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Looking For Hermeneutic Windows

August 10, 2017 / Mary Gray-Reeves

This was a line from Joe Bock’s lecture on “The Positive Role of Religion in Peacebuilding”. Joe shared with us his experiences working in conflict zones, refugee camps and for Catholic Services in Israel/Palestine. He noted that religious conflict is often not about theology or belief systems but identity. Religious groups are places of belonging. They can bring out the best in humanity, and they can bring out the worst. When in conflict, we are at our best if we can peer through windows of interpretation together, seeing a way forward for healing. Communities able to peer together across difference will ultimately be the most important solution for the brokenness in which they find themselves.

Joe spoke of religion as “the two-edged sword of love that is like butter on the one hand and sharpness like hate on the other.” Surely this is true. Hate makes the news more than love. It can excite us positively and negatively. How strange that the quality of the universe we say we most long for is the one we least publicize. To kill, to rape, to slaughter with words or weapon, a signature implementing an unjust policy for the already disadvantaged takes moments and does irreparable damage. Patterns of love – that cut smooth like butter – takes a lifetime. This work is never done. There will always be millions more in need of it.

To find mutuality amidst difference, to look for windows of interpretation and understanding through which people of diverse groups can together peer, is to build relationships across difference. Deepening relationships, humanizing the other, can create common ground for Peacebuilding.

Religion is often the cause or at least exacerbates the world’s problems, but also hold tools and remedies for solutions. Elizabeth Cole picked up in her lectures Wednesday and Thursday on Reconciliation. Although not owned by the world of religion, religion was a perfect follow-on to Joe’s offering.

We have spoken much in our course about the systemic realities of violence, the long-term, destructive implications of conflict, and tools for implementing peace at various stages of conflict. Real reconciliation- the change-of-heart-kind – where all parties end up moving to a new place, disciplining themselves to love and respect in word and deed; this is elusive for many around the globe. We often fail, post-war, managing at best to get to tolerance. Peace is always fragile and requires tending. In my world of faith, reconciliation, where one seeks to live deeply into the butter side of the sword, is always the goal, even if it is not attained.

In The Hebrew Bible, the iconic story of Jews (and the budding nation of Israel) leaving slavery in Egypt and journeying to “The Promised Land” is a core, paradigmatic story of what it is to always be in process of reaching this land of perfection and harmony. Moses dies after a lifetime of leading a people to it, seeing it – just off in the distance. Hebrew Bible scholars will say that it is in the journey that we find our deepest peace, our deepest communion with God and with one another. The minute we think we reach it, is when we lose it. Peace is always fragile but no more so than when we think we have perfected it.

Gratitude

August 10, 2017 / Laura Ahrens

I am very aware as I write this that this will be my last blog. In this blog, I feel compelled to share my words of gratitude. Push-ups to all!

I am so grateful that I took this course. I am grateful for the people with whom I have shared this three week journey. I am grateful for my friend Mary who invited me to join her in taking this course. I am grateful to Pushpa Iyer for accepting me into the program. And I am so grateful for the students in this class. The other students are amazing! The depth of experience, wisdom and passion that they bring to this course is remarkable. I have learned so much from my new friends. Conversations about Nepal, India, Thailand and Egypt for example have impacted me in profound ways, and I know they will continue to inform my journey.

I am grateful for the course content as well. I did most of the readings beforehand and I was really looking forward to exploring the content they revealed more fully during the sessions. I was not disappointed. I will refer to many of the readings again as they have given me new tools to use as a peacebuilder. Whether it is being aware of the difference between gender and sex or thinking about fragility as the opposite of resiliency, I have new ways to process information and, more importantly, to listen to others.

The sessions themselves have been amazing and I am grateful for each and every one. The wide range of topics has helped me to begin to explore new ways of being a peacebuilder and gave me some new frames by which to think about the peacebuilding work I presently do. For example, Wednesday, August 9th when we spoke about “reconciliation,” I found myself thinking about this familiar word in new ways. The conversation about the diversity of definitions of reconciliation alone helped me to see new challenges and opportunities that reconciliation presents. Is it justice, forgiveness, mercy or trust? Unpacking what people want when they say reconciliation deepens the process for me and moves it forward in some new ways.

I am also grateful for the people that made my time away from my office for 3 weeks possible. While some of my time away was continuing education and other time was vacation, through all of it, my administrative assistant, Suzanne, has stayed on top of my work. Her peaceful presence grounds me in my daily routine in so many helpful ways.

And I grateful to God. To serve the one I call the Prince of Peace defines my journey and I’m humbled to walk this path. While I know I still have much to learn, I feel better equipped to be about the work of being a peacebuilder. I am grateful for this experience.

