PNG hill tribes negotiate peace deal
Updated
In Papua New Guinea, at least 30 warring hill tribes from the Southern Highlands have agreed to lay down their arms and cease generations of fighting in what's being described as the regions first peace agreement. The so-called Tari District peace deal has taken 5 years to negotiate through a series of peace building activities organised by a team of local and international volunteers lead by a former Philippines born nun now living in Australia.
Presenter: Claudette Werden
Speakers: Joy Balazo
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BALAZO: In 2003, we started with the Young Ambassadors for Peace workshops, and that was involving members of opposing tribes, of warring tribes. When they had finished with the workshops they found out that there's a way of resolving a problem without having to kill each other.
WERDEN: And how did you manage to get the 32 warring tribes to agree to a peace agreement?
BALAZO: It was when these two tribes agreed to go into mediation, they started to talk about what was the cause of the conflict and why this person killed that person and all those issues that are related to it and then when they decided they did not want to go anymore into fighting, so we throw the question back to them, what do you want to do. In their culture they have to have what they call compensation, if you kill five of my people, you as the leader will have to compensate the relatives of those people who have died, so the whole thing boils into compensation and what to do next, so it's really them who decide whether to finish with the fighting and start the peace building, our role their is to see whether they really want to go into peace, so when they say they want to go for peace, that's when we go into mediation and we facilitate it.
WERDEN: And how has this peace agreement been received in Papua New Guinea?
BALAZO: It's been, people really couldn't believe the fighting going on for 20, 11 years is over. Even for them to see these fighters even if they have not seen them they know their names because its a common knowledge that this "Peter" has been fighting and everyone has been scared to hear their names that they're around and they couldn't believe that things are finished and the other manifestation that they have accepted it really well is that so many people coming together and the following day after the signing you could see the whole of Tari was full of people just walking around leisurely without that fear that was there when we started the initiative Ambassador of Peace in 2005, you could hardly see a person walking on the road because everyone is just so scared and now it's just so different.
WERDEN: And that's not the first peace agreement you've helped negotiate, you've been involved in peace negotiations in Sri Lanka, Indonesia..
BALAZO: That's true, yes, been involved in peace building in Sri Lanka, in Solomon Islands, in Ambon Indonesia but this is the first in Papua New Guinea, that's what they said in the Highlands, because it is in their culture that once you are enemy you are enemy forever.
