Memory for Peace: How Hiroshima’s Experience Can Serve Burkina Faso

Background of the study

On January 15, 2016, Burkina Faso experienced the first ever terrorist attack in its capital city,
Ouagadougou. On the evening of that day, about 30 people with a majority of tourists coming from
several western countries were killed by gunmen before the restaurant Cappuccino, one of the places
in Ouagadougou where westerners like to meet and relax. At first, the population of the city had
mixed feelings of fear and incomprehension. They wondered why this attack happened and who were
the assailants. Slowly, rumors started to spread that the commando was composed of white-skinned
people who probably were from an Arab country and that they only wanted to kill white people.
Nobody could even imagine that citizens of Burkina Faso could be involved in what appeared as a
terrorist commando. Yet, only three years later, the trend had changed. Now suspicion had become
widespread between different communities of the country who began to point at the Fulani community
as the accomplice and sometimes the responsible of terrorist attacks in the country.

In 2019, the mere suspicion will culminate to a dramatic event in a center-north Burkina village called
Yirgou. On January 1st, 2019, gunmen attacked the village and killed six (06) people from the mossi
ethnic group including the village chief and his son. In retaliation, the mossi-led self-defense militia
called Koglweogo will target the Fulani community, their neighbors for decades, accusing them of
being accomplices of the terrorists. Officially, at least 46 deaths will be declared by the government 1
among the Fulani community. Yet, some international media like the French RFI mention 200 deaths 2.
Yirgou was the horrible expression of a thought that had been in the minds of many Burkina citizens
for a long time. A mostly silent discrimination and sometimes voiced accusations had been going on
in the country against the Fulani community since people with traits similar to those of the Fulanis
began to be seen with terrorist commandos. In public transportations, Fulanis began to be looked at
with suspicion and anxiety.

Yet Fulanis have always been part of the Burkinabe population and they even share strong socio-
cultural relations with the mossi ethnic group. According to Maud Saint-Lary 3 the Fulanis and Mossi
ethnic groups have had a complementary relationship since the 18e century on the current territory
called Burkina Faso. In fact, the Fulanis who are breeders were regularly attacked by tribes outside the
mossi empire where they lived and their cattle were stolen. An agreement was found with the mossi
warriors who protected them against the raiders and in exchange the Fulani community provided some
cattle annually for the mossi ritual sacrifices. Later, a conflict broke out in the empire and opposed
two mossi princes who fought for the succession of their deceased father. The Fulani sided with prince
Bagaré against his brother Baogo who was on the throne. Eventually, they defeated Baogo but the
French invaders took advantage of the unrest to colonize the territory after breaking the little
resistance that Baogo had tried to oppose. So, the colonizers entered by the instable northern region of
the mossi empire. Similarly, terrorism and interethnic violences are currently more noticeable in the
same northern region of modern Burkina Faso.

Had these past relationships and conflicts been memorialized correctly, maybe the political authorities
of Burkina Faso could have used these memories to prevent the advent of new forms of conflictuality
in the country by recalling the communities of their collective history and the profound consequences
of their past conflicts. Unfortunately, there seems to be an ignorance of or an insufficient interest in

1
Online Newspaper “LeFaso.net” https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article87308 accessed 10 August 2023
2
Internet site of the French newspaper “RFI” https://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20220521-burkina-les-propos-du-pr
%C3%A9sident-de-la-transition-sur-le-massacre-de-yirgou-font-r%C3%A9agir accessed 10 August 2023
3
Maud Saint-Lary. Aux marges du royaume. Le Yatenga des Peuls : pacte tacite, négociations et
trahisons . Dominique CASAJUS Fabio VITI. La Terre et le Pouvoir. À la mémoire de Michel Izard,
CNRS Editions, 2012, 978-2-271-07357-0. halshs-01742617
1
using the collective memory in general and more specifically the memory of conflicts to promote
peace in Burkina Faso. For example, on February 20 th, 2023, a group of civil-society leaders including
leaders from the Fulani community met with Captain Ibrahim TRAORE, the new President of Burkina
Faso. The objective of the meeting was to discuss about the national situation and possibilities for a
return to peace and security in the country. Taking the floor, Captain TRAORE said to the Fulani
leaders: “Dites à vos parents de déposer les armes”4 which can be translated by “tell your relatives to
put down their arms”. Not only this command was inadequate from a high-ranking official not to
mention the president of the country as by implicitly pointing at the entire Fulani community it could
increase discriminations and bring about violence against the Fulani community, but it was also
inadequate because Ibrahim TRAORÉ comes from the Bwaba ethnic group that has a joking-alliance
with the Fulanis. This alliance could have been used by the president to help appease intercommunity
tensions in the country and even initiate a dialogue with the members of the Fulani community who
had actually been recruited by terrorist organizations operating in the Sahel region, through the
community representatives. Actually, a good use of the collective memory can serve in several ways
to build peace in Burkina Faso and prevent new conflicts while a mismanagement can maintain the
country in a cycle of violence and revenge for years to come. The insufficient exploitation of the
collective memory for peacebuilding in Burkina Faso invites us to explore and learn from the
experiences of other countries who made a better use of their memories to construct more peaceful
societies and contribute to promote peace in the world. A good example is Japan with the famous
peace memorial in Hiroshima that commemorates the atomic bombings of 1945 in Hiroshima and
Nagazaki and that also promotes peace at the national and international level.

