FROM VIOLENT CONFLICT TO PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE

<< “DIMENSIONS OF TERRORISM”

“OIL AND BEYOND” >>

Globalization of Media MCM404

Lesson 35

FROM VIOLENT CONFLICT TO PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE

Text of the handout for students

Note: As a review of the verbal and visual (i.e. ppts) of this lecture will show to the students, the content

covers the subject in its different constituent stages, proceeding from the eruption and cessation of violence

between communities and countries to the challenge of constructing and maintaining stable and peaceful

relations between those who have previously been involved in mutually or directly destructive actions.

The text of the following material on reconciliation is excerpted from the handbook titled: "Reconciliation

After Violent Conflict", published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

(IDEA) based in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003.

The address, contact details and website of IDEA are: International IDEA, Stromsborg, SE-103 34

Stockholm, Sweden. Tel: 46 8 698 3700, Fax: 46 8 20 24 22, email: info@idea.int; website:

http://www.idea.int.

This particular excerpt is taken from Chapter 1 of the handbook, the title of the Chapter is: "Reconciliation:

an Introduction", written by David Bloomfield.

For a more comprehensive portrayal of the subject, students are advised to visit the website of IDEA.

However, the content of the lecture and the handout, along with references to the reading list should give

students an adequate appreciation of the subject of the lecture.

The Process of Reconciliation

Reconciliation means different things to different people. Its significance varies from culture to culture, and

changes with the passage of time. To get a grip on the concept, four basic questions are pertinent:

What?

Who?

How?

When?

2.1

What is Reconciliation?

2.1.1

Ideally

Ideally, reconciliation prevents, once and for all, the use of the past as the seed for renewed conflict. It

consolidates peace, breaks the cycle of violence and strengthens newly established or re-introduced

democratic institutions.

As a backward-looking operation, reconciliation brings about the personal healing of survivors, the reparation

of past injustices, the building or rebuilding of non-violent relationships between individuals and

communities, and the acceptance by the former parties to a conflict of a common vision and understanding

of the past. In its forward-looking dimension, reconciliation means enabling victims and perpetrators to get

on with life and, at the level of society, the establishment of a civilized political dialogue and an adequate

sharing of power.

2.1.2

In Practice

In practice such all-encompassing reconciliation is not easy to realize. The experience of a brutal past makes

the search for peaceful co-existence a delicate and intricate operation. Reconciliation is not an isolated act,

but a constant readiness to leave the tyranny of violence and fear behind. It is not an event but a process, and

as such usually a difficult, long and unpredictable one, involving various steps and stages. Each move

demands changes in attitudes (e.g. tolerance instead of revenge), in conduct (e.g., joint commemoration of all

the dead instead of separate, partisan memorials) and in the institutional environment (e.g., integrating the

war veterans of both sides into one national army instead of keeping ex-combatants in quasi-private militias).

105

Globalization of Media MCM404

Above all, the approach must be that every step counts, that every effort has value, and that in this delicate

domain even a small improvement is significant progress.

There is a certain danger in talking about reconciliation in terms of strict sequence. The process is not a

linear one. At each stage a relapse back into more violent means of dealing with conflicts is always a real

possibility. And the stages do not always follow logically after each other in any set order. Nonetheless, they

remain essential ingredients for lasting reconciliation.

Three stages

Stage1. Replacing Fear by Non-Violent Co-existence

When the shooting stops, the first step away from hatred, hostility and bitterness is the achievement of non-

violent co-existence between the antagonist individuals and groups. This means at a minimal looking for

alternatives to revenge. A South African observer, Charles Villa-Viceencio, writes: "At the lowest level co-

existence implies no more than a willingness not to kill one another a case of walking by on the other side

of the street". For some the basis for this step will be war-weariness or the simple but realistic conclusion

that killing does not bring the dead back to life, or it may be based on the belief that, as Martin Luther King

said, those who do not learn to live together as brothers are all going to perish together as fools. An

encouraging thought here is that, even in the midst of the cruelest conflicts, small islands of tolerance and

civility always continue to exist men and women who, through acts of extreme courage, save the lives of

people "from the other side".

