New Information & News Stream

PEACE TALKS

A new news and information feed (in English) on peace processes

This is new source of news and information about peacebuilding, mediation and peace processes around the world. This app (designed by Factr.com) has enabled our Co-Curators to draw on more than 500 sources (and growing) of published news. It is available free (just follow the site on your browser) or to have as an app (Factr) on you iPhone. This is a resource for anyone engaged or interested in the practical work of mediation and peacebuilding. It is premised on the idea that relevant comparative experiences are are rich source of ideas and inspiration – and it provides a steady flow. of these. Normally buried in the relative obscurity particular geographies and under the preponderance of news on violence and war, these selected articles make the case for the clear and transparent value of efforts to prevent, resolve and transform organised armed conflicts. Unlike other sites related to peace, Peace Talks is focussed on news and information on building peace by peaceful means.

 

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What is in and what is out (*and why)

Using 150 words (and growing *see below), we have sought to create a broad and inclusive filter that, together, broadly defines applied peacebuilding. It is as broad as a list of words that describe all kinds of interventions (by many people and many types of organisations) that are purposefully designed to sustain peace.

Of course there are no clear boundaries, but editorially we are seeking to prioritise deliberate interventions and significant positive changes in conflict contexts and exclude most diplomatic statements, visits and handshakes (articles about which are large in number) and also more indirect educational events like workshops and publications. Here are the criteria we are using in our inclusive approach: Peace_Talks_Search_Criteria. While we have not listed it here, we also have an even larger number of exclusion terms that help the stream run clean and these mostly relate to violence, sport and commerce.

We are very eager to have feedback on whether we should include additional search terms (please send them in), and your views on whether this focus is a legitimate and useful one.

Where are the stories of civil society/NGO/community peacebuilding?

As we have a special interest in uncovering experiences and perspectives that are otherwise hard to find or distinguish, we admit to being proactive in our approach to ensuring diversity of both sources and subjects. We are aware of the vital and creative roles in mediation and peacebuilding played by community leaders and local and international community and nongovernmental organisations, but we struggle to ensure their fair representation in this stream. We are actively looking for sources, including organisational websites – as close as possible to their sources, and would appreciate the suggestion of our readers. Of course, there are many reasons why many intervenors make an active choice to keep their stories out of the media, but if people and policy makers are going to better understand and value the interventions of peacebuilders these stories will need to be made public.

Sign-up as a Contributor

While anyone can have the access of a Viewer, if you would like to be a Contributor (which permissions that enable to you to post up new materials or highlight articles at any time), just send an email to andy@peacebuilding.co.uk

Join us as a Co-curator

Our ideal is that this resource flows as a reader co-curated stream.  We aim to have a minim of ten Co-curators, with the full access privileges to post new content, add new (RSS) sources, add new filter (inclusion/exclusion) terms, and to help keep the stream running focussed and relevant by ‘hiding’ irrelevant stories. This requires a commitment to visit the site at least one or more times a week.

Researchers

While the site has a search function, if you have a particular geographic or thematic interest, articles can be tagged and the App has a great facility for generating bespoke and shareable reports. The site would make a very useful data source for students with an interest in peace journalism.

Please take a minute to give us feedback

This is still in development stage so we need to know if you are encountering any glitches of finding anything difficult to navigate or whether you are finding it useful. (send an email to andy@peacebuilding.co.uk

Spread the word!

Please help us to promote the availability of the site through your networks and social media contacts. It was made to be used. The designers at Factr have also created a widget if you would be interested in adding this feed to your website please get in touch.

Thank you and we hope you find it useful,

/The Co-Curators

The Conflict Within the UK Labour Party and the Need for Mediation

The Labour Party has a conflict that runs deeper than a leadership contest, and it is going to take more than rhetorical punches or another election to get over it.  We are at the stage where everyone is being invited to take a side, if you have not done so already.  Language is being emptied of its normal meanings with calls for a confrontation and resignations alongside calls  to ‘come together’ and ‘work together’ to find an ‘inclusive way forward’.  In the end both, sides are left with a kind of childish self-righteousness of “I’m right and you’re wrong and there is nothing you can do about it.”

