Jungmin Kim/ Conf 340/ 11/19/2019

Abstract
Nigeria is Africa’s Midwest region where made up of a complex race of more than 300 tribes. Historically, Nigeria is full of conflicts, including life threatening, others minor and pedestrian. There has been constant conflict among regional tribes due to differences in the level of development , ethnicity and religion. Conflict management requires the application of resolution techniques to regulate these conflicts; and peace-building seeks to develop constructive relationships across ethnic and national boundaries to resolve these deadly conflicts. The government in Nigeria must address the root causes of these conflicts.

Background  

The ethnic-religious conflict in Nigeria is divided into southern, middle, and northern regional conflicts depending on the center of the occurrence, and the conflict also varies with regions. In the case of conflicts in the central part of the country, the conflict has become even worse as it overlaps economic issues with the chronic and daily pattern of ethnic-religious conflicts in Nigeria.Conflicts between ethnic-religious communities usually appear in an intensified form. ( Inequality as the northern region lags far behind the southern region, and land disputes among nomadic Muslims and agrarian Christians are the main reasons behind the deepening of the Sino-religious conflict.)In the north, anger over poverty and discrimination combined with the political ideology of Islam, giving birth to Boko Haram, an Islamic political militant group. The Nigerian government claims to have effectively eradicated Boko Haram in December 2015, but fighting has continued in the northeastern region.In the southern part of the country, the central government, led by the northern Muslim-born president, and local armed rebels are confronting each other.

Path to peace
Peace building can come in form of direct effort which mainly focuses intentionally on the factors driving or mitigating  conflict, in an attempt to reduce  structural or direct violence. The Kroc  Institute indicates peace-building as “the development of constructive personal, group, and political relationships across  ethnic, religious, class, national, and  racial boundaries … to resolve injustice in  nonviolent ways and to transform the  structural conditions that generate  deadly conflict”.  
The U.S. Government and U.S. Embassy in Nigeria work very closely with a number of organizations in Nigeria to protect people and to have respect for human rights. They work with the Plateau Peace Building Agency, by giving grants for the agency’s ongoing efforts to work for peace and dialogue in this embattled state.

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VXJ7S2jxrY
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308691154_CONFLICT_MANAGEMENT_AND_PEACE_BUILDING_IN_NIGERIA_FINDING_THE_COMMON_GROUND
https://www.usip.org/events/peace-nigeria-how-build-it-and-americas-role
https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2018/09/06/en/peace-building-nigeria