Under the theme: we are one and one we can solves our problems
To be held within a time frame of one year from draft date
Nijmegen, Netherlands 18th April, 2009
Short summary of case
After decades of civil war, Bor is now still witnessing less security and almost zero prevalence of peace. Many parts of Southern Sudan are relatively stable compare to our region. The need of togetherness at this moment is very high. We Bor in Diasporas are co-responsible in bringing about stability and changing of status quo. Without prejudice to a political effort made by our politicians and intellectuals back home to stabilize the unrest, we in Diasporas need to help in finding a sustainable solution to our people’s problems.
Difficulties facing Bor as community are many. This point to the fact that Bor as a community lack a basic organizational structure and therefore unable to address the issues facing it. We the initiators of this project are convince that by bringing our people together (politician and non-politician, educated and uneducated, young and old, man and woman) in popular convention, Bor Community can lay a basic organizational structure. The convention aims to establish powers attribution at a grassroots base and accountability. Empowerment of traditional leaders (Alamaai, chiefs or Sultans) is the one of the main goal of the convention. In addition, the Community headed by Justice Dengtiel Ayuen Kur, might be empower as well. This project can only be achieved in close collaboration with our intellectuals and local chiefs in Bor. As a matter of fact, they are the one to run and organize the convention. The Diasporas will help in co-financing of the event.
Why Popular Convention
Many lives are lost in different battles fought and still being lost in Bor. Whoever has followed news in South Sudan in general and Bor County in particular can affirm this state of affairs. We are all aware of the fact that unity is a force of change. Together we can face our challenges. To deal away with insecurity and unrest in this Community, we need to unite and work as one. Pointing finger to one another contributes to more failure than success. Doing nothing also jeopardizes all advances made in a human welfare and survivorship as coded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Therefore, we the sons and daughters of the very Community in Diasporas should take up our responsibility to help in restoring peace and security in Bor. We can not keep blaming others of doing nothing to calm the unrest, while doing none. All of us are aware that our vulnerable people back home are being hunted down by Murle. And all of us know that those being hunted down are our mothers and fathers who are at their 60th to 70th.
We have also seen that neither GOSS nor Jonglei State is willing to do any. In fact, both governments’ institutions seem to enjoy the suffering of our love ones. Our politicians on the other hands are doing less to bring about peace and security or at least to come up with a genuine solution. Why is that? Simple because they are not our representative, however representatives of their own. For they are not accountable to the people of the suffering Community. Honestly speaking they do not need to, for they were not elected by the Community. They nominated and elected themselves in an aristocracy group and therefore accountable to this group and not to the people they claims to represent. Many meetings are held in Bor town and in different Payams, but you would not believe how the traditional leaders who in fact are the power holders participated. Their participation is more or less limited to audience role. To put it correctly which may not be embrace by others as polite, our traditional leaders are made by this group of aristocrats to come and sit like Masai or Turkana men on “nyacolong”. Never are they asked to contribute, nor is their concern ever addressed. What all political leaders, for instance MP’s and others, do to traditional leaders is keep ordering and telling them what to do and not to do.
To change the situation and to bring about peace and security in our Community, there is a big need to empower the traditional leaders Countywide.
Chiefs (traditional leaders) are among the most affected by violence during the periods of civil war and situations of armed conflict. They and their subjects were victims and witnesses of wartime violence and atrocities, and they were and still are the only leaders to whom the average men seek solutions of their problems. They have a crucial role as participants in post-conflict peace, justice, truth-seeking, reconciliation, reconstruction and development. Excluding them when solving issues concerning their communities has not just failed, but ruined the whole Bor Community. Without prejudice to political effort to bring stability and security to our Community, there is a need to give chiefs a chance in solving conflicts.
We the initiators, are strongly convince that holding/organizing a popular convention, will help in creating oneness and inclusion among us when solving issues facing our Community at large.
To accommodate and include everyone the convention shall consist of two different activities. There will be political discussion, which is the main objective of the convention and there will be a cultural festival competition which will be more or less compose of activities like traditional dance and shows. The result of this convention will shows that we are not a collection of individual or collection of power seekers, but a one Community that can sit and solves its problems as one people. We are all proud of our origin. We all know that other tribes and communities respect and at the same time hate us and may be wish to be one of us, just because of our values.
The great values of konmadaŋ, cok ŋek ca jam, ŋadie yen ka be leu points to an organized community. We were able to practice these values because of chiefs’ listening abilities and specially when there is disagreement. Bor as community never in history choose the leader base on his psychical strength as others communities did and still does. We choose our leaders because of their humility, mental strength and ability to lead. Because of our humble and wise leaders, the name of our Community is in the tongue of every Sudanese. The well known sons and daughters of Bor at the level of Sudan, Africa and may be even to overseas are the products of our humble chiefs. This convention shall therefore. Take us from the stage of power greed we are now in, back to the aforementioned values. Once we are back to our origin, we will join hands in remaking our Community the only way our ancestors did it throughout the centuries. The enemy of one clans or Payam which is part of Bor Community shall be whole Community’s. This convention will offer a chance to summon on a new spirit of communalism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only him/herselves, but each other. The convention itself is of course not a solution to our problems, but it is a chance to sit together and lay down the strategies on how to rebuild and restructure our Community, find a mechanism of selecting our representatives to the various governmental positions, find a common ground on how to respond to threats and repair alliances with our neighbours.
We cannot deny that political approach and solution to such alarming problems is inevitable. Nonetheless, behind every political solution hide a hidden agenda, at least partially if not totally. Above that; given the state of affairs, our problems are too many to be solve by individual politicians. We as the Community can get the effective solution to our problems. That is why a popular convention is inevitable.
Before everything we, being politicians, intellectuals, educated or uneducated, poor or rich, men or women, young or old, are from Bor Community. Therefore participation in this convention shall be base only and just only of being from Bor Community.
Cultural and traditional part of the convention will offer a chance to regain back the dignity, proud and self esteem of being a young man or lady from a certain clan. It is also a time to let culture and tradition heals the wound and bridges the gaps that have been created all these years. It also shows the acknowledgement of the source of humanity and we will use it to remind us our humanity.
As sons and daughters of this very Community, we are more then 100% sure that this Popular Convention will help in re-establishment of oneness in Community identity and mutual respect of our traditional and political leaders. And eventually respect of human rights as such. The history has taught us that Bor Community has always rise and fall as one community. Therefore, coming together is the only way to solve the issues facing us. Let’s not allow the pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned and divided us and ruin the Great Bor Community. Cultural healing nature should likewise not be underestimated.
Objectives of the Bor County Popular Convention:
- help in creating oneness and inclusion among us when solving issues facing our community at large;
- reestablishment of great values of konmadaŋ, cok ŋek ca jam, ŋadie yen ka be leu;
- a chance to sit together and lay down the strategies on how to rebuild and restructure our community;
- find a mechanism of selecting our representatives to the various governmental positions;
- find a common ground on how to respond to threats and repair alliances with our neighbours;
- To empower the traditional leaders Countywide.
- Offer a chance to regain back the dignity, proud and self esteem of being a young man or lady from a certain clan through cultural and traditional competition.
The initiator and drafter of this project is Kon Kelei, supported by Bor Diasporas at large and in particular members of Bor Community in Edmonton, Canada. Any complain or other issues related to this document can be headed to Kon Kelei who can be reaching at jokoke@gmail.com or tel.: +31 619 54 55 96.
Thanks for joining us, together we stand and resist any problem!
By Kon Kelei
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