About seven years ago I received an e-mail starting ‘Dear Marian’ from Brenda Brainch in Kenya, about family mediation. I realised she was probably looking for Marian Roberts, then working for National Family Mediation. Fortunately I knew her so was able to put Brenda in touch. Brenda is a CEDR¹ -trained mediator working in commercial mediation and trying to promote mediation of all kinds. She started the Dispute Resolution Centre in Kenya and more recently helped to found the African Mediation Association (AFMA). When I explained that most of my work was in restorative justice (RJ), she was immediately interested, so we kept in touch over the years via e-mail. Brenda hoped there might be opportunities for RJ in Kenya.

An invitation

In June 2007 Brenda contacted me to say she was passing my name to a colleague of hers, Kehinde (Kenny) Aina, a lawyer in Nigeria. Brenda had been funded by the British Council to work with Kenny and others on ADR² , including a conference in 2006. Kenny is an enthusiast about ADR and mediation, and founded the Negotiation and Conflict Management Group (NCMG) in 1996, to establish the first Multi-Door Courthouse (MDC) in Lagos in 2002, followed by further ones in other Nigerian cities. He organised the first ADR Summit in 2006 and for the second one in 2007, he wanted to have RJ as the main topic. After contact with Kenny, I agreed to talk on Restorative Justice in the UK and Europe.

The conference was entitled ‘The 2nd NCMG African ADR Summit: Restorative Justice, Peace-Building and Economic Development in Africa – the Role of ADR’ and took place in Lagos 30-31 October 2007.  I arrived a day earlier and was able to see the Lagos Multi-Door Courthouse, where court rooms had been converted to mediation suites, to give a choice between mediation, arbitration and litigation. For the conference, Kenny had gathered speakers from all over the globe – United States, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and me from the UK. Although I had been diffident about travelling such a long way (carbon footprint, etc), my journey was one of the shorter ones. We were all in the same hotel, so one of the joys of the conference was the opportunity to network with the other presenters, and learn more about their work.

Conference in Lagos

The first day of the conference was devoted to RJ. Anyone who has been to West Africa will know that conferences and gatherings begin with many formal welcomes and speeches from eminent persons, in this case mostly senior judges from Nigeria. There were about 120 conference participants, mostly lawyers.

The RJ session began with Justice/ Professor Janine Geske, Director of the Restorative Justice Initiative at Marquette University School of Law, Milwaukee, US. She had given up a high-ranking post as Justice to the Supreme Court to start an RJ Initiative, and showed a moving DVD of her work in prisons, bringing together victims, offenders and community in circles to talk. Next, the Hon Justice Gummi, the Chief Justice of the Federal Capital Territory, spoke on RJ and the Criminal Justice System in Nigeria, finding much in common between RJ and traditional African justice – and declared that prisons were incongruent with this. Then I spoke on ‘RJ and VOM: UK & European Experience’ ³ – a tall order in 20 minutes!  The situation in the UK is now so complex (in terms of legal provisions for RJ) that I wrote a comprehensive handout for the detail, and only included a ‘broad-brush picture’ in my presentation. The final input of the morning was on plea-bargaining, which some Nigerian lawyers see as part of RJ⁴. This raised so much controversy that all the questions in the following Open Forum session were directed to it, and none to RJ.

The afternoon session included contributions from the Inspector General of the Police and the Comptroller of Prisons. Both had sent substitutes, who therefore had to read their papers in full. There was an interesting paper on Sharia Law and RJ/ ADR, noting similarities (e.g. the concept of ‘Sulhu’ – bringing conflict to an end, removing bitterness) and differences. Then Uju Agomoh, Director of the NGO⁵  Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), spoke about the potential for RJ in Nigeria.

Previous RJ training

Uju had invited me in 2001 to train victim-offender mediators in Nigeria, Ghana and the Gambia, for the DFID⁶ -funded African Transformative Justice Project. Uju saw RJ as very much part of African heritage, which had been displaced by the British legal system imposed through colonial rule. One of the reasons for looking to a British RJ trainer was to persuade the African British-trained judiciary that RJ was OK, and could be implemented within existing laws!  This training had taken place in 2001, with one week in each of the three countries.

