Learning from Hiroshima, Acting in South Sudan: Lydia Jamba Builds Peace

Always looking for opportunities to expand her skills, Lydia found the Primary Course of the Program for Global Human Resource Development for Peacebuilding and Development. Commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, the Program sets out to discover, develop and build human resources for peacebuilding. The Primary Course focuses on young professionals committed to building careers in peacebuilding and development. It is implemented by Hiroshima University in collaboration with the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

Lydia was accepted to the FY2024 Primary Course, which was held from January 2025 to February 2025. After completing the online training phase, she arrived in Japan to join 22 Program Associates in a four-week training that took her to Hiroshima and Tokyo. Lydia spent each day in Japan reflecting on the many new perspectives and values that she encountered and how she could apply them to her work back home.

One topic that she found immediately practical was negotiation. Conflict resolution always involves mediation and negotiation, and Lydia says that the Course taught practical things that she could use and gave her ideas, such as how to build peace between people in camps for internally displaced people or refugees.

To understand the different approaches to negotiation and looking at communication and teamwork among the negotiating [parties], and understanding … about giving task[s] or a role to the [parties] – was … interesting to me. I didn’t know about that.” —Lydia Tabu Casmiro Jamba (South Sudan), Alumna of the FY2024 Primary Course

The Course also reaffirmed for Lydia the fundamental importance of gender mainstreaming for building peace. She mentions, for example, that the Revitalised Peace Agreement, a 2018 framework to end South Sudan’s civil war, was developed with limited participation by women, and the implementation of its gender commitments has been uneven. Especially now that she works for an organization aiming to build a society where girls and women can realize their rights, Lydia is prepared to develop a theory of change for the projects that she brings in and ensure that gender is meaningfully addressed.