As a rule, conflicts are not only complicated, they are complex. One of the challenges with dealing with complex problems is that they just keep generating so much information, information from so many sources, information that is contradictory, and information that rather than adding up – piles up – leaving us none the wiser – and probably more confused.

At risk of reading like a line in a leaflet, the first step towards dealing with such a conflict is acknowledging that you have one. Is this just a natural expression of a fierce political competition within the party, or does that conclusion mask genuine disagreements within the party, its parliamentarians and its membership? Is it only a matter of the right/wrong person in the job? Is this an interpersonal conflict between people with incompatible character traits?

The second step in ending any conflict is to try to understand it.  To really understand it, to engage with its complexity – and to see it from outside the lens of one’s own experience and opinions. Things tended to work in the Labour party, like in most groups and organisations, but then something got in the way.  Are those factors understood?

There is an opportunity here but it is not an easy one. An opportunity to commit to processes to work towards really understanding the problem(s), why they are happening, what are the factors that have led up to them, and what sustains them?  This is a moment to deal with the issues and move beyond them. The challenge is that to put out this fire you have to engage with it directly and constructively.

No one goes into a conflict to negotiate. Sacrifices are made and risks are taken because we are “in it to win it”. But are we – winning? Do we? Have we?

When does irony become tragedy? Anyone working on international development, human rights and conflict issues in parliament for the last two and more decades will remember the unwavering solidarity of the former back benchers Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Though the Labour party did not have a monopoly commitment to human rights their patience and solidarity with the victims of war, authoritarianism and conflict has been unwavering.

So why not learn from these experiences?  Invest your trust in a good process – trust your colleagues – trust your members and supporters – and commit to understanding what is going on – together, finding options out of the impasse – out of this conflict.  Of course these will involve compromises on all sides, and these will be hard to make.  Finding that common ground is what is needed for contemporary party politics to work – or not. Break the party up, but be sure to do that on the basis of irreconcilable differences of policy – anything less would be confusing for us all. A significant number of people in the UK seem to have an appetite for doing things differently now, and tearing down long established political institutions with all the risks that that entails, though not everyone is in the mood of holding a ‘fire-sale’.

The thing is that we know how to handle and prevent conflict – everyone does. When it gets serious, institutional and intractable, we have professionals – mediators, coaches, advisors, facilitators.  Britain is even one of the world leaders in deploying support to peace and mediation processes worldwide – look behind the peace talks in Syria, Yemen, and Colombia you will see hardworking and talented British professionals, working with the UN and NGOs working directly with the people and the conflict parties

It is difficult to engage in such a process if you are feeling insecure or unsure or stressed – which then becomes part of the problem. Politicians are no different than the rest of us in needing to have clear roles and the trust and confidence of those around them if they are going to face their daily challenges. Take any of these away, and any of us is less able to lead, and less willing to take the risks of engaging with those holding strong views different from our own.

Corbyn and McDonnell are deeply familiar with the knowledge that you resolve differences, not with your friends, but with those who disagree with you. So what can be done?

Democracy may be “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried” but elections are a really poor conflict resolution mechanism, and as we have just seen. Perversely, they can have a conflict generating effect, creating clear winners and equally clear losers where such distinctions did not exist before. When conducted in environments of insecurity and uncertainty they can bring a certain order, but always at a price for the losers, and always with consequences. We know this, we have just experienced this, but nevertheless policy makers are quick to reach for elections and referenda as the political tool of choice for getting out of conflicts.

Labour’s leadership and their allies can choose to battle it out with their opposition within the parliamentary party, and there will be victors and vanquished and perhaps a diminished party will hold together or not, and we will see the political equivalent of a divorce and a new alignment of political parties.  Other options are available.

