Whose interests are being served or not? The question of politics is epitomized by but certainly not limited to the discussions concerning indicators, which focus not on the highly political process of defining indicators, but on the search for a cheque book-ready, Holy Grail, one-size-fits-all, list of impact indicators that could be pasted into the full range of country settings from Peru to Papua New Guinea. In this context, any whining and whingeing about peacebuilding industries may well become academic, if all policy, action, and interventions are strained one- dimensionally through the kaleidoscope of the war on terror and hyper-power self-interest.
Sub-Titling It is appropriate to begin by disentangling the title of this article. Field Notes: The following pages draw on years of observation, conversation, and participation in the development of the idea and practice of PCIA. The format of this article more resembles the rough form of anthropological field notes than the polished elegance of academic articles.
Further, the term Field Notes is meant to indicate that the ideas and arguments presented here are part of an on-going process. Both will be discussed further below. That was the date that the U. While the horrific attacks in September may have brought the dangerous world to the heartland of the United States, it has not brought the U.
Commodification is obvious in the content, structure, style and marketing practices of the marketers, as discussed below. This being said, only a fool would be blind to the stunning exceptions to this pattern. There are extraordinary individuals and organisations which consistently swim against the current. In common usage, it refers to the incapacitating impacts of an intervention on a particular group or subgroup — and the consequent 5 loss of control over fundamental aspects of their lives.
Development Industry refers to organisations, projects, programmes and initiatives that approach development narrowly as a business, and, as a result, lose sight of the human realities and consequences of their work. Mindanao is a cluster of islands in Southern Philippines that were sites for a series of unique PCIA workshops with community workers, activists, development workers, as well as local government officials.
The level of commitment and enthusiasm by the organisers and participants was as intense as it was humbling. The HANDS-ON PCIA workbook see appendix is the product of their willingness, commitment and patience to work collaboratively to create something that suits their particular needs in their particular communities. They have fully appropriated — in the best sense of the word — PCIA, and are using their own versions, in their own languages, in their own islands, in their own realities.
At that point, the tables turned. Since then, I have been learning more from them than they have learned from me. They have not simply translated foreign ideas and tools into local languages; they have made them their own more below. Peace Zones contribute to the building up of a peace constituency in the grassroots and work to immediately relieve local communities, especially the civilian population, of the burden of war. Peace Zones are geographical areas which community residents declare themselves to be off-limits to armed conflict.
They range in size from the area covered by a purok or neighbourhood to that of a province. Peace Zone builders all over the country comprise a major constituency for the pursuit of peace processes on the national level. ZOPs are not simply gun-free zones.
They are much more than spaces free from the visible tools of violence. They are defined by the active presence of the tools to build relationships of tolerance, respect, understanding and peace.
There are other instances where Southern organisations have been stuffed into Northern-defined, and Northern-driven agendas. While oversights may be idiosyncratic, branding is very systematic. The second example of branding may be found in the literature developing Peace and Conflict Assessment Paffenholz and Reychler PCIA in Theory I must say that I was struck in the first round of the Berghof dialogue Austin, Fischer and 8 Wils by the call for a more explicit theoretical grounding of my work on PCIA — though in retrospect perhaps I should not have been, given the academic predispositions of the contributors.
At the time, I countered this feebly with the observation that experience suggests that practical work in war zones is generally better served by looking at interests rather than theory. I suppose with the luxury of time, one might develop a theory of interests in war zones — perhaps drawing on some of the stimulating research being directed by people like David Malone, Mats Berdal, Paul Collier on interests and grievances in the political economy of violent conflict.
However, I would need to be convinced that communities on the ground felt that such theory construction was more useful or at all useful compared with the bare foot inductivism that enables survival — even peacebuilding — in violence-prone realities. Listening to colleagues working in exceptionally difficult conditions in Sri Lanka, Mindanao, and Nepal, I realized that in war zones, theory is either useful or useless. There is no middle ground.
