Stability for Ethiopia's Lowland Marginalized Communities (SELAM-C)

July 2005 - December 2008

Donors: USAID

SELAM-C sought to lessen the negative impact of violent conflict among pastoralists in the South Omo zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State. The project employed a participatory, bottom-up approach and built on traditional pastoral conflict mediation and prevention mechanisms and practices to more effectively foster peace in the communities. This approach enabled community members themselves to map peace potentials and engage in peace processes. The project emphasized the participation of women and youth, along with elders and tribal leaders.

SELAM-C achieved its objectives by building the capacity of target communities and local civil society organizations to:

• lead peace-building and reconciliation processes
• create forums to strengthen the capacity of local governments to identify, address and manage conflicts and enhance good governance
• facilitate processes that can assist in harmonizing government development plans with community livelihood strategies.

SELAM-C organized peace dialogue workshops between different ethnic and tribal groups to resolve inter-ethnic conflict, established a Geographic Information System (GIS) to assist in identifying traditional boundaries, located important ecological changes of the project area, and finalized a community tourism scan.