The leadership could seek and accept some form of mediation or facilitation. The difference being traditionally understood as when the parties appoint a mediator they give that person or office the authority for the process, whereas a facilitator is there as someone to help, but the parties agree, or not, the agenda and the terms.  Such third parties may be independent or may (like Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite) have a declared interest. There are pros and cons of both, and true neutrality in any conflict is rare and difficult for lots of good reasons. What matters at the end of the day is that they have enabled the parties to reach their own agreements.

There are, of course, problems with this model. One question will be who has the legitimacy and the authority to represent those in the parliamentary Labour Party who have lost confidence in Corbyn’s leadership. And, can the elected leadership afford to take the risks of such a process?  And how to handle such a process under the spotlight of a febrile media. Who is “in” and who is “out”?

There is also the question of whether we are expecting too much of the ‘leaders’ and not drawing enough on the social and intellectual capital and experience of the whole of the party, especially it’s elected members who have both the legitimacy and the broader capabilities of identifying creative ways forward.

One approach developed in response to intractable political conflicts around the world has been to convene facilitated dialogues to analyse and problem solve. These have come to be called “Track II” dialogues referring to the fact that they are not roundtables of decision-takers but of groups of people with influence and integrity and the ability and interest to explore ideas and freely ‘talk to the other side”.

In both approaches there is a ‘success risk’ – that is of their identifying a way forward, but it not having the essential support of leadership or their constituencies to put it into practice

Perhaps the most creative, if also most idealist processes around the world today are where such traditionally elite models of doing diplomacy and resolving conflicts are themselves democratised.  Where people are finding ways to get involved. We all know that politics, democratic or otherwise, does not make much of a spectator sport.

Constituency parties could do so much more. They could each take on the challenge of being a convenor and a facilitator of localised dialogue processes. Call on the skills locally available and hold their own workshops – agree their own ground rules and set their own agendas to help members to better understand what the conflict is (and is not) about, and see if they can generate ideas for the way forward that could be useful.

Or we could just watch them fight it out, cast our ballots and hope for the best.

The Unconventional Peace Process in the Basque Country

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The unconventional peace process in the Basque Country

A Meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues

25 April 2016

Here is a copy of my remarks:


My name is Andy Carl. I have been working in the field of mediation, dialogue and peacebuilding for the last 25 years. Until recently I have been the Executive Director of Conciliation Resources which I co-founded 21 years ago. Before setting up CR I help to establish another international NGO, International Alert. So I have had a front row seat in the development of this peacebuilding sector.

The four lessons that I would like to highlight today from what I have learned about effectiveness in international mediation & dialogue work are the following:

1. The importance of following and supporting the lead of people living with their conflict;

2. That transformation starts with enquiry – and that in order to deal with their conflicts, people needed understand them better;

3. That you need to pay attention to power, exclusion, asymmetry & inclusion, gender; and

4. The importance of taking the initiative – be proactive – work to prevent violence & be creative.

I have been part of a series of mediators and peacebuilding professionals engaging in the Basque country over the last two decades which reads like a WHO’S WHO of our field (perhaps starting with Fr. Alex Reid (the insider mediator in Northern Ireland) to, more recently, the South African head of the ICG who has spoken at this forum in the past, Brian Currin).

Like Northern Ireland, the conflict in the Basque Country – has long been a point of reference, a kind of touch-stone for this developing field. Fifteen years ago we published an issue in the Accord series on the peace process in N. Ireland – and with a local organisation, had it translated into Spanish and distributed around the Basque country to help them have access to and learn from the experience. Since then I have taken part in an international peace conference organised by Elkarri and the Autonomous government. With CR, in 2010, we drew on the Basque experience in our workshops and publications looking at peacebuilding across borders (based on the idea that conflicts don’t stop at borders why should peacebuilding?) CR facilitated workshops on public participation. We were invited to part of history, in co-sponsoring and taking part in the Aiete Peace conference in 2011. Since then I have been part of the civil society initiative called the Social Forum organised Lokarri & Bake Bidea to define the popular agenda of how to move from the absence of violence to winning a real peace.