The move towards such co-existence requires first of all that victims and perpetrators be freed from the

paralysing isolation and all-consuming self-pity in which they often live. This involves the building or renewal

of communication inside the communities of victims and offenders and between them. Political and

community leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and religious institutions have a serious

responsibility here. They can initiate or sustain programmes for such liberating communications. Or, as

symbolic representatives of victims and offenders, they can initiate dialogue if those directly involved are not

yet ready to talk.

A second condition is a safe environment. Without a minimum of physical security there is no prospect of

any progress along the path to reconciliation. Local and/or international political decision-makers have a

crucial role to play at this point. Serious effort must be directed towards establishing the rule of law on

equitable and accepted terms.

Conflicts do not disappear with this step in the reconciliation process. Individuals, groups and communities

continue to be adversaries, but they agree to disagree and to use less violent means to accommodate old (and

new) disputes. One possible way is to exchange private vengeance for retribution by an institution (e.g., a

criminal court) which is bound by agreed rules.

Stage2. When Fear No Longer Rules: Building Confidence and Trust

Then, in due course, co-existence evolves towards a relation of trust. This second stage in the process

requires that each party, both the victim and the offender, gains renewed confidence in himself or herself and

in each other. It also entails believing that humanity is present in every man and woman; an

acknowledgement of the humanity of others is the basis of mutual trust and opens the door for the gradual

arrival of a sustainable culture of non-violence. In the context of Kosovo, Howard Clark writes: "One can

counsel distinguishing between a person and his actions, hating the sin while trying not to hate the sinner; one

can also attempt to understand the human weakness of those who were swept away by the tide. However,

even when one cannot forgive, there are some minimum standards below which one should not sink: social

reconstruction demands respecting the rights of those one detests. This respect is in itself an assertion of

one's own humanity".

Another product of stage 2 is the victim's capacity to distinguish degrees of guilt among the perpetrators to

disaggregate individual and community. This is an important move in destroying atrocity myths, which keep

alive the idea that all the members of a rival group are actual or potential perpetrators. Courts of law can

make a difference here: their mission is precisely to individualize guilt. Traditional justice mechanisms often

106

Globalization of Media MCM404

create similar opportunities. In October 2001 the population of Rwanda elected more than 200,000 lay

judges who oversee some 10,000 gacaca tribunals, a society-rooted institution where individuals' guilt in the

1994 genocide will be publicly discussed.

For trust and confidence to truly develop, a post-conflict society has to put in place a minimum of functional

institutions a non-partisan judiciary, an effective civil service and an appropriate legislative structure. It is

this condition that links a reconciliation policy to the many other tasks of transition from violent conflict to

durable peace.

Stage3. Towards Empathy

Empathy comes with the victims' willingness to listen to the reasons for the hatred of those who caused their

pain and with the offenders' understanding of the anger and bitterness of those who suffered. One way to

make this possible is the work of truth commissions, sifting fact from fiction, truth from myth. In addition,

such commissions may lead to an official acknowledgement of the injustice inflicted. Truth-telling is also a

precondition of reconciliation because it creates objective opportunities for people to see the past in terms of

shared suffering and collective responsibility. More important still is the recognition that victims and

offenders share a common identity, as survivors and as human beings, and simply have to get on with each

other. In some cases, the parties in the conflict will seek and discover meeting points where partnership

appears more sensible than sustained conflict. Common interests may be found in roles and identities that

cross former lines of division, such as religion, gender and generation or region, as in the case of the

Burundian province of Ngozi, where Hutu and Tutsi are collaborating closely in an attempt to improve the

prospects of their region, thus transcending the divisions of the past. Economic concerns too may inspire

such bridging activities, as they do in Kosovo, where Albanian trade unionists and a Serbian workers'

movement have established post-war contract.

Empathy does not necessarily lead to a fully harmonious society or to national unity. Conflicts and

controversy are part and parcel of all human communities. Moreover, empathy does not exclude the

continuation of feelings of anger. Nor does it require that the victim be ready to forgive and forget.

