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CONTACT News

November 23, 2007

Intercultural Education for Peacebuilders
 

August 30, 2007

Securing Afghanistan: Women's Vital Contributions

SIT Graduate Institute Faculty member Paula Green led a peacebuilding workshop in Kabul


January 31, 2007

Paula GreenProfessor Paula Green Delivers Keynote Address in Nepal
Nepal is currently experiencing a period of intense transition, moving from a monarchy to a democratic republic, integrating Maoists into the Parliament, preparing for elections of a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, and issuing citizen papers to previously marginalized populations. The conference, which took place in Kathmandu January 16, 2007, was designed to contribute to peacebuilding and development by sharing best practices for post-conflict initiatives from zones of conflict around the world.

Paula Green offered a keynote address entitled: Fostering the Ties that Bind: Practicing Peacebuilding and Development in Conflict Sensitive Environments
Peacebuilding Conference  

Intercultural Education for Peacebuilders

Paula Green
School for International Training
This article originally appeared in Antrhopology News, Volume 48 Number 8 Nov 2007 Published by American Anthropological Association reprinted with permission (c) 2007.

To create a more secure and peaceful world, peacebuilders need cultural exposure and fluidity, including the capacity to identify areas of common ground and to be comfortable in a wide variety of cultures.
 
The field of peacebuilding has developed in response to the widespread number of violent conflicts engulfing the world in the two decades since the end of the Cold War. As the field has grown, its pioneers have endeavored to create educational programs that build the capacity for engagement in conflict prevention, resolution and healing in war-torn societies. MA and PhD programs have multiplied, as have shorter programs designed to train citizen activists and community leaders, especially those working in war-threatened or postwar environments.

International Training

In 1997, I founded the Conflict Transformation across Cultures (CONTACT) program at the School for International Training (SIT) (now the SIT Graduate Institute) in Vermont to train new generations of leaders as peacebuilders. Participants in this summer initiative tend to be adult professionals employed by NGOs who work in environments of violent conflict and are motivated by the urgency for peace. Most have previous exposure to training programs within their country or region, but no prior opportunity to form social networks across the globe, which are critical for those involved in Track Two (citizen) diplomacy as they provide exposure to new strategies as well as encouragement for peacemaking efforts.

Social Peacebuilding and Historical Narratives

The social dimensions of peacebuilding overlap with anthropological concerns, such as the transmission of hostility and the healing of communal relations sundered by war. In working with students, I observe how feelings of hatred and revenge plague individuals living in war-torn communities. As enmity is passed through communal narratives and locked into historical memory over countless generations, communities become trapped in cycles of violence. It is through these narratives that tensions are kept high and efforts toward social healing are often sabotaged.

Leaders damaged by war are able to take advantage of these recycled narratives, making opportunistic decisions through the lens of their own and the community’s unhealed wounds, humiliations, self-interests and perceptions. Historical memory, with all its biases, demands retribution and resists reconciliation. Chosen traumas are stored up in the collective psyche, destructively reappearing in new generations.

Commentary

In Blood Lines, Vamik Volkan writes about the role of historical narrative, chosen traumas and chosen glories. Historical narrative includes those elements of the past that a community chooses to remember about itself, usually favorable, and excludes what it prefers to discard, such as its own excesses and destructive behaviors. Shared perceptions and collective memories of grievances exaggerated and augmented by time, feed ethnic animosity, protect group cohesion and form the rationale for future conflict. Historical narratives can be mutually recognized and adjusted to accommodate varied perceptions and more complex realities.

Chosen traumas such as civil war, genocide or invasion, are unique markers in a group’s history that shape collective responses to new events. Hyper-vigilant security precautions in the US after Sept 11 are one example. Chosen glories, however, celebrate particular events such as nation formation or victory and remind groups of their heroic and powerful moments. Cherished glories and traumas can be honored skillfully or serve as the impetus or rationale for future violence. Milosevic’s appearance in Kosovo to commemorate the 600th anniversary of Serb defeat at the hands of Kosovars became the rallying cry for the late-20th-century Serb violence in Kosovo.

Self-awareness and personal transformation can serve as antidotes to the sorrowful knots of selective memory and vengeance. If those who lead organizations and communities are themselves somewhat conscious of historical dynamics, partially free from or at least aware of prejudices and more aware of others’ needs, wounds and perceptions, then their own empathic attitudes and behaviors can shape their communities toward more just and peaceful interactions. A belief in the liberating power of diversity-based experiential education underlies international peacebuilding education, and offers hope that these programs can impact new generations of peace leaders.