I am honoured to share this platform with one of the great champions of peace and social change in the Basque country, Arnaldo Otegi. The headline challenge and lesson that I would like to share with you today is an idea that is relevant whether you are working on (or concerned with) the Spanish-Basque conflict or the Turkish-Kurdish conflict or the Syrian conflict or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, or any of the many ongoing and unresolved conflicts around the world.

How do we pursue our agenda for peace if the conflict cannot be resolved on the battlefield – through hard power alone? What options do we have if there are no prospects for a negotiated and comprehensive political solution? All over the world today conflicts are “stuck” in these cycles of violence and unresolved conflict – often with relatively low levels of insurgency and counterinsurgency.

I heard a quote from a young Kashmiri militant – who said that his group first took up violence as a tactic of resistance, but overtime it became a culture, without an alternative. What Arnaldo Otegi and the Basque peace process have shown is how alternatives can be built through a mix of politics and creative initiatives, harnessing the power and influence of people and their organisations, their communities and political parties. Not only have they shown us that it is possible to pursue peace and justice in times of violence, but also that these alternatives are not only constructed by independent mediators and peacebuilding professionals. Yes – such organisations have essential roles to play. Yes – we have many effective tools and approaches for conflict resolution. But what the Abertzale Left have to tell us is of the roles and potentials for peacebuilding from communities historically criminalised for their close association and proximity to the armed actors.

Teresa Whitfield – (author of the book: Endgame for ETA) wrote that there was a concentration of factors that led to ETA’s decision to abandon violence – a perfect storm – of a sustained campaign from the Spanish and French states (police, intelligence and the legal system) plus a clear rejection and revulsion of violence by the large swathes of civil society. But these were not enough. It needed a third wave What Otegi and his colleagues did is that they made determined efforts to have an open debate about how to pursue the goals of the nationalist left. Which resulted in their decision to call for pursuing these aspirations through exclusively peaceful and democratic means. To do this involved the persuasion of their movement’s social and political base as well as politically challenging ETA itself.

I had the opportunity to witness the historic moment in Aiete when the stage was set for the dramatic call on ETA to end its violence and support the pursuit of peace and justice by exclusively peaceful means. The tragedy is that the Spanish state, in its wisdom, decided to put Mr Otegi in prison for having such powerful and peaceful influence, and we have had to wait this long to hear from the man himself.

I think this Basque example – of how to move towards peace – matters to us all because without the smart power (not the “soft power”) of public peacebuilding, we really are stuck living with our unfinished business of armed conflicts and the inhumane levels of violence and trauma. Of course it matters most for all those whose lives who have been touched by the Basque conflict and its violence – who live with its legacy and trauma every day.

I think that is the whole of Basque society – which is still a wonderfully intact and egalitarian society – but it means everybody knows somebody who is still suffering from the conflict. Of course it also continues to cast a shadow on the lives of many people in the wider Spain and France who have also been affected.

Yes, it is a beautiful country (and a fantastic place to visit), but we need to remember the survivors of the violence and acts of ETA’s terrorism. And without drawing parallel lines, we need to remember family members of prisoners like Mr Otegi here who, every week are visiting their relatives dispersed in the four corners of the Iberian Peninsula – they are all survivors of the trauma and repression.

At a time when refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean driven by exactly these kinds of unresolved conflicts. I appreciate it is difficult to sustain compassion for all those who suffer from war and armed conflict – but that is exactly what we need to do.

One of the effective things peace activists in the Basque country have done has been to insist on framing the problem as a complex conflict – and framing the many efforts to transform it collectively and over time as a peace process. For lots of reasons governments tend to be enormously resistant to this language. We hear about this context as a contentious Basque “Problem”. The Kurdish Question? The Irish Troubles? Even in referring to formal peace processes we hear of the Turkish “Solution process”, the government’s preferred name for the Thai–Pataani peace process is a “Happiness process”. Why do they bother? Why is it that so important how it is referred to?

