Under the umbrella of the Sudan Peace-building for Development Project and the Sudan/South Sudan Cross-border Initiative, the World Bank asked The Hague Academy to organise a training course in Khartoum for stakeholders at different levels of government and from academia on issues related to Peacebuilding, (Fiscal) Decentralisation, Local Governance and Service Delivery, which a special emphasis on Darfur. The aim of this training was to effectively be able to foster peace through better- informed planning and decision making at the decentralised level.
The training participants consisted of officials from Darfur state and local planning authorities and departments, Commissioners, Fiscal Financial Allocation and Monitoring officials, as well as relevant government entities at the federal level and state, local planning officials and the Darfur Peace Institute.
Active discussions about peacebuilding, reconstruction and the development of Darfur took place. Questions about how to integrate internally displaced persons in the communities, how to negotiate with rebels to protect basic infrastructure and how to improve citizens trust in the government were discussed. Bringing all these different stakeholders together to discuss these vital issues can certainly be called a success and the participants made plans on how to continue coordination among themselves in order to continue learning from each other and working together to achieve sustainable peace and spur development.
One of most important “lessons learnt” that participants mentioned were the interactive learning methods. Like one of the participants said: “We are used to traditional university style lectures, where there is one way communication between the professor and the students. In this course from the very start on, the trainers treated us as equals. Sometimes the roles even switched and we became the teachers. This was a very effective way to build confidence and learn actively. It has changed our perspective on leadership and we will apply it when we share the results of this course with our colleagues and in interactions with our citizens”.
At the end of the training the minister of Reconstruction of the Darfur Regional Authority, Mr. Tadjadine Bechir Niam handed out the well earned certificates and he expressed the hope that more of these training sessions will be organised in the future.
