Seeking a Road to Peace in Southeast Africa

This text is a part of our Girls and Management particular report that coincides with world occasions in March celebrating the accomplishments of girls. This dialog has been edited and condensed.

Deborah Julio, 36, has a previous that helped form her position as an advocate for ladies’s rights and a battle mediator between the southeast African nation of Malawi, the place she lives, and neighboring Mozambique.

Ms. Julio misplaced her father when she was 2 years previous and dropped out of main faculty after the lack of her mom. She finally studied to be a pastor, and now has a grocery retailer in her city. Her first husband died in a automotive accident in 2016, and he or she has since remarried. At this time, she has two stepchildren and three youngsters from her earlier marriage. Along with advocating ladies’s rights as chair of the Girls’s Motion in Mangochi District, Malawi, and as secretary of the District Peace and Unity Committee (DPUC), Ms. Julio helps with battle mediation supported by U.N. Girls Malawi.

Ms. Julio’s work is very related as a result of she resides in an space that’s impacted by non secular battle, violence round borderland disputes and a excessive charge of early little one marriage.

How did you find yourself being a dealer of peace?

In 2016, I attended a battle and peace-building coaching in Mangochi. Afterward, I used to be chosen to turn out to be one of many first members of the DPUC, a voluntary group that helps the native council with battle decision and peace constructing. I used to be picked because the secretary.

U.N. Girls acquired to know of our work and invited me to attend a Girls’s Motion coaching, the place they geared up us with expertise to deal with gender-based violence. I used to be then elected as chairperson for the Mangochi Girls’s Motion group.

What initiatives have you ever labored on?

They embody a chieftaincy wrangle, and non secular disputes between Muslims and Christians within the district. I additionally intervened in a possible human trafficking case the place any individual from Mozambique pretended to have an curiosity in marrying a neighborhood member from Lulanga (in Malawi) however had intentions of trafficking her.

For the Girls’s Motion, I’ve intervened on points which have the potential to disrupt the peace in the neighborhood. For instance, there was a case in Lulanga the place 5 boys raped a 14-year-old lady. Her mother and father determined to hide the case to keep away from public disgrace, however we enlightened them on the necessity to take the kid to a hospital and likewise helped them report the matter to the police. Now, the perpetrators are serving their jail sentences.

There was additionally a case the place a neighborhood well being employee tried to entice a 14-year-old lady to sleep with him in change for a job. The lady wanted cash to outlive. This problem was reported to the chief who ordered the well being employee to depart his space and pay a nice of three goats and 100,000 Malawian Kwacha ($60).

Are you able to share a particular occasion the place your gender influenced the way in which you approached battle mediation?

There was a difficulty not too long ago in a village within the district of males resisting a lady taking over a management position in the neighborhood. The village chief was spearheading the opposition. I approached him and used my very own instance as a lady in a management position to indicate him that girls can succeed as leaders. A number of weeks later, I discovered that the neighborhood had accepted the girl, and he or she has now taken up the place.

Are you able to elaborate on any approaches you’ve used to forestall tensions from escalating into violence? What position does early warning play in your work?

Traditionally, some areas are vulnerable to violence, particularly concerning land disputes. By means of monitoring these areas, the Girls’s Motion noticed that there have been undercurrents of tensions brewing in a spot known as Makanjira, alongside the Mozambican border. We needed to intervene when accusations between two villages round land demarcation began.

Earlier than the villagers may mobilize one another to trigger extra hurt, we intervened by assembly with chiefs from each the Malawian and Mozambique sides. We discovered an answer the place communities acquired a bit of land. Proper now, there isn’t a dispute concerning the border for that piece of land. In one other vibrant facet, ladies and women are sometimes affected by these border disputes, however, on this case, ladies from each side are allowed to farm on their designated lands and are serving to to maintain their households.