Our meeting today is part of this “re-framing”. Basque peace activists have successfully asserted that ETA’s violence was one expression of the conflict but should not be misunderstood or misrepresented as the whole of the conflict (and visa-versa). In doing so they sustained the idea that the problem was not just complicated, it is a complex one and responding to complexity requires a different kind of thinking and strategy.

Complex problems have four characteristics. They are:

  1. Emergent: the events that you see are not predictable with a high degree of accuracy and sometimes fast changing;
  2. Information Generating:  including multiple and contradicting perceptions of the problem and the solutions;
  3. Adaptive: Actors and stakeholders are constantly and autonomously adapting their behavior and making elastic demands;
  4. Interconnected: and does not respect man-made boundaries – like the French and Spanish borders.

I think it is common in situations of unequal and asymmetric power, where more often than not, the state determines what the problem will be called (terrorism, extremism). This closes down thinking. One of the achievements of those working for peace in the Basque country has been to shift this public discourse – to build the legitimacy of an idea – the idea that ETA’s violence was a part of a wider Basque problem and that problem was a complex conflict – with many stakeholders – and that radical idea of the need to transform that conflict with a peace process.

How did they do it? How are they doing it? Answering this question helps us to understand why the interest and involvement of internationals was so important. And why the involvement of mediators, peacebuilding NGOs, academics and members of former liberation movements mattered. There is another important aspect of this example – with relevance for many if not all other conflicts and contexts of “terrorism” – that is the role and power of committed constituencies.

Arnaldo Otegi does not come from a peace NGO. He is a leader of a political, nationalist and progressive party and movement of Abertzale Left who are supported by more than 25% of the Basque population. I think the most important story in this complex narrative of the Basque peace process is how they (and he) asserted the voice of that part of the Basque community for pursing their agenda through exclusively peaceful means.

It is not uncommon in the ways we talk about war and conflict to overlook differences and pluralities – and to fall on simple binaries:

• You are either with us or against us?

• Choose “iraultza ala hil” / revolution or death; • Right or wrong:

• Help the heroes or be an apologist for terrorism.

What room is left for compromise and negotiation? It evaporates.

I recently heard a US Ambassador (Richard Haas) say that one of the important lessons they learned from their intervention in Afghanistan was, as he said “the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.” Traditional Diplomacy doesn’t do pluralism and diversity very well.

Civilians communities living with armed groups and perhaps sharing part or all of their political & national aspirations and perhaps their animosities with state authorities – are quick to be criminalised. Quick to be perceived by state authorities as apologists, sympathisers or supporters of their sworn enemies – tarred with the same brush – these civilians tend to indiscriminately receive the same harsh treatments. Whether it is nationalist Tamils in Sri Lanka, Kurds in Turkey, Acholi in Uganda, or conservative Muslims in Brussels and here in the UK, I think we all recognise these phenomena. They can be communities of resistance and communities of resilience – and such groups live in dangerous neighbourhoods.

In what has been described as the “polarised pluralism” of Basque politics and society, what I think is the real headline story in the Basque peace process, is how leaders of this associated community of progressive nationalists were able to exercise their insider roles and influence and change the course of the conflict. I think this is the still largely untold story. How it was possible to make the space and create the opportunity for a diverse community – in a time of violence and repression – to deeply reflect on the question of how to move their agenda forward, and whether and how to challenge the tactics of violence.

This is what happened in the period leading up to the Aiete conference of 2011. It is a story of not only countering violent extremism – but one of building pathways out of it. Part of the spectrum of Countering Violent Extremism – like conflict resolution itself – that is just not getting enough policy air time. So what are the potential lessons from these experiences?

a. Every peace process builds on a combination of the ashes of failed efforts from the past – and from the foundations of its successful milestones.

b. We know that peacebuilding is not an event but a process. Look at Northern Ireland. The process did not stop with the Good Friday Agreement. How many agreements have been reached since then? How many challenges remain outstanding?

c. Whether it is the example of the peace conferences, the debates and discussion and reflections on the tactics of violence that took place inside, but importantly also outside of ETA, or it is the example of the Aiete Conference itself, or the initiatives like the Social Forum and the unofficial International Verification Commission that followed.

d. None of these initiatives in themselves have brought peace – but together they point the direction and answer the question of What Works in Responding to Conflict

e. So the Basques do not have a roadmap but they do have a track record.

