By Cherno Omar Barry – Professor of Comparative Literature
BOOK PROFILE
Title: Pearls of Sustainable Peace
Author: Muhammed Trawally
ISBN: 978-9983-94-496-9
Year of Publication: 2025
Publisher: Self-Published, The Gambia
Length: 84 pages
Genre: Peace Studies / Philosophy / Social Development
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Country of Origin: The Gambia
In a world where the vocabulary of peace is too often confined to the conference hall and the communiqué, Pearls of Sustainable Peace by Muhammed Trawally arrives as a refreshing and profound call for human and institutional renewal. Published in 2025, this 84-page work of reflection and reform is less a book than a mirror held to the conscience of nations and individuals alike. It is at once poetic, philosophical, and pedagogical—a text that challenges the reader to understand peace not merely as the absence of war but as a way of living, learning, and governing.
From the opening pages, Trawally makes it clear that Pearls of Sustainable Peace is a labour of conviction. The dedication — “to serve Almighty God, by uplifting the dignity of a people under God” — sets the moral tone. The preface reads like a sermon for an age that has lost its compassion: a warning that when the blood of children stains the soil, no ideology, no matter how noble, can justify it. This opening reflection situates the author among thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., whose understanding of peace transcended politics to touch the spiritual fabric of humanity.
The author, a Gambian peace educator and global advocate, builds his argument through a four-stage framework — Musukuta, Garaba, Mahatma, and Lisa — representing the home, the school, the workplace, and the public sphere. Each stage functions as a layer in what he calls the architecture of sustainable peace. The model is deceptively simple yet deeply profound: peace, he insists, must be cultivated at home before it can flourish in the world. “If homes fail,” he writes, “no government, no law, no institution can make up for it.” This premise forms the heart of the book.
Language, in Trawally’s hands, is both melody and instrument. His prose moves between the meditative and the didactic, often borrowing the cadence of scripture and the precision of a lecture. His diction is clear and purposeful, his sentences polished with rhetorical rhythm and moral urgency. “The mind is like a garden,” he tells us, “as one sows so he or she will reap.” This imagery, recurrent throughout the text, transforms abstract principles into tangible metaphors. The book’s title itself — Pearls of Sustainable Peace — suggests the slow formation of something precious under pressure, an apt metaphor for the patience required to build harmony in fractured societies.
The chapters unfold like a moral curriculum. The Musukuta stage situates peace within the family, calling parents the “quiet architects of society.” The author quotes philosophers from Benjamin Franklin to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to reinforce his claim that character is destiny. “Men are what their mothers made them,” he echoes Emerson, reminding readers that governance begins in the nursery. From there, the Garaba stage explores schools as “seedbeds of peace,” insisting that education must cultivate not only literacy but empathy. “A child who learns only to read and write, without being taught how to love and forgive,” he cautions, “may one day become a clever tyrant.”
By the time the narrative reaches the Mahatma and Lisa stages, Trawally expands his argument to the ethical and institutional dimensions of peace. Here, the book becomes a social manifesto. He identifies corruption, injustice, and institutional betrayal as “peace killers,” arguing that societies cannot thrive when the very systems meant to serve become instruments of oppression. His prose at this stage carries the gravity of political commentary but retains its moral clarity. “A parliament that excludes youth from participation,” he writes, “creates policies that ignore the future.” Such insights give the book a pulse that is both local and continental, resonating with Africa’s contemporary governance challenges.
One of the most striking features of Pearls of Sustainable Peace is its intertextual depth. Trawally engages a wide range of voices—from Gandhi’s Young India Speeches to Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence — and grounds his reflections in verifiable references. His integration of quotations from Einstein, the Dalai Lama, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and even Margaret Thatcher demonstrates both breadth and balance. Yet, for all its citations, the book remains deeply rooted in African realities. The author’s references to the April 2000 student protests in The Gambia, the decay of civic attitudes in public spaces, and the moral fatigue of institutions place his arguments squarely within the continent’s ongoing struggle for ethical governance and civic renewal.
