Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation.

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary spoke at MIT this week on “The War in Afghanistan: How to End it.” In his speech, he outlined what he saw as the necessary political and economic steps to end the war and rebuild Afghanistan. The Washington Post covers Miliband’s speech here.  But as these things go, some of the more interesting comments came out during the Q&A portion of the talk. 

I was tweeting from the talk and the tweet that elicited the most response was regarding Afghanistan and agriculture. 

One MIT undergrad asked, “What can engineers like us do in Afghanistan?”  David Miliband’s response? Focus on agriculture.

Later in the session, Miliband again re-iterated his point, “the alternative to drugs is agriculture.” He emphasized both the importance of security and prices in creating a strong agricultural sector. 

Will Okumu is the founder of Awasi Multi Youth Group. Read all of Will's blog posts.

Romina joined Ashoka in 2005 and works for Ashoka’s Youth Venture, primarily supporting and creating a strong global movement of young changemakers around the world. Read all of her posts here.

The post election violence in Kenya in January 2008 led to the death of over 1,330 persons and the displacement over 350,000 persons (over 70,000 families) across the country. Internationally displaced persons (IDPs) were temporarily settled in church compounds, soccer stadiums, police stations, prison compounds, primary school pitches, agricultural show grounds and even by the road sides. The government of Kenya, NGO’s and members of the private sector initially launched the Operation Rudi Nyumbani I (Operation Go Back Home Phase I), a program through which the government and its partners sought to preach peace among the warring communities so that the displaced families could be facilitated to re-access their farmlands and lead normal productive lives. In doing this the Government of Kenya availed Kshs 35,000 (approximately USD 500) to be given to each and every family that agreed to return to their farmlands. This money was meant to facilitate reconstruction and ease resettlement of the IDPs. Under Operation Rudi Nyumbani I the Government of Kenya resettled over 100,000 persons (20,000 families) who were also facilitated by the NGOs to form community farmers associations in order to cheaply access farm inputs such as seeds and fertilizers. This program ensured that IDPs were able to produce food for subsistence and even for retail purposes thus earning the extra shilling for the families.

A piece I worked on recently from Afghanistan highlights both the opportunities and the challenges facing women entrepreneurs in post-conflict reconstruction. The US military has, for the first time, set aside more than $350 million over five years in contracts for Afghan businesswomen to produce tees, socks and outdoor gear for the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. As the American military sees it, the initiative is part counter-insurgency and part economic development.

Says Air Force Maj. Charles Seidel, who is overseeing the program: "Fifty percent of the country are women.  If we are going to make a difference, we have got to create jobs, we have to give hope. How better to do that?’’

On the opportunity side: Women are eager for the business and hungry to win the military contract.  For the past eight years Afghan women have ventured into entrepreneurship and created start-ups in fields ranging from tailoring to trucking.  Their profits have gone to educate their children and support their families, and along the way they have helped to reshape their roles among their relatives. 

Zachary Angafor, Founder of African Conflicts Response Foundation, discusses his ideas for mitigating conflict between farmers and pastoral communities in North West Cameroon, and his insights in formulating this entrepreneurial approach.

The history of violent conflict in African pastoral and farming communities is an old saga. Indeed, disputes between pastoralists and farmers over water, pasture, grazing land, as well as the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, have transformed the arid lands of the continent into theatres of war. From Sudan to Kenya on the East coast to Cameroon and Nigeria on the West coast, the conflicts are legion and often deadly. However, in this saga of recurrent conflict is a possible solution which, if well exploited, could considerably mitigate, if not, put an end to the violence. This is encouraging and opens up an opportunity to implement a people-to people approach or coexistence to peace and reconciliation in agro-pastoral communities. In other words, to create an environment where there is deep and active coexistence of community, where pastoralists and farmers live with and amongst each other, and where everyday interaction is rich and multifaceted.

Ashoka Peace is proud to present a recently published article in the latest issue of Beyond Profit that describes the rationale and goals and inspiration behind our work.

In this article, we discuss the stories of two classic social entrepreneurs - Jerry White and Neichute Duolo - who came up with new solutions for problems of violent conflict, and through those stories, we begin to elicit the principles and patterns that are driving innovation in the peacebuilding field.

You can also read the article in full on the Beyond Profit blog.

We welcome your comments, suggestions and dialogue.

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Kissing the Tiger: Peace as a Pre-Requisite for Development

Roshan Paul and Sarah Jefferson

The year 1991 marked the beginning of an era of turmoil and unrest in Mali. Distraught by the lack of autonomy of the citizen sector, ethnic Tuaregs launched an insurgency to transfer power from the Malian government to the people. In the process, Tuaregs became targets for retaliation by Malian troops and fled the country along with thousands of ethnic Moors. Although it is difficult to accurately amass the number of refugees, it is estimated that by 1995-1996 when hostilities began to pacify, 80,000 Malians had been given refugee status.

Mali was confronted at this juncture with the challenge of successfully reintegrating tens of thousands of repatriated Malians, who, because of the disruption of the insurgency, found themselves economically and socially disadvantaged. Indeed, “repatries” are considered to be uninvited strangers and intruders who tend to stand out and be seen as untrustworthy because of their different accents or behaviors acquired while abroad.