Timor-Leste Election Won by Jose Maria Vasconselos
Jose Maria de Vasconcelos wins East Timor presidential election. (REUTERS-Lirio Da Fonseca)
By Jose De Sousa
Jose De Sousa, known as Quico, is the SFCG Country Director in Dili, Timor-Leste. He sent us this blog post as a follow-up to his pre-election post which you can read here.
Jose Maria de Vasconcelos, also known as Taur Matan Ruak, won a second round election held this Monday, the 16th of April. Vasconcelos won over 61% of the 449,827 valid ballots counted, compared to 38% obtained by his rival, former independence leader Francisco Guterres, known as Lu Olo. Vasconcelos, 56, and Guterres, 58, were partners in the guerilla war against the Indonesian troops that occupied East Timor after the withdrawal of Portugal from this former colony in 1974.
Once again, the Timorese set a good example of a peacefully-run election. read more…
The New Gerber Babies
By Adrienne Varkiani
Companies across America have recently been changing their work in an effort to reflect the shifting demographics of the nation. Disney, for example, came out with its first black princess in The Princess and the Frog two years ago. Gerber, rather than continuing to use the same white baby from twenty years ago, has added several more babies of various races to their Gerber Baby campaign. And most recently, Marvel Comic’s Ultimate series features a new Spiderman who is half-black and half-Hispanic.
Of course, like many other Spiderman fans, I’m happy that Peter Parker is still alive in Marvel’s standard line. But reading some of the comments on the story about this new, alternate Spiderman made me quite upset. While I was happy Peter Parker was still alive because I liked him personally, a lot of other people disliked the alternate Spiderman because of his race. Those who commented made quips about affirmative action, outsourcing, and the new Spiderman doing the “work American superheroes refuse to do.” The same comments were on the stories about the Gerber babies, and I’m sure I would find similar comments on older articles about The Princess and the Frog.
Princess Tiana in The Princess and the Frog
I’m not sure whether such comments were made because of a bad experience with someone of a different race, an instinctive fear of change and that which is different from us, or if it was simply the hatred that often results from the anonymity of the internet. But while such changes may have been made by some companies out of the need to be politically correct, for the majority is was simply done in order to reflect reality. And the reality is that our nation’s demographics are changing. read more…
The following blog was written by Jonathan White for SFCG’s Learning Portal for Design, Monitoring, & Evaluation for Peacebuilding. You can find the original post here.
Capacity development seems to be all the rage these days. Many donors require capacity development to be built into any project they fund; this includes USAID’s own Conflict Management and Mitigation office. The popularity of capacity development is further evidenced by the shifting semantics surrounding the terminology itself: we’ve moved from ‘capacity building’ to ‘capacity development’ in order to avoid the implication that no capacity existed to begin with (i.e., ‘building’).
But how do we go about assessing and evaluating capacity? And, furthermore, what does this imply for the processes by which we design capacity development initiatives? read more…
SFCG addresses conflict mining at the local level
Photograph of Congolese miners at a gold mine in Montgbawalu, Ituri district, eastern Congo. September 8, 2005 (REUTERS/Jiro Ose)
By Audra Gustin, with assistance from the SFCG DRC Country Staff
The presence of vast mineral resources plays a key role in the conflicts that devastate Eastern Congo. The informal nature of the mining sector allows armed groups to finance their operations via the sale of conflict minerals.
Currently in the U.S., the Dodd-Frank bill requires Wall Street companies to trace the origins of their minerals and ensure that they are conflict-free, thus impeding the activities of dangerous armed groups. However, if the law is not followed, there is a risk that Congolese minerals could be banned entirely, which would devastate the local economy. SFCG is therefore undertaking steps to support the implementation of the law at a local level. read more…
Cynthia interviewing the former president of Burundi, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, in one of the Generation Grand Lacs programs in Bujumbura.
By Cyntia Ngendakuriyo
In 2011, I entered a program called Génération Grands Lacs (GGL), initiated by Search for Common Ground in the DRC. Every Saturday, we travel to meet young people from Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. On February 18th, 2012, I was scheduled to represent GGL in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s more than 3,500 km away from where I live in Bujumbura.
From Bujumbura to Kinshasa, we went through Kigali and Goma, where I met people from Kinshasa. Since that day, I have been impressed by many things. read more…
Marchers en route to Peace Park
By Brian Lee
Hundreds of youth and women’s organizations gathered in downtown Dili to march for peace on March 29th. The event was part of the N-Peace campaign on Women, Peace, and Security supported by UNDP and AusAID under the N-Peace initiative through partnership with Search for Common Ground Timor-Leste (SFCG-TL), UNFPA, and the N-Peace Network. It was hailed as a success by organizers, participants, and onlookers alike.
Singing and Dancing at the Peace Park
Although organizers had initially hoped for about 300 participants, it is estimated that between 500-600 youth from various universities in Timor Dili, women’s groups, and religious institutions participated. The one-kilometer march, ending at Peace Park and accompanied by singing, dancing, and speeches, was intended to promote peaceful and cooperative relations among Timorese people.
Just weeks away from the second round of 2012 presidential elections, the march could not have come at a more critical time. In 2006 and 2007, pre- and post-election violence plunged East Timor into turmoil.
Ironically, the event was not without conflict. read more…
