by Sumo Kupe, National Director

Peace is not the absence of hostility, conflict, traumatic events, or violence. Peace is a mindset sustained by the ability of a person or group to minimize any extreme negative effect of a given situation. The mindset of peace creates an atmosphere that is conducive to the development and utilization of one’s fullest potential. Those potentials need to be fulfilled in order to maintain a nonviolent co-existence and sustainable livelihood. Peace begins with each individual’s ability to cope with life circumstances. When individuals cannot cope and intra-personal conflict spills over, it affects one’s atmosphere and everything within it.

If intra-personal conflict is not dealt with first, it is bound to worsen and become inter-personal or inter-group. When and if conflict within an individual spills over to the inter-personal and is not properly addressed, the tendency for frequently repeated breaches of peace is more likely to be higher and to become violent in nature.

The cycle of conflict and violence is currently on the rise in Liberia. This cycle is rooted in intra- personal conflict due to anger, hunger, anxiety, low self-esteem, abject poverty, challenges to sustainable livelihood, and unemployment. This cycle is reinforced by the often violent responses of marginalized individuals who live in a post-war society, facing all of the above problems every day, and harbor unprocessed trauma. The growing violence comprises a huge psycho- socio-economic epidemic that will require comprehensive and pragmatic psycho-social intervention involving, specifically, psychological trauma relief.

Unprocessed trauma can be linked to psychological disturbances and the lack of inner peace. Inter-personal violence often erupts from unprocessed psychological trauma. In post-war Liberia, this takes many anti-social forms: mob justice, violent demonstrations sometimes leading to death and property destruction,

gender based violence that sometimes leads to murder, rape, secret killings, increased criminality, school-based discipline, difficulties in child rearing and parenting, substance abuse and dependency, violent reprisal against police, and brutality perpetrated by law enforcement agents. In any post-war country, the gap between peace building on the whole and individual psychological relief of trauma and depression need to be linked. Psychological relief should be given proportional attention and support in all efforts to rehabilitate and develop post-war societies such as Liberia.

Second Chance Africa (SCA) has acknowledge the dire need for a link between peace building and psychological services and is presently laying the groundwork to provide effective treatment for trauma and depression through several projects in Montserrado County prisons, ‘ghettos’, schools and communities. SCA seeks to create a model that is derived from a hybrid of western philosophies as well as concepts that are traditional to the socio-cultural context of Liberia. One goal of SCA is to develop a psycho- social assessment and intervention model that is comprehensible to all of the literate, semi-literate and illiterate program participants in the African- Liberian context.

Lucky Dube, the late reggae musician of South Africa, a country once traumatized by apartheid, said:

“You cannot give peace, if you do not have peace within yourself”

Helping people to build and maintain inner peace through psychological rehabilitation intervention services is an essential component to growing a sustainable peace harvest in Liberia and all other post-war situations. When peace exists within one self, it can spill over to others.