DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA – As part of the Auschwitz Institute’s mission to strengthen national mechanisms devoted to genocide and mass atrocity prevention, AIPR’s Africa Program recently co-organized a three-day training of Tanzania’s National Committee for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and all forms of Discrimination (TNC). This seminar was the second in our series of trainings for the TNC and focused specifically on the prevention of election and resource-based violence—two issues relevant in the Tanzanian context.
The training took place on October 14 – 16, 2014, in Dar es Salaam and was attended by approximately forty Tanzanian government officials from the TNC and civil society leaders. Professor Dr. Mohammed Bakari, Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam, delivered a module titled, Community-based Natural Resource Conflict Management: The Case of Mtwara. “When working in conflict resolution,” he told participants, “it is essential to separate the parties from the problem. People are people, and a problem is a problem. If you focus on defeating one party or another to the dispute, and ignore the actual problem, then the problem will persist.”
AIPR Director of Africa Programs Dr. Ashad Sentongo also taught several modules, including one on grassroots approaches to resolving resource-based conflict. “When looking at conflict in Africa,” said Sentongo, “you see that the majority of the violence has taken place at the grassroots level, therefore it is essential when addressing genocide and mass atrocity prevention, to begin with creating local accountability, ownership, and community resilience. These are the keys to grassroots prevention.”
Following the seminar, Jack Mayerhofer, AIPR’s African Programs – New York Liaison, said that it was a “very lively training with a lot of committee input.” According to Mayerhofer, “the training was grounded in providing conceptual and theoretical frameworks/contexts within which to work, but also very much in the application of practical knowledge and skills and how they apply to the realities in Tanzania.”
Please click here for a report prepared by the TNC about this three day training.