And some significant things have changed since the ETA’s declaration to end their violence:

i. There have been no further acts of ETA violence;

ii. EH BILDU is a legal party enjoying a healthy slice of public support;

iii. The conflict is not so much of a neuralgic issue for Spanish politics (*a sharp pain that is felt along the length of a nerve);

iv. Some exiles have been allowed to return; v. Some prisoners have been released;

vi. People will have their own measure of the change – but many live with less fear and anxiety;

vii. The private security sector has its been “demobilised”;

viii. Self-determination and constitutional change have a new momentum across Spain and within the EU (and even here in the UK) .

And I know they will continue to look for ideas, inspiration and assistance in meeting their challenges. This is important – not just for the transforming the conflict in the Basque Country – but also for all those working to prevent new acts of violence, end long-standing and seemingly intractable conflicts, to build legitimate, capable and accountable governments, and peaceful, just and prosperous societies.

I think that Basque experiences are relevant where there may be a military outcome, or where there might be a negotiated one – but I think they are especially inspirational for those contexts where neither of these seems likely or even possible. Where peace is truly elusive. For Palestinians, Kurds, Somalis, Kashmiris and so many others.

I encourage you to study and unpick the Basque peacemaking experience. While we have yet to see a new political settlement – we are seeing conflict transformation achieved through a series of unilateral steps, incremental agreements, and truly innovative initiatives. Of course they have enormous challenges and unfinished business ahead:

1. The Prisoners (dispersion);

2. Their exiles/refugees;

3. The continuation of arrests & criminalisation of political leaders;

4. ETA still exists/ disarmament is incomplete;

5. They have yet to deal with the traumatic legacies of their past;

6. And of course they have not negotiated their right to self-determination (to name a few).

We look forward to seeing new strategies for peaceful social change that tap into Basque social resilience – ones that are more sustainable than the historic vicious cycles of violence, and more effective! I hope that people and organisations here in the UK can continue to learn from and importantly – find ways to support your peace process. Conflicts do not resolve themselves – and winning the peace requires collective and concerted efforts. I hope that people, organisations and parliamentarians here will be able to make that commitment to supporting you in transforming yours – I know I will.

Thank you and good luck.

My Leaving Speech at The Prince Albert

 

Wednesday 17 February, 2016

The Prince Albert, Camden Town

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“I want to say thank you to you all – for coming out tonight – but more importantly for your friendship over all these years, for your trust and for confidence.

And for those of you who worked with CR – for your willingness to make sacrifices and take the risks, to work hard together, and to try – and keep trying, to support people living with violent conflict in making a difference.  I know that my colleagues have poured their life and soul into this work – and for everyone it is much more than a day job – and that you have done it for lots of reasons and for lots of people, but in as much as you also did it support me and CR – thank you.

It has been an amazing 21 years

One of the many challenges in peacebuilding work, and also in getting older – is not forgetting. You all know that we were one of the first NGOs to focus on documenting and learning from peace processes. We had the idea of publishing peace agreements – on the ‘World Wide Web’ – and to capture people’s stories of how their conflicts were transformed. We went to work to work on our first issue of Accord on peacemaking in Liberia.  It was 1994.

Nelson Mandela was elected President in South Africa’s first inter-racial election – and we all were given hope.  Later, we worked with talented people from South Africa and published many articles on different dimensions of that peace process – and one of the challenges was getting South African authors to look through their timeline telescopes backwards – and not only to share their brilliant peacebuilding innovations (of which there were many)– but to remember and to remind us of how they worked for peace at a time when apartheid seemed here to stay and that real or significant change seemed impossible. And then it was: possible.

So I reckon that is one of the challenges of our nostalgia – that is not only to reflect back over all we have achieved – but to remember how unlikely or even impossible some changes seemed to be.

