Tactical Notebooks, empowerment

Society as Mediator for Conflict Resolution

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:15 -0500

Society as Mediator for Conflict Resolution

by Tamara Muruetagoiena

Download full notebook below. [*note]

In this notebook you will learn how Elkarri, a group based in the Basque Region, has used a form of dialogue they call social mediation to encourage the broadest possible participation from all arenas of society to discuss solutions to the conflict. Community members were given a broad choice of ways to get involved: from signing a petition to becoming a member to participating in and organizing discussion groups. But however people chose to participate, they learned that they had a role to play in mediating the conflict that affected their lives and created pressure on the groups in conflict to make steps toward seeking peaceful resolution.

There are more than forty significant ongoing political conflicts in the world today. One of these is the continuing conflict in the Basque Country. More and more, civilian populations find themselves caught in the crossfire, powerless to influence the conflicts that profoundly affect their daily lives. Elkarri is attempting to empower all elements of Basque society, constructing a "space" wherein the people of the Basque Country can mediate for their own well-being. Across the political spectrum, all public opinion surveys conducted over the last 10 years reflect consensus amongst Basques on several principal points. Foremost, the population firmly rejects the use of violence to achieve political aims. Even as the Basque population recognizes that there are serious political problems requiring resolution, the population strongly supports dialogue as the path to resolve these differences and wishes a voice in determining the future of the Basque Country.

In the last twelve years Elkarri has taken up this mandate and sought to promote a culture of dialogue and peace. In an effort to overcome the dynamic of confrontation, the organization has worked to create an atmosphere of cooperation, leveraging public sentiment toward the establishment and maintenance of a continuing viable dialogue. In this sense, Elkarri’s endeavors have been directed toward society as a whole: the citizens, mass media, political parties, institutions and all the actors in the conflict. Given the context of extreme political polarization in the Basque Country, the founders of Elkarri felt it was essential, from the start, to clearly establish the independent character of this social group along with its complete independence from all of the involved parties.

A fresh outlook and a new vocabulary have proven fundamental in creating spaces for meeting and discourse instead of the common attitudes and expressions of hostility, coercion and intractability. Elkarri does not adhere blindly to rigid criteria such as "neutrality" or "equidistance." Rather, the movement is guided by an active commitment to the establishment of conditions favorable to a balanced and democratic process of dialogue. This social movement is continually evolving its own language and modes of action, unmistakably distinct from the concepts, words and methods employed by the parties embroiled in the conflict. Elkarri provides an "a la carte" menu of participation to maximize grassroots support. Rather than dictating one or two prescribed means of involvement, Elkarri aims to maximize accessibility by providing a wide range of options. Because the pace of contemporary society limits the amount of time, energy and resources that people are willing and able to commit, we allow people to tailor their involvement to match their capacities.

The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by the broad support for Elkarri’s Peace Conference of 2001-2002. While it culminated in a single event, the Peace Conference encompassed a year-long, four-part process operating on three levels–among the general population, among political parties and internationally. It began with a signature drive that netted 50,000 signatures and small donations that added up to US$500,000. Eventually more than 4,000 people joined the organization as members while 1,200 volunteered their time and 180 ongoing local workshops and one-time events were held throughout the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre, as well as in Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels and New York. This notebook is an attempt to share some of the valuable insights and experience we gained through this process of social participation. We hope that this information will be useful to others seeking to broaden the base of participation in conflict resolution.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:14 -0500

Side by Side

by Liam Mahony

Download full notebook below. [*note]

Since the mid-1980s, human rights groups and other activist organizations being targeted with repressive abuses have been calling on international NGOs to provide them with direct accompaniment by international field workers. These field workers – usually volunteers – spend twenty-four hours a day with threatened activists, at the premises of threatened organizations, in threatened communities or witnessing public events organized by threatened groups. The international presence serves as a deterrent against the use of violence. In order to ensure this deterrence, these international accompaniment organizations are part of transnational networks poised and ready to mobilize political pressure against perpetrators should their volunteers witness any attacks or should their clients be further threatened.

"I can say with certainty that the fact that we are alive today is mainly because of Peace Brigades’ work." – Luis Perez Casas, Lawyer’s Collective Jose Alvear Restrepo, Bogotá, Colombia

International protective accompaniment is the physical accompaniment by international personnel of activists, organizations or communities threatened with politically motivated attacks. Peace Brigades International has been developing this tactic since the mid-1980s, sending hundreds of volunteers into different conflict situations around the world. PBI currently sustains a presence of about 80 people working in several conflicts, responding to requests for accompaniment from all kinds of threatened civil society organizations.