And there is rarely the luxury of time or space to mull over and contemplate abstractions, however erudite, parsimonious, or elegant. If PCIA works for you in the field, use it. If not, throw it out. We all have much more important things to do with our very limited and precious time.
This much I can tell you, though: where PCIA has been used, and where it appears to have been successful, it was because PCIA was fully appropriated by communities themselves. They took it; they changed it; they used it so that it worked for them in their communities, in their realities. But for now, the distance between the academy and the field suggests that it may be a long while before we see useful theory. This is true — with two points of elaboration. First, as pointed out repeatedly, the reason for writing that study was to chart the conceptual boundaries of an area of activity which, up to that point in time, had not been systematically defined or explored.
Criticisms that Measure of Peace was not user-friendly misunderstand the intentions and context of its writing. Second, it strikes me as logical that the development of anything seeking to be user-friendly needs to employ an iterative process which begins with the conceptual — problem identification, a survey of existing theories, responses, tools, and so on — usually drawing from research, conversations, and experiences related to a particular problem.
It is still too technical and mechanistic, but it is moving in the right directions. More on this, shortly. Given the lamentations over the lack of user-friendly tools, one might reasonably expect to have seen the development of a variety of nifty instruments in the years since the publication of A Measure of Peace. Unfortunately not.
Interestingly, the fact that there are not collections of competing PCIA tools floating around in cyberspace does not seem to have inhibited donors and development agencies from finding consultants to conduct Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments. The fact that this kind of grey literature is not circulating freely is itself a hindrance to the accumulation of a body of material that would allow a more systematic analysis of the idea and application of PCIA.
The transactional cash-for-product relationship between the buyer development agency and seller consultant-evaluator may exercise a strong dampening impact on critical findings — and thereby inhibits operational changes that may be necessary to genuinely mainstream PCIA.
As noted above, it inhibits the development of PCIA capacity with organisations and their partners. For the most part, it excludes genuine participation of those affected by the interventions being evaluated. It just wanted a PCIA product, not a process — particularly one that might entail additional financial or logistical costs, even if it made sense in the longer 10 term.
No doubt there is a variety of reasons for why this might be the case. Or it may be rooted in the feudal in-fighting within organisations as sub-groups try to assert control over policy and programming territory while blocking the efforts of others. The fact that such pathologies exist in some organisations should not be taken to imply that it is so in all organisations.
By most accounts, they were disorganised, confused and ill-prepared. The facilitators were unable to respond to questions about the specific relevance of PCIA to the on-going peace process questions that should have been expected, since PCIA had been a part of a three-year consultation between government, donors, and civil society.
You cannot separate the political from the technical. PCIA is fundamentally, and inexorably, political. How could the organisers have expected participants not to focus on the current peace process — especially in the rebel-controlled areas?
When participants did try to steer discussion towards their immediate political-conflict context, it was dismissed: the specific national context was explicitly not structured into the workshop. It appears that the workshops saw the meeting of two disconnected universes: the one of the facilitators who knew next to nothing of the political realities of the country, and the other of participants who were inextricably mired in these realities.
How is it possible to have a workshop in rebel-controlled areas — or any part of a war-affected country — where that context is not the overwhelming point of reference 11 for everyone in the room? Not only should this have been expected, it should have been the basis for holding the workshops. To not anticipate this, to not respond to this, is to set the workshops up for failure, and to invite the disgruntlement of participants — who would be correct in dismissing PCIA as an irrelevant academic concept.
The workshops therefore missed an opportunity, while possibly foreclosing more relevant and informed discussion on PCIA in the future. In addition to the confused content and process of the workshops, documents were written in academic English and not translated into local languages. On-site interpretation was inadequate. All of these factors combined to ensure the frustration of participants and the failure of the exercise.
Ironically, the net impact of workshops may have been to decrease the opportunity to strengthen PCIA capacity. Despite this, a second round of workshops was held. The second workshop followed a similar path — its Northern-defined agenda was based entirely on academic, English-language, material. Details for this harsh assessment were derived from interviews with a number of participants in the workshops.