When we started, Captain Valentine Strasser was President in Sierra Leone – when the expression of SOBELs was coined (where combatants were both soldiers and rebels).

There were peacebuilders but no peacebuilding field per se.

There was not yet even a DFID.

We started with a vision – and we were forward thinking

Many – if not all of you – know the story that Conciliation Resources was dreamt up by a small nonviolent rebel group from within International Alert – our sister organisation across the river, where I started my peacebuilding career, and where I was one of the first staff. We thought there was a clear and unmet global need to do more, to support what we called “Community Peacebuilding”. Unlike in(the recently departed) Boutros Boutros-Gali’s definition we thought Peacebuilding was relevant at “all stages in a conflict. As it develops and threatens to degenerated into widespread violence, when violence has taken hold, and when a suspension or a peace settlement has been negotiated between warring parties”

Our big idea was to “help provide safe spaces in which local organisations can discuss and develop responses to imminent or ongoing violence”

We thought at the heart of the work we should focus creating trust and confidence – and everything else would follow.

We flagged four things that would define us:

1.    That we should “follow and support the lead of local people” – sharing solidarity to sustain local leadership; offering new perspectives; and helping to unblock impasses.

2.    That in order to deal with their conflicts, people needed understand them –they needed information and to have a process of enquiry.

3.    Pay attention to power, exclusion, inclusion, how gender relations work, discrimination, and we would work with groups from across the conflict spectrum

4.    Finally – our focus was to support conflict transformation that was proactive and preventive

CR was not set up by David Lord and myself alone – this was always a collective and seriously globally networked effort.

Yes it is true that we still owe thanks to Tony Borden and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) for giving us the space and a real organisational home in which we got started in their offices in Lancaster House in the Angel, Islington.

But with our earliest work in Sierra Leone & Liberia, Fiji, Somaliland, and Ukraine – we were never alone. We were always a group of people – this was never an ego trip. We started with volunteers and associates including Stephanie Loomis, Bruce Jones, Davin Bremner, Dylan Hendrickson and Diana Francis. We also had trustees and advisers – including Mark Hoffman, Theo Sowa and Christina Sganga and Guus Meijer. Our first staff included Francis Fortune, Jeremy Armon and Abi Onadipe. (and some of you are with us tonight).

20 years ago we had an income of just over 200K with 20 donors from the UK, Japan, EU, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Mauritius!

Looking at the world today you might think that we have made little difference and we are only seeing the repeated and depressing cycles of war and peace followed by war. Coups followed by painstaking pro-democracy processes followed by another coup in Fiji, the glacial processes of change and reversal in the South Caucasus and in West and East Africa have been our bread and butter.

But all the messages I have had since announcing my leaving, all the emails and film clips have all brought home for me – if I ever doubted it that we have – Conciliation Resources has – touched people’s lives whether:

Lewis Alexis of JUPEDEC, who wrote thanking for the help to get him out of prison in Central African Republic when he was supporting young people fleeing the LRA,

Or our good friend and partner Paata Balian, who went from being courageous NGO leader to a courageous Minister in the Georgian government.

Ruairi O’Connell, who went from being our young Project Officer on the Balkans to the British Ambassador to Kosovo.

Lucy Akello in Northern Uganda, from NGO partner to MP

Or the lives of communities in Abkhazia, Fiji, Northern Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Philippines –

In working on conflict, we see trends and counter-trends, currents and counter currents – but we are not just guided by hope and wishful thinking.  We know the media entertains and sells the news with graphic stories of violence.  You have to look hard to see the stories of people preventing and transforming armed conflict.  You could miss the fact that what we do matters – and what we do actually works.

I read recently an article by Andy Mack who is working on the international agreement on what governments will track to follow progress on the new Global Development Goal on Peaceful Societies. He wrote:

“Back in the 1990s, it was widely assumed, including by the UN, that the level of political violence around the world was increasing.