Accompaniment can take many forms. Some threatened activists receive 24-hour-aday accompaniment. For others the presence is more sporadic. Sometimes team members spend all day on the premises of an office of a threatened organization.Sometimes they live in threatened rural villages in conflict zones. This accompaniment service has three simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing impacts. The international presence protects threatened activists by raising the stakes of any attacks against them. It encourages civil society activism by allowing threatened organizations more space and confidence to operate and by building links of solidarity with the international community. And it strengthens the international movement for peace and human rights by giving accompaniment volunteers a powerful first-hand experience that becomes a sustained source of inspiration to themselves and others upon their return to their home country. This tactical notebook will analyze how protective accompaniment works, based on the substantial experience of PBI in Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. Since the 1990s, numerous other organizations have also provided protective international accompaniment in other settings, modifying the approach according to their particular identity and mission. In the final section of the notebook I will also offer a brief comparative discussion of several of these experiences.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Research for Action

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:13 -0500

by Chubashini Suntharalingam, Southeast Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (SEACON)

Download full notebook below.[*note]

Responding to the rise of free trade in the global economy, the Southeast Asian Council for Food Security (SEACON) set out in 2003 to conduct a unique, participatory research project to investigate the impacts of these macroeconomic changes on small scale food producers in Southeast Asia. Research manager Chubashini Suntharalingam’s notebook entitled "Research for Action" outlines the process. The notebook serves as a useful guide for organizations in creating participatory research projects that effectively involve and empower the people impacted by the issues they are studying.

In it, the author first outlines the research methods that characterize a participatory research process. These include the challenges of conducting interviews and organizing focused discussion groups. The author also confronts the difficulties of working with researchers that are untrained in writing documents and reports, as well as the potential issues that must be considered working with participants at the grassroots level. For example, in SEACON’s study, the very people that were struggling economically as a result of the issues that the organization sought to study were also limited in their capacity to participate in the project as a result of these hardships. Taking the time to conduct an interview would mean loosing hours that needed to be spent working. The issue serves to exemplify how, by involving local communities, researches must also be considerate of their unique needs.

Looking beyond the research process, the notebook also details the potential impacts of participatory research that creates thorough, credible documentation at the grassroots level. Not only can the information be utilized in advocacy and lobbying efforts, the research process itself can serve to create a network of activists, informing organizations working on issues that impact study participants, and directly benefiting the people themselves. Participatory research "empowers local communities," the author concludes, "connecting victims of human rights violations to the information they need to become active defenders of their right and to develop creative solutions to human rights challenges."

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from http://www.adobe.com

Complementary Strengths: Western Psychology and Traditional Healing

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:00 -0500

Complementary Strengths: Western Psychology and Traditional Healing

by Lucrecia Wamb

Download full notebook below. [*note]

In this notebook, we learn about efforts to integrate and maximize knowledge from traditional and western healing methods to reintegrate child soldiers into communities devastated by war. Rebuilding Hope saw the need for an integrated healing process that would allow families and communities to accept child soldiers back into their lives -- even those who had killed their relatives and burned down villages. Acknowledging that traditional healers are often the first people community members approach when they need help (healing), Rebuilding Hope psychologists approached the healers as well as other community leaders, such as teachers and tribal leaders, to be project partners. The creation of an integrated support system combining western psychology and the traditional healing processes enabled children to be reintegrated into their families and communities as purified people, while the psychologists developed sustainable mental and emotional support systems for them. Such reintegration issues are not unique to Mozambique. Other communities dealing with these complex issues of reintegration, whether of child solders or other populations, can find this tactic helpful in generating ideas toward accessing traditional forms of support and healing.

Mental health practices and interventions in developing countries and post-conflict situations are extremely challenging. A common misperception is that mental health support is the sole task of psychologists, social workers, medical doctors, counselors, and nurses–in other words, western-trained personnel. Our experience, however, shows how a community process of mental health assistance must constructively involve all levels of experience and knowledge in the society. In this tactical notebook, we will describe the reintegration of former child soldiers back into their communities, a process that brought about the collaboration of community leaders, Western-trained psychologists, and local curandieros (healers). All societies and cultures have developed, created, and learned mechanisms to deal with their specific problems in different spheres of life. If we seek to help a community to rebuild itself from trauma, our approach should first ask "how is this society or community already using its own resources to overcome or deal with the problem?"

