“Peace is like a fragile glass; it must be handled with care.”
This is how Kuey Kuach describes his daily work in the Jewi refugee camp in Gambella, Ethiopia. Kuey Kuach fled South Sudan more than ten years ago and has since raised his six children in the camp. The Gambella State is one of the poorest in Ethiopia. The number of refugees exceeds the host population, and tensions can easily escalate. A hungry child stealing a food coupon can flare up into a fight. A fight can become a clash between groups. And a clash between groups can become deadly violence.
Every day, Kuey Kuach and other local peace promoters ensure that refugees and host communities voice problems as soon as they arise. They help find solutions to resolve disputes before they turn violent. Results are tangible: “Previously, when a conflict arose, people immediately acted emotionally. Revenge was what they were thinking about. Today, they come to me first and ask if I can help them find a solution. Instead of fighting, we sit down together and talk.”
This work benefits from funding and support from an international organisation called ZOA. Investing in local peace actors, like ZOA is doing in Jewi refugee camp, is not obvious in humanitarian action. For ZOA, this is the result of an organisational journey. Its first focus was technical work: staff were hired because they knew how to build shelters, water and sanitation infrastructure, and provide life-saving assistance during disasters. Initially, peace was seen as too political, too sensitive, too elusive to invest in. But staff could see how their work sometimes inadvertently created even more tensions for communities. They also saw the positive difference they could make: staying present even in high-risk situations, they witnessed how local communities craved for peace and how much could be achieved by supporting their efforts.
ZOA applied for conflict sensitivity support from PeaceNexus in 2016. Step by step, the organisation has transformed ways of working in conflict contexts. Regular trainings and peer-learning between country teams were held for staff and partners to learn dialogue and conflict resolution techniques. ZOA leadership critically assessed their overall strategy, choice of partners and ways to design, implement and evaluate the work to ensure context and local actors would be put at the centre.
Such work within an organisation is hardly visible from the outside. It takes courage, humility and perseverance. But today, at community level, results are tangible. Tensions have decreased in the Jewi refuge camp in Ethiopia. Communities are healing from the trauma of violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Children from different communities in Iraq are learning with their teachers about how resolve disputes peacefully.
ZOA’s work demonstrates that peace can be built even in the most challenging contexts. Today, work on the “Peace Nexus” has been put at the centre of ZOA’s 2023-2027 strategy. In the words of their leader Chris Lukkien, “In all we do, we will be searching for options to contribute to reducing conflict and promoting peace.”
By Heloise Heyer, with Corita Corbijn
PeaceNexus provided conflict sensitivity support to ZOA from 2016 – 2020. We wanted to tell this story because ZOA was one of the first humanitarian partners of the Foundation. In this partnership characterised by shared values, trust and perseverance, we learnt tremendously about the courage and innovation it takes to move from principles to practice on conflict sensitivity.
Reference on Gambella story and quotes: Cultivating peaceful relations in Gambella, Ethiopia, ZOA, June 2025
Reference of picture: DRC programme, ZOA Peacebuilding Best Practice Paper