This was not surprising since about twice as many conflicts started in the 1990s as the 1980s. But few noticed that even more conflicts ended than started in this period—creating a substantial net decline in conflict numbers.

In fact it wasn’t until the early 2000s when access to the new conflict data became available, that researchers were able to demonstrate just how effective peacebuilding and peace negotiations had become in stopping wars.

Over the past decade, researchers have shown that while some agreements break down – if or when conflicts restart they are significantly less violent, so even “failed” peace agreements can save large numbers of lives.

Sadly – CR is needed now more than ever. 

But you have the people, the experience, the knowledge, the relations with others, the reputation and the vision to go on doing extraordinary work that will touch the lives of millions of people and those of our closest partners.

I am very proud of what we have achieved together.  It genuinely gives me even greater pride and a sense deep respect to see what it is that you all can, are and will go on to achieve. I know it will be creative, courageous and deeply impressive.

I will miss working with all of you, the banter, the downloads, the flipcharts, our travels, our starting and ending ever day together.

Thanks for making it possible for me to have twenty-one full and exciting years that seem to have gone by in a flash – and for enabling me to start out again – on another curve in my working life.

Thank you to all of you outside of CR – who have been just as much part of my life and part the changes we are working for. This has always been about connecting with others and being part of processes that are bigger than all of us – but only happen because of the good relations that we have.

And thank you to my family, Lucy, Sam and Molly – who if you ever wondered – are obviously at the heart of what made this all possible for me.

Thank you all for this wonderful send off. My kids have grown up, Conciliation Resources has long ago grown up and found its own life and will find its own future. I hope I will always be a part of CR and I know that it will always be part of me and my life.

Thanks for the dancing, the music and the words – thank you everyone and enjoy yourself!

/AC

 

 

Reflections on DFID’s Recent Conflict Research Programme Tender

Probably most organisations with links to DFID and to the field of practice of peacebuilding will know of their recent call for a consortium to undertake a four-year(+) and six million pound project to explore two big questions to inform future UK government decision making:

“What works in addressing violent conflict?”, and

“How do complex and persistent violent conflicts evolve?”

It is one of the unintended consequences of DFID’s decision to rely on a commercial tendering process that they have discouraged organisations and individuals from coming together to, build on the thinking that has gone before, creating a true global talent pool. Instead a great deal of time will have been wasted in this highly competitive process.

This is an opportunity for all those applying themselves to DFID’s Big Questions to revisit two milestone pieces of work, each by leading organisation in field of peacebuilding, which sought to address these two questions. The first, by the OECD DAC with substantial forward thinking from the team at CDA, Collaborative Learning Projects in the US, and the second by the very thoughtful Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

OECD/DAC Guidance on “Evaluating Peacebuilding”

This important, if rather dry, piece of work doesn’t answer DFID’s question of ‘What Works?’ but does give extremely useful guidance on how you might find out whether and how a peacebuilding intervention has (or has not) worked, and why.  I particularly like their useful table ‘B.1.’ (on page) which I see as an important draft typology of ‘domains of change’ relevant to peacebuilding. I would also recommend reading the earlier paper that lead to this guidance from CDA. I think it’s interesting to ask, if this does not adequately answer DFID’s question (and it clearly doesn’t) why not and what does that say about the enquiry?

A synthesised report of their “Violence and Transition” Project

This is a fascinating and important paper which explores the question of what are “the factors that influence the relationship between violence and transition and their significance for processes of democratisation”? Their multi-disciplinary approach was groundbreaking, and they came up with a fascinating framework of “different fault-lines and factors of violence in a trajectory over time”. They identify, what they called, a number of “conceptual lessons” about the relationship between violence and democratic transition.

I think both their methods and their findings are relevant for the consortium that seeks to help DFID explore their on evolution conflicts away from violence.

I’d be interested to hear from others what they think of are key resources which help us all to answer the question of how to be more discerning and more effective in our work to prevent and address:

” the innumerable possible substantive occasions of war.” (Adam Curle)

Good luck to DFID on shortlisting the bidder, and to everyone seeking to be the winning consortium.