To illustrate this, I will share with you the experience of a Mozambican nongovernmental organization, Reconstruindo a Esperança (RE, Rebuilding Hope) in working with children affected by military violence, particularly in rural communities. The work focused on providing psychological assistance and promoting community reintegration after 16 years of war, in the process using and reinforcing community resources. In this notebook we focus on Josina Machel Island, a rural community in Maputo province, 130 km from the city of Maputo. The island has 10,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom make a living from agriculture, fishing, livestock, and migratory labor (working in the Republic of South Africa). During the war an important military base was nearby. Many children were used as combatants, and many were sexually exploited.

Collective traumas, like war, are more than the sum of their individual effects. These traumas rip apart the social fabric, damaging the very foundations of social relations upon which mental health depends. Conventional psychotraumatology tends to focus on the individual’s experience, but in order to help individuals heal as community members who have lived a collective trauma, something more is needed. The process must involve the community and its indigenous social and spiritual support mechanisms. People define their identity in relation to their community and ancestors, and after trauma they must rebuild that identity with the community. In the cosmology of that community process, individualized Western psychology alone will not suffice. Rebuilding Hope created a uniquely collaborative process, based on mutual respect for both western and traditional disciplines of healing.

The process we built was as inclusive as possible, facilitating the empowerment of the community as a whole while still caring for the individual psychological needs of our clients. The project encouraged and depended upon the leadership and support of community religious leaders, local teachers, and parents. With the help of traditional local and religious leaders, we forged links with local curandieros. As a result of this collaboration, when those under our psychotherapeutic care felt they needed traditional purification rituals to wash away the bad spirits, we referred them to the curandeiros. Reciprocally, the traditional healers would purify their patients and send them to the psychologists for additional support. As a result, an integrated support system was created: through traditional healing processes, children were reintegrated into their families and communities as purified people, while the psychologists developed sustainability methods for mental and emotional well-being. The result was a symbiotic model of psychotherapeutic interventions, taking into account the local knowledge and culture.

During a period of eight years, Rebuilding Hope has worked with approximately 700 children. The lessons we can learn from this go beyond the reintegration of child soldiers. It is our hope that our experience will help people working in other contexts to effectively integrate into their approaches the local capacities, cultural concepts, and wisdom, catalytic tools that can be essential in rebuilding community mental health. The need for such cross-cultural integration of healing strategies will certainly be relevant elsewhere, not only in the African context–i.e. Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ivory Coast–but in other countries as well.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Action Theatre

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:07:59 -0500

by Motahar Akand, Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK)

Download full notebook below. [*note]

The goal of Action Theatre is to develop the capacities of young people and cultural activists at the grassroots level to be a force for change, helping to create a society based on human rights, gender equity and social justice. The tactical outcome is the creation of local theatre groups who would initiate discussion, debate, analysis and actions on critical human rights issues in their community. Participants in the tactic also enhance their leadership skills and human rights awareness.

Six individual elements–six roles–work in conjunction with one another to provide a complete Action Theatre experience:

Initiator: Creates an action theatre group.
Core team: ASK staff members who initiate Action Theatre in other communities.
Primary team: Community members who form the human rights theatre group, or Manobadhikar Natya Parishad (MNP), and implement action theatre
Upazilla level Manobadhikar Natya Parishad (UzMNP): Federation of local MNP groups.
Partner NGO or PNGO: The local group with which ASK works to coordinate the program.
Community Organizer (CO): Local community member working under the supervision of the PNGO to build the primary team and provide support to them.
Audience: Participants in performance who are tasked with defining the action to be taken.

In this tactical notebook, we outline the Action Theatre framework that has been developed and replicated in twelve working areas across Bangladesh. We will share the key elements and steps necessary for the successful application of this tactic, as well as some of the challenges and unexpected outcomes we have seen. Local theatre groups are now gaining ground as a mobilizing force in Bangladesh. This tactical notebook will help provide you with the information you need to determine whether Action Theatre is appropriate for your country and human rights issue.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from http://www.adobe.com

A Mock Tribunal to Advance Change

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:07:58 -0500

A Mock Tribunal to Advance Change

By Mufuliat Fijabi

Downlaod full notebook below. [*note]

In this notebook we learn about the creative and effective use of a mock tribunal to change public perceptions and beliefs regarding violations against women, and to change public policy and law. BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, in collaboration with CIRDDOC (Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre), highlighted violations of women’s rights in Nigeria that were viewed by the public as normal or even justifiable abuse. The organization used prominent people–a Nigerian Supreme Court justice, a member of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) committee in Nigeria, lawyers, and representatives from the National Human Rights Commission–to create a high powered panel of "judges" to draw media attention and hear testimonies by women from many areas of Nigeria. The judges were selected based on their prominence and their concern for women’s rights. The tribunal’s recommendations was instrumental, at both local and national levels, in subsequent attempts to advocate for new laws and for reforms of existing laws related to violence against women. This tactic may provide each of us with ideas for addressing public perceptions and misunderstandings regarding other disadvantaged or abused populations.