War and Peace

August 9, 2017 / Dylan Sparks

Today provided us with opportunities to further analyse the effectiveness of peace building, specifically with regards to reconciliation, as well as the rare chance to delve into the intricacies of interpretation (as opposed to translation).

During Elizabeth Cole’s session we learnt about reconciliation as the final stage of peace building. While this may be seen as the final stage, it is often the most elusive. She pointed this out by highlighting that a country recently out of a civil war, has a 50% chance of relapsing to violence in the first 5 years of post-conflict. This helps distinguish between negative peace (absence of high-level violence) and positive peace (sustainable peace). A country or community which has undergone a genuine reconciliation process and other forms of peace building, would be classified in the positive peace stage. Conversely, a country where high-level violence has just recently ceased to exist, it would be described as negative peace. I found the session really interesting in discussing how frequent the relationship between funding and reconciliation process. Resources are always limited, as is time, and these processes can often require a large quantity of both. We also examined the different dimensions of reconciliation during our morning session:

Truth
Justice: retributive (trials), restorative
Reparations
Apologies
Foregivness/Repentance
Acknowledgment
Ceremonies
Exhumations – related to truth/social
Commemoration
Guarantee of Non-Repetition

I thought the discussion of commemorations and memorials was really interesting, particularly pertaining to how to balance the past and the future in how conflict is visually represented. I remember visiting the killing fields in Cambodia, and being upset that the “memorial” to the victims of the genocide was a glass tower displaying 9,000 skulls. Reflecting, I think what I struggled with most about the memorial was that the focus was on the past and conflict, and not on looking towards what the future could look like. This relates to a question raised today about how does a community avoid developing a victim identity? Having said that, the memorial was a very powerful way of reminding future generations of the horrors committed – and in a similar way to memorials which include lists of names, this one (in a crude way) gave some sense of the magnitude of the violence.

Some of the rules that I learnt from the interpretation session were:

Interpreters always speak in the 1st person
Need to be perceived as neutral
Cultural and Confidential context are critical
The speaker and interpreter should work as a partnership, to ensure a smooth working relationship

Flowing to Peace

August 9, 2017 / Brijlal Chaudhari

The session with Prof. Jeff Langholz was energizing and encouraging. I learned that it is not the just identity that people are fighting for. Natural resources are increasingly becoming the sources of conflict around the world. The rate at which the world is urbanizing adding stress on the aquifers, fresh water sources. To keep the population alive in the urban centers, the governments are diverting the water sources towards the urban centers creating haves and have nots. This process is becoming less and less sustainable as the water delivery systems are centralized and monopolized with little room for competition and innovation.

Prof. Jeff talked about the innovation he is leading in the decentralization of water delivery to households in the cities at a cheaper price by reducing the impacts on the environment. The company that he is running with his student is called WaterCity Inc who borrows the idea from SolarCity (a solar company). The innovation is an incredible one. Water is considered as a public good and one only expects the government to take care of such issue as the citizens are paying taxes to the government. However, the Jeff and his students stepped in as a private sector to solve the water shortage issue in the rapidly growing urban centers.

His innovation made me think that when we fail to imagine, we are left with no options. Hence, we continue to experience violence that is structural and cultural. As peace-builders, one should encourage ourselves to engage with various parties with multiple perspectives. It will increase the possibility of imagining further. I am appreciating this program more as it brought diverse speakers from various backgrounds and expertise. It has certainly broadened my capacity to imagine further and not make conclusions right away or get frustrated easily. I am also learning that as peace-builders we cannot take sides. We must understand that till we find the truth, we have to keep the communication open with both parties. The moment we take sides, it will jeopardize the relationship with the second party and possibly the communication channel will end. As peace-builders, we need to keep the engagement and communication alive.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights

August 9, 2017 / Mary Gray-Reeves

Monday was a full day revolving around the topic of gender. We explored gender, sex, identity and cultural roles. Dr. Sujeta Moorti was thorough and careful in exploring the topic, helping each of us consider it through our own experience and cultural lens. In the United States we experience this as an emerging conversation. Julia Mosse, author of “What is Gender?” suggests we think of gender as we think about the development of language; something that is dynamic, fluid, on a continuum, and as a spectrum.

Of course, this is not a cultural conversation for most women on the planet. To even be recognized as fully human is a daily concern. Human rights (eg., the right not be tortured, to have food and shelter – those things for which the state is responsible to the individual) and human security (more communal concerns such as sustainable food supply for a village) are on a given day how many women spend their energy.

Not until the Arusha Peace Agreement (1993), which among other things ended the three year civil war in Rwanda, were women’s rights were provided for in any peace agreement in the world. This was especially important as women returned to Burundi from refugee host countries. While little has been instituted toward the equal rights outlined in the agreement, ground was made in the articulation of the basic human rights of women. It is important to note that no women were included at the table in forging the conditions of the Peace accord. There is so far to go.