Pardoning the offenders will, of course, broaden the basis for empathy, but for many victims it may be too

distant, or too sudden, a goal and to pursue it relentlessly may result in any abrupt and early end to the entire

reconciliation process. At this stage it may be unjust to ask victims to forgive if perpetrators refrain from

expressing regret and remorse, as has been the case in Argentina, Chile and Guatemala.

Accompanying the Three Stages: Introduction of the Codes of Democracy and a Just Socio-Economic

Order. Peaceful co-existence, trust and empathy do not develop in a sustainable way if structural injustices in

the political, legal and economic domains remain. A reconciliation process must therefore be supported by a

gradual sharing of power, an honouring of each other's political commitments, the creation of a climate

conducive to human rights and economic justice, and a willingness among the population at large to accept

responsibility for the past and for the future in other words, reconciliation must be backed by the

recognition of the essential codes of democracy.

There are many examples of societies where reconciliation has remained hollow or unfinished precisely

because one side of a previous divide refused, consciously or unintentionally, to acknowledge this need for

democracy. Zimbabwe's recent history is a frightening demonstration of what happens when this is the case.

Zimbabwe was for many years acclaimed as a model of reconciliation between blacks and whites after long-

lasting colonial rule and a bloody military conflict. But thorough going economic justice has not been

achieved. It is widely believed that the end of the policy of reconciliation is partly based on and backed by a

general disappointment among large sections of the black population who see that the economic disparities

between Africans and white settlers have not disappeared.

2.1.3

What Reconciliation Is Not

The use of the term "reconciliation" in dealing with past human injustice is not without its dangers. The

interpretation of the concept is contested, and there are many erroneous notions of what reconciliation is.

(See section 1.2 clarifications of the definitions of reconciliation).

107

Globalization of Media MCM404

In a political context, those who want nothing done may cynically plan reconciliation merely as a

smokescreen. Victims, one the other hand, may perceive and condemn it as a code word for simply

forgetting. For those who have to live with their own pain and trauma, the term is indeed extremely sensitive.

As a victim of apartheid told the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), "Reconciliation

is only in the vocabulary of those who can afford it. It is non-existent to a person whose self-respect has

been stripped away and poverty is a festering wound that consumes his soul". A general feeling among black

and coloured South Africans is that the discourse on reconciliation has pressured them towards a premature

closure with the past.

A second source of misunderstandings is that the people of a post-conflict society are sometimes forced to be

impatient, as if co-existence, trust and empathy can come swiftly. Such timing, expecting too much too

soon, especially if it is proclaimed as official policy is doomed to fail. Reconciliation must be seen as a long-

term process that may take decades or generations. Reconciliation based on ambiguity will not last. The

notion and its interpretation must be publicly discussed. Here lies a task for the authorities, the media,

schools and civil society in its broadcast shape NGOs, advocacy groups, religious institutions and so on.

The need for peaceful co-existence, trust and empathy must be internalized before any effective policy can be

set in motion. Such society-wide debate will have to take into account that genuine reconciliation is much

more than rebuilding relationships between former enemies, or between victims and perpetrators.

2.2

Reconciliation: Who is Involved?

Co-existence, trust and empathy develop between individuals who are connected as victims, beneficiaries and

perpetrators. This is reconciliation at the interpersonal level. That is, for example, what happens when the

victim is willing to shake hands with the torturer who inflicted their pain? Many initiatives in the area of

healing (for example, medication) take this route towards reconciliation. However, all the steps in the process

also entail the reconciling of groups and communities as a whole. Each perspective, the interpersonal and the

collective, has its own chemistry but they are equally important in the process.

Individual victims and perpetrators are at the heart of all reconciliation activities. However, both categories

embrace many more persons and groups than those who are directly involved in acts of political, ethnic or

religious violence. The definition of victim hood as it is used in chapter 4, includes family members,

neighbours and even friends of direct victims, all of whom may have been traumatized by what they have

experienced or witnessed.

108

Table of Contents: