The Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) has continued to pursue its mandate and mission on building the capacity for Churches and the church leadership to ensure they are better informed with requisite skills and knowledge in peace building, conflict resolution and management on emerging issues and challenges facing the communities. PROCMURA sees it necessary and important to intervene where possible in conflict-stricken situations and heed to the churches role in peacebuilding by strengthening the church in peacebuilding efforts at the grassroots level in its constituencies across Africa.

PROCMURA recognizes that it is through such relationships and partnerships that church leaders can be empowered to enhance their capacities to address issues of conflict within the community and together manage and develop solutions to the issues.

Malakal Town, in the Upper Nile region of South Sudan, is one of the regions that continues to face unpeaceful situations and violent related conflicts. This informed PROCMURA’s decision to organize a consultative meeting for the Churches in Malakal from the 15th to 16th of October, 2022. The Consultation meeting brought together forty (40) church leaders at the UNMISSION Protection of Civilians Camp in Malakal to discuss and find solutions to the continued conflict in the region which continuously spills over into the camp. Clergy, Pastors, lay leaders, and women leaders from Nuer Presbyterian Church Baptist, Presbyterian Church of South Sudan, The Baptist Church, the Episcopal church of South Sudan, the Seventh Day Adventist, the Church of Christ in Nations and the Catholic Church among others. All of them found the way into the consultations eager to see the role they could play.

The PROCMURA Team led by the Area Adviser for South Sudan Rev. James Bol, facilitated and moderated the discussions and offered his expertise on the issues of unity of purpose, peace and development based on PROCMURA’s approach to Conflict Prevention, Peace Building, and Reconciliation. Subsequently, Rev. Mark Akec, the former General Secretary of the South Sudan Council of Churches and currently the Chairperson of the PROCMURA Area Committee, engaged the leaders on the importance of the church as a peace maker and why it needs to be on the forefront of peacebuilding processes. He also relived his experiences during his time in leadership at the council on how the Church was instrumental in negotiating the South Sudan Peace Accord before the independence and birth of the youngest Nation in Africa.

The primary objectives of the consultation were for PROCMURA to identify and train influential church leaders including women and youth in the community through Training of Trainers (TOT) workshops and seminars that will assist in having a church leadership and community that is better informed and equipped on the growing challenges and complexities in peacebuilding in the society. With these, the church in Malakal can also, in the long run, be in a position to develop local solutions and interventions of promoting peace and resolving the conflicts within their communities.

Building their capacity and establishing synergies in the community will enable them, as key stakeholders, understand how they can use their influence to prevent, mitigate, or respond to violence. The Churches play a key role and is, more often than not, an ambassador of peace. Its actions and involvement in conflict resolution has a huge impact on peacebuilding and ending violence using religious peacebuilding strategies.

In addition to these, the leaders sought to address some of the challenges faced by the IDPs in light of the continued conflict in the region and develop impact-oriented intervention strategies such as trauma healing and reconciliation and finding alternative ways for the vulnerable to have better livelihoods.

The consultation was timely as it came at a time when there was ongoing clashes which had led to an additional 15,000 more persons escaping into the POC. The Camp is already overcrowded and currently hosts more than 34,000 IDPS seeking shelter. The consultation enabled the church leaders to come together and see how they can encourage the communities to coexist during this period when they were all in dire need of peace and begin by stretching a hand of good neighborliness to one another by sharing the dismal resources and facilities in the camp. Priority would be given to children and women in the camps.

The church leaders established a community peacebuilding network in order to be advocates of peace and peaceful coexistence within the IDP camp and within their respective communities and implored on the youth to be peaceful and not to be used as the perpetrators of violence.