Trawally’s contribution is particularly significant in the context of Africa’s peacekeeping landscape. For decades, the continent has witnessed cycles of military intervention and post-conflict reconstruction — from the African Union’s missions in Mali and Sudan to Ecowas operations in The Gambia and Sierra Leone. These interventions, while necessary, often address symptoms rather than causes. Pearls of Sustainable Peace offers a different paradigm: a peace that begins in the moral imagination, not in the barracks. Where traditional peacekeeping is reactive, Trawally’s vision is preventive. Where policy frameworks rely on coercion, his model rests on conscience. His argument aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16, both of which envision “peaceful and inclusive societies.” Yet he moves beyond bureaucracy, calling for a renewal of humanity itself.
The comparative lens of the book, though implicit, can be read against the backdrop of the continent’s most enduring crises — the civil wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the insurgencies in the Sahel, and the social fractures in Ethiopia and Cameroon. In each, the failure of homegrown moral systems mirrors the collapse of institutional ethics. Trawally’s remedy — starting peace from the home and extending it outward — may sound idealistic, but history vindicates him. From South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to Rwanda’s post-genocide reconciliation model, sustainable peace has always emerged where societies combined justice with moral education. As John Paul Lederach argued in The Moral Imagination (2005), peacebuilding requires “the capacity to imagine a web of relationships that includes our enemies.” Trawally’s book operationalizes that idea within a culturally grounded framework.
Stylistically, the work straddles the boundary between literature and philosophy. It reads at once like a personal reflection and a civic manifesto. The prose is sprinkled with metaphor and parallelism — devices that make the argument memorable without compromising its clarity. “Homes that heal, heal nations,” he writes, a line that could easily serve as a national motto. His use of repetition — “When homes fail, societies begin to rot from within” — drives home the central thesis with poetic precision. The rhythm and moral persuasion recall Chinua Achebe’s The Trouble with Nigeria, where literature becomes a mirror of social conscience.
If the book has a weakness, it is the idealism that occasionally overwhelms its pragmatism. The vision of peace that begins with every individual is inspiring but may appear utopian in societies ravaged by systemic injustice and economic inequality. Yet even here, Trawally’s argument is not naïve; it is aspirational. He does not claim that inner peace alone can end wars, but rather that without inner peace, all external peacekeeping efforts will fail. In this sense, the book is less a manual for policymakers than a moral blueprint for citizens.
In the concluding chapters, Lisa — the Public Sphere Where Culture Is Made, the author celebrates the creative power of nature and art as allies of peace. “Peace breathes in the forests, sings in the rivers, and dances in the colors of art,” he writes, in one of the book’s most lyrical passages. Here, Trawally reminds us that peace is not only negotiated but also imagined — through stories, songs, and symbols that unite people beyond politics. The inclusion of this final reflection brings the book full circle: from the personal to the planetary, from the moral to the artistic, from the home to the world.
In the final assessment, Pearls of Sustainable Peace stands as one of the most intellectually coherent and spiritually resonant works to emerge from The Gambia in recent years. It belongs to a growing tradition of African peace literature alongside the writings of Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai, and Ali Mazrui — thinkers who insist that the real battle for peace is fought not in the field but in the human heart. Trawally’s voice is both youthful and wise, his message urgent but hopeful. His book does not promise easy solutions, but it dares to suggest that peace can be taught, learned, and lived.
In an era when the world’s attention is fixed on conflicts and divisions, Pearls of Sustainable Peace offers a different gaze: one that looks inward first. “If you hold this book,” the author writes, “you hold a mirror.” It is a mirror that reflects not only our flaws but also our possibilities. And in that reflection lies the promise that peace, however fragile, can still be sustained — one home, one school, one heart at a time.
Author Profile
Muhammed Trawally is a Gambian peace advocate, educator, and writer. He currently serves as the Country Director of the Institute of International Peace Leaders, an organization aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). He also chairs the Unity of Nations Action for Climate Change Council Gambia SDG Leaders, registered in India. He serves as the Global Director of Media and Public Relations for the United Youth for a Sustainable Globe.
Trained in International Conflict Analysis and Peacebuilding by a German Institute and certified by the United States Institute of Peace in civic-military coordination and media and arts for peacebuilding, Trawally’s professional journey bridges global activism and community-based development. His work has earned him international recognition—he was listed among the World Book of Records’ Most Inspiring Men on Earth (2022) and has been invited to speak at global forums, including the Global Peace Summit (Dubai) and the Sevagram Ashram Symposium (India).
