Bikita’s Rising Peace Movement is Claiming Peace as a Right

“Peace is the most urgent item on humanity’s agenda.”

These words always fill us with a sense of urgency at ZimRights. They motivated us to launch the Right to Peace Campaign in which we are mobilising communities to do more than just demand peace, but to work for it because it is an urgent matter.

In that regard, the month of July was a busy month as we continued engagement with our members in Bikita and Zaka on the work of building peace.

On 23 July, we visited our members in Bikita. At the previous meeting, about 30 community activists had indicated that they wanted to join the Right to Peace Campaign. We mobilised resources to meet with them, reflect on the challenges that their community is facing and what can be done to assist. At ZimRights, under the Shifting Power to the People Strategy (SP2P), ?it is our firm belief that communities must lead in creating and sustaining a culture of peace. As such we shared with them the tools that they can use to help their communities overcome the existing threats to peace. We spoke about Bikita’s legacy of violence and the state of woundedness in the community. We also spoke about the polarising political culture that requires leadership in building cohesion and restoring relationships.

It was not all gloomy. We spoke about the wealth that the community offers, especially a vibrant and active citizenry that is ready to support a new peace movement in the region. Among the participants, we had traditional leaders, ministers of religion, teachers, and farmers. These reflected on what their skills can bring to the cause of peace. Finally, we spoke about how the campaign can help unleash the peace capacities in their own communities. We introduced the Right to Peace Manual, went through the five modules of the manual. (Manual available here https://bit.ly/3PcfNZi ) We spoke about the key peace actions that peace champions can undertake to help combat violence and create conditions in which peace can flourish. We ended with an action plan that will see 30 champions taking part in the campaign.

After a hot meal, we toured one of the Peace Garden in the area which we support. The green scenery at the garden is an island of hope in a community that struggles daily to overcome violence in all its forms.

We are grateful that our members in Bikita are leading through action. As the Masvingo Regional Chairperson emphasised during the meeting, “Peace is everyone’s obligation.”