The training had been successful, but despite large stakeholder meetings in each country, financial support had not been forthcoming to take it forward in Nigeria (some work continued in Ghana prisons for a while, and there is a court mediation service in the Gambia). So this conference was an ideal opportunity to put Kenny and Uju in contact – with the result that Uju was able to contribute a presentation. She spoke with passion about bringing RJ back to Africa, involving victims, offenders and the community – perfectly possible within the current law. ‘We can do it – it depends whether we decide to do it.’

Conference: ADR and Peace Awards

The second day of the conference was devoted to ADR, especially mediation, in the commercial sector, and included presentations by John Brand from South Africa, Jimmy Muyanja from Uganda, Kate Kopischke from the US (who mediates community disputes on projects funded by the World Bank’s private-sector lenders) and Lesley Agams (the Country Director of Ashoka), as well as Nigerian lawyers. Brenda Brainch encouraged people to join the newly-formed African Mediation Association and Kenny Aina reminded participants that they could join the NCMG to stay abreast of developments in Nigeria. An Open Forum session with many impassioned contributions (e.g. about poverty; and the Niger Delta conflicts) concluded the conference at lunchtime. 

Later that evening everyone attended the presentation of this year’s Peace Awards, initiated by Kenny at the conference in 2006. The 2007 individual awards went to Kofi Annan and Judge Kayode Eso, a Nigerian long-time patron of the NCMG, the corporate award to Lagos State, and the press award to the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The occasion took place at the new Civic Centre in Lagos and was accompanied by an evening of speeches and dinner.

More networking

A further piece of networking concerned the speaker from Uganda, where I had also trained mediators (and some trainers) in 1999 and 2002. Again, lack of funding had prevented the initiatives lasting very long at that time. But Jimmy Muyanja was captivated by RJ – and knowing that there are at least two RJ trainers in Uganda (with whom I am still in touch) gave him the idea to pursue funding for it. (There should even be a manual for the ‘Uganda RJ Model’ that we developed together.) So I returned home feeling that this trip, though short, had been valuable in terms of hopefully furthering RJ in at least two African countries.

Since my return, I know that Jimmy has been in contact with the two trainers in Uganda, and they are enthusiastic about taking things further. Uju and Kenny plan to stay in touch to develop a pilot project. I have been sending AFMA leaflets to anyone I know who is working in conflict resolution in Africa. I have put people in touch (and vice versa) with an RJ academic from a university in Florida, Mark Davidheiser, who has started an African Working Group to bring people together (He had contacted me after seeing articles of mine on the web). There is also an Africa Quaker Peace Network, so there seem to be many people working in the same direction.

Let’s hope that all these initiatives and enthusiasm can bring about a resurgence of RJ within the African justice systems. And many thanks to Kenny for giving an extra push to this project with his dynamism in organising the conference.

______________________________

Footnotes:

¹ Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, concerned with commercial mediation, based in London.
² Alternative Dispute Resolution, a term used in the commercial sector to cover mediation, arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution which are alternatives to litigation.
³ I am aware that this title is somewhat misleading as the UK is part of Europe, but I could not think of a more accurate one without getting tied in knots!
⁴ I thought it was not generally part of RJ in the UK – does anyone in the RJC have views or experience of this?
⁶ Non Governmental Organisation
⁷ Department for International Development, part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.  DFID has given grants to several projects around the world, including several in the criminal justice sector.

Web sites and useful contacts

Negotiation and Conflict Management Group (NCMG), Nigeria
www.ncmggroup.org
E-mail: info@ncmggroup.org
Kenny Aina: kennyaina@aol.com

Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), Nigeria
www.prawa.org
E-mail: info@prawa.org
Uju Agomoh: ujuagomoh1@yahoo.co.uk

African Mediation Association (AFMA)
Brenda Brainch: mediate@wananchi.com

Africa Peace and Conflict Network
www.africaworkinggroup.org
Mark Davidheiser: mdavidhe@yahoo.com
Hamdesa Tuso: tuso@nova.edu
Jean-Mathieu Essis: essis@nova.edu

Africa Quaker Peace Network
Clerk: Colin Glenn: colin@phaphama.org
Assistant Clerk: Hezron Masitsa: hmusotsi@yahoo.com. 
Other contacts (Kenya): Malesi Kinaro: malesiekk@yahoo.com 
Bridget Butt: bridget_butt@yahoo.com


Brikama Mediation Center, The Gambia
Momodou Gassama: mceegass@yahoo.com

Marian Liebmann

March 2008