The Unexplored Assets

This article explores the roles that faith-based dispute settlement institutions play for peace making among the Siltie in southern Ethiopia. It looks into the intertwined and multifaceted roles of faith leaders as peace makers, religious figures as well as social actors. The article argues that the inefficiency of the state and Sharia courts worsened by an acute shortage of staff seems to render the courts irrelevant in the eyes of many local people, who often question their legitimacy and jurisdiction. It also argues that elders and local religious actors who are conversant with grass-root level conflicts are more important figures to end face to face disputes and foster efforts to promote reconciliation than state judges and Qadis. This is evidenced by the seemingly higher number of people who prefer taking their cases to faith-based and customary modes of dispute settlement rather than the Sharia and state courts. This indicates the existence of internal power contentions between plural intra-faith dispute settlement institutions on the one hand, and the state courts on the other. I have mainly employed a qualitative data gathering method to generate the data presented in this article.