “a house for Africa,” the place where leaders involved in conflict can explore the possibilities of peaceful settlements in an environment that fosters confidentiality and creativity. Because of its track record, Sant'Egidio doesn't need to seek areas of intervention to add to the list of possible engagements, nor does it need to decide between them. In a sort of automatic selection, actors in immediate contact with Sant'Egidio express their interest for peaceful solutions by approaching the community and exploring these alternatives with senior mediators of the community (Giro 1998).
As is already clear in the case of Mozambique, the Community of Sant'Egidio rates as one actor in a complex system that can facilitate a process with internal
coherence through strict discipline and a resolved orientation. While based on the assumption that peace is always possible, the community members involved in political processes tend to check this general assumption against the real conditions on the ground (Hume 1994). Significant to the understanding of what NGOs in general can contribute to conflict resolution processes is the observation that the organizations’ intelligence-gathering processes frequently run parallel to the ones available to state actors. To the surprise of many Western diplomats, the community of Sant’Egidio negotiators are frequently very well-informed through their personal connections with all involved actors and relevant observers.
As a Catholic organization, Sant’Egidio has been able to successfully and effectively partner with bishops, missionaries, and local communities around the world. The loosely centralized structure of the Catholic Church that allows, in the words of John Paul Lederach, “both verticality andhorizontality,” is the setting in which the Community of Sant’Egidio develops highly detailed reports from areas of conflict (Lederach 1997).In contrast to other peace-building NGOs, the community of Sant’Egidio has accumulated significant political capital related to its capacity to accurately understand recent events in light of decades-long patterns. This advantage is largely due to Sant’Egidio’s 40-year commitment to peace work, and to the continuity of the personnel working on specific areas (due to the fact that no one is paid and therefore there is no need for turnover). We can compare this informationgathering process to the one established by the International Crisis Group, which sends expatriates to an area of conflict to establish a network that will eventually produce relevant reporting that can be disseminated through the ICG central office in Brussels to decisionmakers around the world. In contrast, the Community of Sant’Egidio relies on already established networks of local actors. These local actors speak the language, know the culture, belong to the polity affected by the conflict, and have been connected with the peace work of the negotiators for a long time, both in their own country and in Rome, giving Sant’Egidio a significant advantage. The aim of the information gathering and analysis performed is not public disclosure, but rather the facilitation of the peace process itself and the creation of loops of confidence strengthened by the confidentiality of the conversations (well documented in the book edited by Ronald J. Fisher 2005). The first peace process ever facilitated by the Community of Sant’Egidio in Mozambique was successful exactly because of the confidentiality of the conversations and its mode of information gathering and verification (Hume 1994).
The Community of Sant’Egidio seems to believe that, although final agreements must have a very public dimension and be welcomed by societies affected by conflict, the preparation for a successful agreement requires carefully maintained confidentiality. When the community of Sant’Egidio team, led by don Matteo Maria Zuppi, was exploring possible processes in Burundi, it was doing so without publicly acknowledging the conversation. Yet, the parties who were not necessarily ready for a serious commitment to the process decided to leak the information to the press and therefore negatively affected the outcome of the conversations.
The Community of Sant’Egidio’s experience in Mozambique, as well as all of the other initiatives to date, rests on the assumptions and practice of effective coordination with all relevant actors. However, what was observed during the Mozambique peace process was that there is great variation in actors’ perception of what is relevant in the peace process. It was determined that the Portuguese government wanted to play a primary role in the Mozambique peace process and was actively undermining the leadership in that effort. However, the parties themselves, both FRELIMO and RENAMO, did not appreciate having a former colonial power leading a political process that had such a huge impact on the newly independent country and its structure (Hume 1994). While the Portuguese government perceived the Community of Sant'Egidio as a weak mediator, the parties perceived the community as a strong actor capable of asserting the prerogatives of a peace process that had its own endogenous dynamics. An interesting point on a more general and theoretical level is that all mediation efforts suffer the challenges of alternatives that are constantly promoted by some actors in the system who are trying to maximize their gains by manipulating the process (Crocker et al. 1999). However, these challenges should not be viewed as an aberration. They are the normal expression of a lively political process in which a multiplicity of actors participates. It can be said that successful peace processes require effective coordination with all relevant actors. Obviously, coordination doesn't mean consensus or even full disclosure; rather, it means shared goals and open communication (Donini 1996). (See www.santegidio.org/en/index.html)