On March 14, 2001 the Nigerian public, media, and government witnessed something that had never happened before. In a "mock tribunal" in Abuja, the federal capital of Nigeria, 33 women and girls told a distinguished panel of judges their individual stories of violent victimization. The event attracted ample media coverage and an audience of from 150 to 500 people over the course of the day. It was the first major organized attempt in the country to break the public silence on violence against women. As each woman finished her testimony–or the testimony of her sisters, for the woman who did not survive–the audience was often in tears. At the end the panel of judges retired to deliberate, and returned with a powerful set of recommendations for significant policy changes to protect Nigerian women from violence and human rights abuse.

This mock tribunal was organized by BAOBAB For Women’s Human Rights and by the Civil Resource Development and Documentation Center (CIRDDOC). The idea developed after seeing the impact of tribunals like those in Vienna and Tokyo, and the worldwide attention they attracted. CIRDDOC had itself, in 1999, organized a mock tribunal in Anambra State in South East Nigeria, addressing human rights violations. This event attracted a strong public turnout, and began further discussions on human rights violations in general and those affecting women in particular. Since 1996, BAOBAB had been running workshops and producing radio programs to draw attention to violence against women, and working with women on ways to recognize violence and build defenses against it. Prior to this event, violence against women was given no serious attention in the press, in the halls of government, or in law enforcement. We felt that engaging prominent persons in such a high-profile event would facilitate policy changes. We organized this mock tribunal so that the general public would recognize violence against women and help stop it; so that law enforcement agents would recognize such violence, their own role in perpetuating it, and their responsibility in preventing it; so that the government would agree to play a more significant role in reducing the violence and make resources available to help care for victims; and also so that the government would provide resources to compensate and counsel survivors, helping them integrate back into their lives and communities.

We believe that the tribunal and its associated media workshops influenced the consciousness not only of the Nigerian public, but of bodies such as the National Assembly and the law enforcement agencies (police, army, customs, and the like). At the tribunal itself, legislators vowed to use all power within their reach to fight violence against women, and promised to play a significant role in ensuring that the bill on violence against women was passed into law. The tribunal attracted a great deal of media and public attention, which helped move the problem of violence against women onto the public agenda, opening the way for more effective application of other tactics such as public education and pressure. It also helped empower survivors and give them hope for the future.

Additional Resources:

The International Museum of Women has posted an article on BAOBAB for the March, 2008 focus of Women, Power and Politics! The story has inspired and attracted 1,000 visitors a day to read, comment and take action at www.imow.org.
The website of the International Museum of Women has a new online community allows both individuals and organizations to become a member and connect with like-minded women, men and organizations around the world.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Access to Justice: Creating local level, citizen action mediation bodies to ensure human rights

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:07:58 -0500

by Dinesh Narayan Suddhakar

Download full notebook below [*note]

The Centre for Victims of Torture (CVICT) in Nepal instituted a tactic to circumvent the problem of police abuse through a process of rights-based community mediation. This community mediation process was piloted in three districts of the country and has now expanded to twelve. The tactic trains local people as mediators and resources to their communities on basic laws and human rights. In addition, it has served as a vehicle to empower women to become community leaders, addressing their individual and collective needs. In the three districts there are currently 90 Human Rights Mediation Committees (HRMCs) and 90 Women Peace Committees (WPCs) at the Village Development Committee level and 810 HRMCs at the ward level.

The WPCs have served approximately 8,000 women who have been included in awareness building programmes and 4,865 women who received basic training on human rights, basic laws and mediation skills. From those who received that training, 1,993 women currently work as volunteers. A total of 964 disputes–out of 1,273–were successfully settled. In addition, legal aid was provided to 24 women to pursue 28 cases in the formal court system. Up to now, both committee types have successfully settled 3,107 out of 3,939 community level disputes.

Evidence of the success of the HMRCs and WPCs is the allocation of annual funds by the government’s Village Development Committees. This is vital to sustain the programme. Perhaps more significant is a public recognition of the HRMCs and WPCs by the formal justice forums, (i.e. court, district administration, police, etc.). Names of mediators are listed by the district court in its notice board. In addition, positive response has come from police and requests have come from other Village Development Committees to institute the programme.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.