TEARFUND.ORG.NZ
ISSUE / SPRING 2012
CORRESPONDENT Desert Experience WORKING TOWARDS PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND PAGE 5
STARVING THE PLIGHT OF NORTH KOREA’S CHILDREN PAGE 6
POSTWAR AID PREVENTING CORRUPTION PAGE 7
PEACEBUILDING:
A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE AND GOOD DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE UNCIVILISED WAR: A Sri Lankan government soldier walks with his weapons near the town of Putumatalan, 2009.
By Steve Tollestrup
A
n observation all of us at TEAR Fund have made is how poverty and conflict accompany each other. They are like evil twins. Find one and you will discover the other, and it is always the most vulnerable that suffer as a result. Visit a community living under the shadow of open conflict and their fear, discomfort and sense of being in limbo is tangible as they fend for themselves. A week after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, I was one of three non-nationals given access to a heavily guarded internment camp south of Vavuniya for Tamil refugees and suspected sympathisers of the insurgency. It was a ghastly scene. Young and old, mostly women and children lay wounded, dying on the concrete floor or staring perplexed and traumatised
at the walls of the razor-wire encircled warehouse where they were kept. As I was leaving, a woman in a mudstained sari shoved her way toward me carrying a small photo album. Grabbing my arm, she looked at me as if to say, ‘Bear witness to who I was and what I had’. Opening the album, the first picture I see is a teenage girl. She’s wearing a bright red sari and beaming, holding a certificate for a school prize in dancing. “My daughter,” she says. I turn the page. I see two teenage boys sharing the seat of a small motorbike; brothers who’d grown up together and shared dreams for the future. “My sons,” she says. I turn the page. I look at a black and white formal photograph of two young people on their wedding day staring at the camera with wooden expressions of apprehension. “My husband and I,” she says. I look at the woman holding my arm, and I see her distantly in this photograph. Without
words she is saying, ‘I mattered. I was a mother and a wife I was loved and loved.’ Then she said in a voice hoarse from sadness, “they’re gone, all gone”. They had died just days before, caught in crossfire of battle at Mullaitivu lagoon. That is the sharp and tragic reality of civil violence and warfare and TEAR Fund wants to be part of ending the suffering of the victims of conflict like this bereft widow. Conflict and violence are not always accompanied by bullets and steel. Sometimes it is much more subtle. Look closely at oppressed and desperately poor communities and you will find other forms of violence. Caste, patriarchy, control of needed resources by the powerful or elites, denial of rights, family and domestic violence, unequal division of labour, extortion by money lenders and labour contractors, exclusion by race, religion and gender are some of the subtle and not so subtle forms of conflict in the fabric of poor communities.
PICTURE / REUTERS ALERTNET/ DAVID GRAY
For any community to prosper and meet the challenges of poverty, social cohesion is required. The greater the solidarity, opportunity for inclusion and participation, and the sense of community, the greater the lift in economic activity and well-being. That is why TEAR Fund is bringing peace building into the core of our development practice. Continued on page 3
PRAY • Pray for calm in conflict-affected communities TEAR Fund works with. • Pray for those affected by subtle violence like denial of rights, control and all other things that oppress people. • Pray for freedom where conflict and violence have caused the devastation of people.
PO Box 8315, Symonds St, Auckland 1150, New Zealand • enquiries@tearfund.org.nz • 0800 800 777 • tearfund.org.nz