Increasing Intercultural Competence

Peacebuilding institutes cross academic disciplines and offer curricula that include conflict analysis and intervention; social change theory and practice; skills in negotiation, dialogue and nonviolent action; linkages to development and resource issues; and reconciliation and forgiveness processes. Threaded throughout these topics at CONTACT is a metalevel agenda of consciousness change and community building. The program creates opportunities to personally question the consequences of biased socialization and its reinforcement by media and educational institutions. Exploring the many identities in each individual’s life allows women peacebuilders, for example, or those sharing a passion for soccer to find common ground across differences and to build successful alliances across previously unbridged ethnic divides.

To create a more secure and peaceful world, peacebuilders need cultural exposure and fluidity, including the capacity to identify areas of common ground and to be comfortable in a wide variety of cultures. Exposure to the "identified Other" in a contained educational environment encourages positive attitudinal and behavioral formation toward groups who have been dehumanized and relegated to enemy status. In our own era, in which religious ideologies particularly have become markers of separation, learning in a religiously diverse community offers important opportunities to expand tolerance toward people from particular faiths.

Intercultural peacebuilding education also involves learning about traditional approaches to prevent, recover from or negotiate terms of armed conflict. Western methods are often structured quite differently from customary processes of mediation between disputants, in which use of respected elders in decision making may be pivotal. Rehabilitation of child soldiers and war-affected victims may be the most vital, immediate focus of reconciliation processes. Exposure to the varying models of redress and healing promotes utilization of conflict resolution methods that are best suited to the context, makes it possible for global South participants to protect their own socheritages, and increases the sensitivity and humility of peacebuilders from the global North.

Paula Green is the founder-director of CONTACT, a professor at the School for International Training (now the SIT Graduate Institute) in Brattleboro, VT, and the founder-director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, a nonprofit organization based in Amherst, MA.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Securing Afghanistan: Women's Vital Contributions

SIT Graduate Institute Faculty member Paula Green led a peacebuilding workshop in Kabul
Recognizing the continuing need to build effective coalitions and to strengthen the capacity of Afghan women, the Initiative for Inclusive Security, in partnership with the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, led a training workshop in Kabul, Afghanistan from September 1 - September 6, 2007. The Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a prominent umbrella organization comprised of more than 90 Afghan NGOs, assisted with implementation of the consultation. Dr. Paula Green, director of Karuna Center and Professor at the SIT Graduate Institute, will lead the peacebuilding facilitation.

Approximately 25 women participants, all demonstrated leaders from Afghanistan’s government, parliament, private sector, and civil society, will convene for the weeklong program.  Through innovative skills-building training, participants will develop a comprehensive advocacy agenda to increase women’s active engagement with security issues.

Initial training sessions by Dr. Green and the team will focus on intensive team building, providing a forum for participants to create a sustainable coalition.  Further sessions led by the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will introduce participants to multi-sectoral approaches to conflict resolution processes, emphasizing the collective formation of a national civil identity that bridges across ethnic, religious, and regional divides. These exercises will highlight commonalities and cultivate trust among participants so that a unified platform around gender and security can be developed.

"Conditions in Afghanistan are difficult for all residents and most especially for women," said Dr. Green after her recent visit to Kabul. "Many educated women, including large numbers returning now after fleeing during the Taliban years, are dedicated to improving political, economic and social conditions in their war-devastated country. Our training program focused on building effective coalitions for women to develop a comprehensive advocacy agenda and a common platform for peace and security. "

The primary objectives of the consultation were to:

  • Promote, through participatory sessions, the creation of a multi-sectoral coalition of demonstrated Afghan women leaders around security issues;
  • Create, through intensive strategic planning sessions, the coalition’s advocacy agenda and outreach strategy;
  • Enable participants to present their recommendations to national and international policymakers;
  • Advocate for women’s full engagement in security to national and international policymakers in efforts to promote sustainable peace and prosperity in Afghanistan  

Paula Green, EdD, founded and directs the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and serves on the faculty of the SIT Graduate Institute, where she developed programs in conflict transformation. She has extensive international experience in peacebuilding and has taught at several graduate schools, universities, and other educational centers worldwide. As a facilitator in interethnic dialogue and conflict transformation, Green has worked in Bosnia, Israel and Palestine, Rwanda and Eastern Africa, Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal, and, now, Afghanistan. In addition to consulting and training, Green has been an active board member of several international peace organizations, including the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The author of numerous internationally published articles and chapters, Green co-edited the textbook, Psychology and Social Responsibility: Facing Global Challenges.