Dr. Moorti encouraged us to look toward Liberia and Rwanda as current leaders in making progress toward more inclusion of women in positions of power. Notably, the US is lagging in terms of women in political positions of power, and still is one of the six countries in the world who has not signed onto CEDAW, The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. We join Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga in this distinction.

Peace-builders & Challenges to Peace-building

August 9, 2017 / Brijlal Chaudhari

After two weeks of incredible sessions on various topics on peace-building, we had the opportunity to talk about who peace-builders are and what are the challenges. It was a great conversation we had a class as I was able to revisit the knowledge that I had acquired so far from the sessions. Below are my thoughts:

Who are peace-builders?

Peacebuilders are individuals (engineers, lawyers, religious leaders, academicians, human right activists, policy makers, trauma healers, social workers, law enforcement authorities, story tellers, journalists, civil society members, business leaders) who use their position directly or indirectly to reduce and eliminate direct, structural and cultural violence with an aim to restore the social order and transform the existing human relationships for sustainable peace.

For some peace-builders peacebuilding is a life-long work and commitment. For some, it is a just job. However, once one is directly involved in the peacebuilding process and reconciliation, it is difficult to come out of the scene. I felt that one faces a moral dilemma when it comes to leaving the profession as one has heard the stories of the victims and perpetrators. While working with the victims, the peace-builders are in the risk of becoming victims themselves. One has to be careful in such situations and seek guidance and support from the colleagues. However, the there needs to a safe environment to talk and share. It got me interested and I want to explore this topic further. Shall we take care of ourselves or the real victims of the conflict? However, I am learning that there is an opportunity cost in prioritizing self-care that involves leaving the peace-building process in the middle.

The majority of the speakers who shared their knowledge, wisdom, and experience with us so far can be categorized as peace builders. The majority of the speakers are using critical peacebuilding lens to seek solutions. It was quite comforting that individuals that constitute peace-builders come from a variety of sectors bringing diverse perspectives and expertise. However, the struggle is bringing all these perspectives together.

Challenges to peace-building?

Peacebuilding is tiring and a long process. One cannot hope to change the social order over night or in a year or two. It is a journey and not competition of race. However, the majority of the peace -building work followed DDR model, a liberal peacebuilding model. When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dayton Accords is an outcome of the liberal peace-building model that is based on the idea that democracy and liberal economy will build bridges between the communities in conflict and end violence. The accord failed to reveal the truth, bring justice and heal the wounds of the trauma the victims carry and transform relationships and the existing structures and systems. The critical peace-building approach got my attention and that uses people centered and bottom up approach to peacebuilding where people’s participation is the key. I am still thinking of this method and will continue to do so.

Political will is crucial in setting the tone and environment of trust that can help the truth come out. Truth and Justice work in an interesting way. They can work against each other, while they can also complement each other. One has to think deeply about what kind of justice are we seeking when it comes to peacebuilding. Do we do injustice to one group by doing justice to another group are some of the questions one needs to keep asking ourselves.

Other challenges, that came out in the conversation are:

Budget
Patience
Neutrality (impartiality & Equi-distance)

Religious Challenges to Peace Building and the future of Water

August 9, 2017 / Sneha Mahapatra

Todays session started with understanding the various roles that religion plays in peace building. It was very interesting to hear the various approaches we can take toward viewing the role that religion plays in peace-building.

I liked how Dr. Bock opened the session with asking us what we hoped to gain out of understanding the role that religion plays in peace-building and it was interesting to understand the various responses people had to the question that he posed. The activity then which made us think about a positive and negative impact or role that religion has had in the area of conflict was an eyeopening exercise for me because it made me realize how easy it was for all of us to find a negative way in which religion has created conflict but to think of a positive way in which religion affected conflict was much harder.

Another intriguing term that Mr. Bock introduced in his class presentation was the term “coreligionists” and how it is an effective and important method in promoting conflict resolution because of the power that someone who professes your religion has in using the space that they embody to provokes peoples thoughts and challenge them to re-think fundamentalist.

It was also an engaging topic to discuss about the power that the state has in how religion gets used to create and further perpetrate conflict and whether or not there can be a situation or a state where we can have religion independent of state and whether or not there can be a party that intervene just with the motive of help or can there be a state that is truly secular especially in places where religion has been so deeply embedded within society ?

The next session that we had was on the scarcity of water and the approach of using the 3 Ps being People, Planet and Prosperity to understand how deeply disturbing the water problem in the world is and how we can use methods like rain water harvesting, grey water harvesting and recycling water to use the same gallon of water over and over again was an approach that made a lot of sense and also did a good job of tackling the problems of the 3 Ps and the idea of expanding the pie was definitely a new perspective that gave me a lot to think about.