Problem statement
The identified problem this research tries to investigate is the insufficient exploitation of the collective
memory in Burkina Faso to help resolve the complex insecurity issue the country faces since 2016.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is dual. First it tries to understand how memorialization can contribute to
build peace at national and international level, using the case of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
Secondly, it aims at exploring how the Japanese experience can help Burkina Faso make a better use
of its memories to avoid the recurrence of new conflicts and promote peace at national and
international level.
.
Research questions
The main research question is: How can the memory contribute to build peace? This main question is
supported by two sub questions. The first sub question is: how does the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
contribute to peace in Japan and the world? And the second sub question is: how can the Hiroshima
experience serve Burkina Faso?

Previous studies
Previous research in the field of memorialization and heritage have generally recognized the
importance of memorials for the restoration of victims’ dignity, the commemoration of past abuses
and the non-repetition of violent conflicts at the national level (Tunamzifu 2018) 5. However, when it
comes to accepting war memorials as a universal heritage, there is some “legitimate” opposition from
former war adversaries who perpetrated the atrocities in a specific war context and who would not
have them accepted in the international memory as wrongdoings of theirs. A case in point is the
contestation from the USA and China in 1996 when “the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku

4
Newspaper « l’Evènement », Issue of March 25, 2023. p.7
5
Tunamzifu, P. Memorialisation as an often neglected aspect in the consolidation of transitional justice
Case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo https://www.accord.org.za/tag/commemoration-of-memories
accessed 25 May 2023
2
Dome) was successfully inscribed on the World Heritage List" (Rico 2008, p.346)6. Yet, the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial should allow us to go beyond our national identities and historical
perspectives to see all its potential for rallying humanity for international peacebuilding. As president
Obama would put it during his visit to Hiroshima in 2016, “There are many sites around the world that
chronicle this war -- memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that
echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we
are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a
species -- our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves
apart from nature and bend it to our will -- those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched
destruction.”7 Our study will contribute to a more practical understanding of the Hiroshima peace
memorial role in national and international peace while making a connection between the Japan’s
context and Burkina Faso in order to draw applicable lessons for the latter.

Methodology
 Qualitative method
In order to gain a deep understanding of the Hiroshima peace memorial’s contribution to peace in
Japan and in the world, and the possible usefulness of Hiroshima’s experience to Burkina Faso, we
will use the qualitative research method.
 Data collection
Both primary and secondary data will be used in our study in order to cross the data and get the most
accurate information possible. For the primary data collection, we will mainly conduct interviews with
people who are knowledgeable on the Hiroshima bombing and the Hiroshima peace memorial’s
activities. These people will include the survivors of the bombings (hibakushas), people working at
the Hiroshima peace memorial, academics, peace tourists and people living in Hiroshima. Oral
questionnaires will be used to collect the information. Other primary sources might include laws and
policies on memorialization in Japan and Burkina Faso, memoirs and statistical data available on the
Hiroshima experience. Our secondary data will include newspaper articles and academic articles
writings.
 Data Analysis
To analyze the collected data, we will use the discourse analysis method in order to understand the
information at our disposal and make interpretation.
 Limitations and alternative
The main limitation that can negatively impact our study in the language barrier since most of the data
will be in Japanese. A solution to this limitation could be starting Japanese classes as soon as I reach
Japan. Also, requesting the help a translator could be useful to conduct administer the oral
questionnaires. Another weakness can be the insufficient mastery of the social science research
methodology but I intend to take methodology classes as soon as possible in order to respect the
standards of a scientific work.

Significance of the study

The results of the study will mainly benefit Burkina Faso as the recommendations will be made in the
last section of the document in order to help the country make a better use of its collective memories
to contribute to the resolution of the current conflictual situation and help prevent new conflicts in the
country. Moreover, other developing countries can use the recommendations made to Burkina Faso
and adapt them to their own national contexts.

6
Rico, T. “Negative Heritage: The Place of Conflict in World Heritage” Conservation and Mgmt of Arch. Sites, Vol. 10 No. 4,
November, 2008, 344–352
7
Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/27/remarks-President-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-
japan-hiroshima-peace#:~:text=We%20come%20to%20mourn%20the,war%20that%20sets%20Hiroshima%20apart.
Accessed 25May2023
3
TENTATIVE THESIS PLAN

INTRODUCTION
1. Background of the Study
2. Problem statement
3. Research questions
4. Literature review
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY
I. Theoretical framework
II. Research methodology

CHAPTER II: THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL TO PEACE IN JAPAN AND
IN THE WORLD
I. The contribution of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial to Peace in Japan
1. Maintaining the memory of the 1945 events alive
2. Transmission of the memory to the future generations
3. Using the memory for peace education
II. The contribution of the Hiroshima peace memorial to peace in the World
1. Peace tourism
2. Advocacy against the atomic weapon
3. Training on peace studies offered to people from different countries

CHAPTER III: COMPARING THE NATIONAL CONTEXTS IN JAPAN AND BURKINA FASO
1. Comparison of historical and social contexts
2. Comparison of legal/policy frameworks for memorialization
3. Comparison of institutional frameworks for memorialization
4. Recommendations for a more active enforcement of the memory and peace nexus in Burkina
Faso

CONCLUSION