Hakamat and Peacebuilding 2004-2012

Abstract

Five years after the secession of South Sudan from Sudan, peace building activities in Sudan have not yet come to an end and violent conflicts in Sudan have not stopped – rather, they intensified – while international attention has shifted to other regions of the world. Darfur remains a crisis region, and the southern, eastern, and western edges of the Sudan are still conflict-ridden, even increasingly so. This article looks into how peacebuilding projects engaged Hakamat – female singers and poets – to spread the message of peace between 2004 and 2012. This international involvement was influenced by two things: the image of Hakamat among the riverine North Sudanese and the international peacebuilding community as `troublemakers´; and the fact that they contradict the image of women as passive victims of violent conflicts. It was for these reasons that the Hakamat became a `hot topic´ with organizations working in Darfur. Although the issue was not prominently reported in the newspapers, the organizations working on peacebuilding in Sudan worked keenly with the women singers and poets known as `Hakamat´, who are said to influence the violent conflict in Darfur through their songs and poetry. The Hakamat perhaps first gained the attention of these organizations as potential peacebuilding actors and participants in peacebuilding workshops because of their `extraordinary´ role as women who can influence issues that were regarded as `male affairs´: that is, conflict and violence. Equally, the Government of Sudan also sought to involve the Hakamat in its political processes in Darfur since the late 1980s.This article is based on an unpublished Diploma thesis (Adam 2013), the research for which was carried out in the Greater Khartoum area between August 2012 and April 2013.