Knowledge sharing in peacebuilding: A case study of the Nuba Mountains' war zone in Sudan

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in decolonial/postcolonial approaches to peace, peacebuilding and peace education pedagogy, with scholars asking scholar-practitioners and practitioners to rethink `the world from the perspective of the marginalized, that is, from Latin America, from Africa, from Indigenous places and from the global South' (Zembylas, 2020, p. 5; see also Ayindo, 2017; FitzGerald, 2021; Fontan, 2012; Hajir & Kester, 2020; Omer, 2020; Sabaratnam, 2013, 2017; Schirch, 2022; Shirazi, 2011; Weerawardhana, 2018; Zondi, 2016). However, decolonial/postcolonial-informed peacebuilding scholarship has yet to focus on the different conceptions and functions of knowledge sharing within peacebuilding practice from the perspective of peacebuilders working in a war zone, particularly in Africa. While scholars have called for more research on exactly how knowledge sharing could contribute to peacebuilding directly, empirical studies focusing on how knowledge sharing impacts peacebuilding practice within a war zone have yet to be conducted (Verkoren, 2006, 2008). This study contributes to filling this gap by using a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm (Chilisa, 2020) and a combined participatory action research case study methodology to better understand the role of knowledge sharing in peacebuilding practice in the Nuba Mountains war zone during the current war between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the Government of Sudan (GoS), which has been ongoing for 12 years.

The study found that the role of knowledge sharing in peacebuilding practice within the Nuba Mountains war zone was more than just information flowing between people. It was a far more profound communal experience that was based around a collective self-concept, using different kinds of knowledge within endogenous knowledge systems involving informal and formal community settings rather than organisational settings. These endogenous knowledge systems were an amalgamation of African, Arab-Islamic and Western knowledge systems due to the trans-Saharan slave trade, colonialism, globalisation and successive authoritarian regimes in Sudan that marginalised African knowledge systems within Nuba Mountains communities, over centuries. The study found that the Nuba Mountains communal knowledge sharing practice became a function of Nuba Mountains peacebuilding practice. It generated endogenous knowledge, unearthed buried knowledge, lessened inherited power imbalances, and played an epistemic violence prevention role within the peacebuilding practice. The study offers a contribution to peacebuilding scholarship and practice by highlighting a missing knowledge system dimension within peacebuilding scholarship and practice and offering a research design that borrows and integrates decolonial/postcolonial and relational mentoring constructs for its transdisciplinary analytical framework. Rather than offering a specific methodology for practitioners to use in practice, this study offers guiding questions that can aid any peacebuilding scholar-practitioner who is thinking about engaging in knowledge sharing as part of peacebuilding practice or scholarship in war zones or with war-affected communities.