“it’s never going to be the same”

August 9, 2017 / Nasema Zeerak

All wars are the same, they start the same way. One group arms themselves and then they attack one early morning or late night. I remember my parents and grandparents telling me stories of civil war in Afghanistan over and over again. “It was early morning, we were woken by the sounds of rocket and gunshots”, “ the neighbor’s son was shot in front of our eyes”, “ we couldn’t go anywhere, they were coming from every direction.” and on and on.

Today, we watched the movie “ Pretty Village” in Elizabeth Cole’s session. The movie was very emotional and sad. It was about the 1992 war in Bosnia. Like every other war, the story of Bosnian war is the same. The Serbs armed themselves and attacked the Bosnian Muslims. Some of the quotes from the movie that struck me are:

“ things have never been the same ever since then.”

“ it isn’t the same.”

“I have realized what real loss is like.”

“Those experiences, the trauma will follow you for the rest of your life.”

“It’s never easy to go back even after 20 years.”

“ it’s good to feel like a human being again.”

Today in Bosnia, just because the violence has stopped, it does not mean the country is in a stable place. Everyone has a deep emotional scar from the war. Reconciliation is not an easy process. In a post war society, it is not easy to put together even the components of reconciliation. People have gone back and are starting their lives, but the trauma will follow them for the rest of their lives. In our discussion, we talked about dimensions of reconciliation as follows:

Justice
Truth
Peace
Acknowledgement
Apology, forgiveness
Ceremonies
Commemoration
Exhumations

An important issue that came up in our discussion of dimensions of reconciliation was that these elements are in tension with each other. For example, forgiveness and justice. Or remembrance and forgetting. It is extremely difficult to conclude what is the priority or what is more important. Each individual experiences things differently and so reconcile differently, or might never reconcile.

A secured Settlement

August 9, 2017 / Hayab John

War is a terrible experience, those who do not lived through it knows nothing.Imagine growing in a community that had about 800 people but because of war or conflict, one group killed the other and only 50 people left.Such community has now become a ghost settlement. Also Imagine when the bread of a dog is seen as better than a usual meal as it was in the concentration camp.

Any person or community that has experience any form of violent conflict do experience trauma every single time they remember the incident or if they have been away when they go back to that Area.

The video Petty Village about the killings in Bosnia during the session on Contextualzing the problem by Elizabeth Cole was not only emotional but posed a bigger challenge when we begin to contemplate discussing reconciliation and forgiveness .What kind of dialogue will you have in this situation where victims have suffer cruelty from those I know as brothers or neighbors.

How can one forgive or reconcile when the perpetrators do not acknowledges the crime and continually live in denials?How can a victim in this situation forgive and forget as many Reliigious peace actors will preach .

The process of building trust can be very complicated here .Even children who did not know how it happened but realized that trust was not there when this carnage happened to their parents or relations will continue to have anger whenever the story is told.

When Peace builders have the opportunity to work amongst these people ,elements of reconciliation to be use should includes truth telling ,Justice which can be retributive or restorative .There should also be acknowledgement,apologies,confessions,repentance and forgiveness so that the reconciliation will produce a secured settlement.

On Reconciliation

August 9, 2017 / Nasema Zeerak

We always talk about reconciliation in peace building and conflict resolution. But when attempting to write this blog, I had to look up the word.

Reconciliation: “the action of making one view or belief compatible with another”

In our session with Joseph Bock, he asked us a question: “ Where is reconciliation initiated?” It was brought up that it starts when the victim forgives the perpetrator. This was so hard to see how the reconciliation starts by victim forgiving the perpetrator. For me, a big question is how does a victim move from being angry, and mad and upset to forgiving the perpetrator. Even more challenging is when the conflict took place in the first place due to incompatible views and beliefs. Then what is the incentive for the victim to go back to reconcile and forgive the perpetrator?

The discussions left me puzzled and provoked me. I remembered speaking to one of the other students from our program about reconciliation. She had some great insights on it. In a short conversation, she mentioned that “not everything can be fixed”, “If one if not reconciled to the truth, then one should work with something to be able to move on”. A short conversation helped me wrap my head around this concept. Yes, not all views and beliefs can be compatible at all times. Not every relationship can be restored to how it was before the conflict. And most importantly we should all be able to move on for our own sakes.

Going back to Joseph Bock’s session, he said that when a victim and perpetrator reconcile, they go to a new place. I believe that is true. And that exactly is reconciliation, to work with something and go to a new place.

My biggest take away from the sessions on reconciliation was that as human beings we should be able to reconcile for our own sake. Holding on to something leaves us angry and mad and broken. In order to set ourselves free, we have to work with our conflicts and incompatible views and beliefs.

Joseph Bock ended the session with a beautiful quote that summarizes my blog:

“Continue to love each other like brothers and sisters and remember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this, some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

2017 Summer Peacebuilding Program