SPADO is currently managing a network of civil society activists comprising representatives of NGOs, religious scholars, political activists, academia and media representatives. The capacity building of the network comprising forty members was undertaken on lines of conflict analysis, mediation, dialogues, negotiation and communication and problem solving skills with the technical expertise of United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in 2009 for representatives of aforementioned segments from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. In the second phase starting the network was extended to Karachi and other parts of Sindh province, training another batch of forty-five civil society activists.
The network members have ever since resolved some very potentially violent conflicts within their communities and undertaken trainings within their organizations and the communities in their respective areas. SPADO maintains an active follow-up on the activities of the group and reflects these in a quarterly newsletter. These conflict mediation facilitators trained in dialogue mediation valuably contributed to SPADO’s another peacebuilding intervention at the regional level called Pakistan-Afghanistan Dialogue initiative 2010-2011 in which they engaged border communities representatives from cross sectors in identifying barriers and opportunities to peacebuilding in border sharing Pukhtoon populated regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan and developing community action plans and policy recommendations to local and national governments and the international community for building peace in the region.
SPADO has achieved remarkable results of this activity in terms of the effectiveness for example:
- Two land conflicts were peacefully resolved and one land conflict is being managed nonviolently
- One ethnic conflict was resolved peacefully
- One conflict regarding humanitarian assistance to flood victims was resolved peacefully
- One conflict regarding two journalist unions was resolved peacefully
- One Karo-kari case was resolved peacefully
