How dialogue ended violence in some countries
MBABANE – History has it that in countries where volatile conditions were prevailing, national dialogues were held successfully to put an end to violence, rebellions and civil wars, among other situations.
This is the notion that Members of Parliament (MPs) put as their defence when calling for Prime Minister (PM) Cleopas Dlamini to implement the highly anticipated national dialogue during a sitting in Parliament last week, to which government has insisted that it won’t happen amid the current volatile situation.
According to a National Dialogue Handbook compiled by the United Nations Peacemakers, countries like Mali, Sudan, Tunisia and Lebanon, among others, were able to have national dialogues or anything closer to that, despite that there were ongoing rebellions, civil wars, intensifying violence at the time.
The legislators wanted to know what it would take for government to see it fit to implement the dialogue and stop hiding behind the ‘condition or situation not being conducive for a national dialogue’ statement.
In Lebanon, for example, the national dialogue that was convened from 2008 to 2014 was agreed upon against the backdrop of increasing violence that threatened the stability of the country as revealed in the National Dialogue Handbook.
Polarisation
Growing polarisation within Lebanese society and a longstanding political crisis escalated into an armed confrontation between political factions in 2008.
“As the fighting intensified, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, invited all Lebanese parties to a six-day National Dialogue Conference in Doha, where they eventually reached a settlement on May 21, 2008.
The Doha agreement ended the 18-month long political crisis in Lebanon and led to the election of Michel Sleiman as President of the Republic,” reads the handbook.
In addition, an election system and the holding of a national dialogue were agreed upon to eventually re-establish State authority over all of Lebanon, restore relationships between various groups and ensure security of the State and citizens. In the context of the armed rebellion in Mali, the overthrow of the Second Malian Republic and the coup d’état against President Moussa Traoré in March 1991, civil society actors of the democratic movement forced the regime into dialogue, albeit without success.
Violence
Violence escalated and a part of the army broke away and, together with those civil society actors, set up the Transitional Committee for the Salvation of the People (CTSP) which instituted a transitional government. The CTSP passed the Basic Act in 1991, constituting the National Conference as a sovereign assembly.