Elders attempted Ethiopia, Eritrea mediation

29 January, 2008

Professor Ephrem Isaak, a former professor at Harvard University and the leader of the Council of Elders, which made possible the release of CUD leaders after 18 months of detention, this week, said there had been set in motion a mediation process to resolve the Ethio- Eritrean conflict by elders from both sides.

Prof. Ephrem Issac stated this last Tuesday at the Addis Ababa University. The occasion was the third lecture of a series of lectures presented under "Democracy and the social question," a forum organized by the Goethe Institute in collaboration with Fredrick Ebert Foundation and the Addis Ababa University. The forum, which is in its third edition, provides a podium on which speakers from both the Ethiopian and international community present their views for open dialogue on democracy issue. Tuesday's forum was shared by Prof. Ephrem Issac and Paster Daniel Mekonnen. Ephrem told the audience that the mediation process, organized by elders of the two nations, was kept under wraps until Tuesday.

The elders' mission included top elites and religious leaders of both sides who worked hard, traveling between Addis Ababa and Asmara. However, Prof. Ephrem's group of elders of Ethiopia and Eritrea couldn't achieve further results and was forced to end without success.

Prof. Ephrem said on his lecture, "In 1989, at a critical stage in Ethiopian history, with violence sweeping the country, a group of concerned Ethio-Eritrean elders came together to intervene and stop the bloodshed. We met one weekend and spent a long time praying together and discussing a spiritual road of conflict resolution and traditional peacemaking customs. We understood that where there was no love there could be no peace, as ancient spiritual teachers, including the late Mother Teresa, have held."

He added, "We, therefore, began our work as a family with love and respect for each other, for our warring compatriots, and for all our peoples. Deriving our authority from the peace culture of our ancient spiritual Ethio-Eritrean shimagles or/jarsas "elders", we were able to serve as independent, neutral mediators. Rooted in such a deeper structure of our religio-ethical principles and committed to seek truth and justice, we vowed to promote and implement peace and reconciliation, where there was hate and conflict among our peoples. An Ad Hoc Peace Committee (AHPC) of elders with one sacred goal was thus born to create a forum for a calm, mutually respectful dialog with and among the conflicting parties."

The AHPC consisted of noted and respected, politically unaffiliated Ethio-Eritrean leaders, according to Prof. Ephrem. "Among them were a former Secretary General of the Ethiopian Teachers Federation and a director of an immigrant services organization in Texas, a former Secretary General of the Eritrean Teachers Federation and a Dean at the University of Maryland, a former Secretary General of the Ethiopian Labor Federation and a representative of AFLCIO, a former Director of the Ethiopian Ministry of Public Health and Professor at Howard University, a former Haile Sellasie University Dean and Professor of Psychology, a former provincial governor and President of the Agricultural College and a UN agricultural consultant, a Professor of Women's Studies in Arizona State University, a former professor of Ethiopian languages in a German university, a Human Rights lawyer, and I, a former Harvard Professor, scholar of Biblical and Ethiopian languages and religious literature, translator of Handel's Messiah into the Amharic language, and Director General of the National Literacy Campaign Organization of Ethiopia."

Prof. Ephrem revealed that the elders were chosen carefully for their ethical standards and for the value they gave to their respective religious traditions: Ethiopian Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic Christians; a devout Muslim; and a devout Jew.

In his lecture entitled Tradition of elders in peacemaking, Ephrem Yishak for the first time publicly announced the process of the mediation effort. "Representing a spectrum of opinions, we, the elders, were deliberately joined together not only from different religions, but also from diverse ethnic, professional, and gender backgrounds.

The AHPC was also unique not only in this regard but also in respect to the fact that members, although all highly educated and sophisticated individuals residing in the West, revered and valued the traditional religio-ethical, admirably straightforward, Ethio-Eritrean culture of eldership and conflict resolution procedures. Fortunately and importantly, each one of us had one or another venue of contact or relations with the political parties, groups and individuals involved in the conflicts, whose members we would often encounter at weddings, funerals, and other family occasions."

The discussion forum also featured various topics such as on elders' role in peace making, democracy and stability and will appear in the next issue of Capital.

By Abiy Demilew - Capital