Participants applied this spirituality that enhances inner peace, material to actual projects or programmes, which which in turn has an impact on building they themselves brought to the workshop. Articulate the relevance and challenges of conflict and identify the factors which help in assessing the state of a particular conflict. Demonstrate skills in the use of conflict mapping and analysis.
Cultivate and apply the understandings and practical, hands-on, skills necessary to anticipate, monitor, and evaluate how a developmental, humanitarian, peacebuilding, or private sector intervention may affect the dynamics of peace or conflict in violence-prone regions.
Plan follow-through mechanisms for continuing exchange and sharing learning applications among participants. The Habarana workshop was an unprecedented and unique contribution to the development of peacebuilding capacities in Sri Lanka because of its attempt to link the work being done globally to nurture a Culture of Peace with on-going work on Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment.
The approach was piloted in the Philippines in collaborative initiatives between the Local Government Support Programme and myself. It is essential to understand why the workshop sought to integrate Culture of Peace with Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment in a single workshop, because it sheds light on the structure, content and the implications of this workshop and future efforts to nurture PCIA capacities.
In the past, Culture of Peace training has tended to be undertaken without the explicit consideration of the institutional realities and professional demands of those working on, or in, conflict-prone areas. It was left up to the individual to decide how or whether to incorporate COP ideas into their work. Conversely, training in PCIA or derivative methodologies has been treated almost entirely as a mechanistic, analytical, exercise in complete isolation from the personal and cultural not to mention philosophical and ethical foundations that will shape the ways in which PCIA is understood and applied — and that will ultimately determine its success or failure, by whatever criteria one chooses to use.
In other words, there is no hard and fast border between the personal and the professional demands thrust on individuals working in conflict-prone areas. The struggle to manage these two sets of demands often leads to burn out or break down at a personal level, and poor decision-making leading to project failure or worse at a professional level. However, the slow process of such integration begins with the realization that 1 this compartmentalization exists for various reasons and 2 it carries a price that diminishes us both personally and professionally.
The workshop itself offered an opportunity to examine these connections and disconnections. Through increased awareness and the application of basic tools, capacities were stimulated to begin a self- critical process to connect the cultural and the technical in the work and lives of participants. One participant suggested that it might be more efficient to separate the Culture of Peace component of the workshop from the PCIA component.
Because it is difficult to get people to commit to a five-day workshop, and because people want the immediate hands-on tools of PCIA, why not just have a 2-day PCIA workshop? Or alternatively, why not divide the workshop into two separate shorter workshops? Cognizant of the fact that we can never be bias-free in how we assess the impact of any initiative, the Culture of Peace module provides an opportunity for the participants to surface and become aware of their own way of 14 looking at peace and conflict issues and may be strategically applied in PCIA based on how they have personally worked out these issues themselves.
There is no other group in the world that currently possesses experience in training and application of PCIA that surpasses the informal PCIA network in the Philippines. This added a very important dimension of two-way learning to the workshop. In addition to the three Filipino co-facilitators, there were two participants from Nepal whose presence and engagement similarly contributed to learning using comparative methods. The potential for further South-South linkages beyond the personal friendships which were initiated is high.
Participants realize that there are, in fact, different pieces to different puzzles different conflicts; different conditions at different points in the same conflict; intersecting conflicts; and so on. Sometimes the same group is identified correctly as both a conflict and a peace stakeholder. And they see that the interests, objectives and means associated with different stakeholders may also change over time. The fluidity and complexity of the map underscores the need for an iterative approach to mapping throughout the life of a project.
This exercise allowed them to develop a hands-on understanding of the tools. This gives participants a reasonable basis to decide for themselves whether or to what degree PCIA may be immediately useful for them.
A number of participants found it particularly useful to have to identify and distinguish between peace indicators, conflict indicators, and development indicators in their particular projects. This was the exercise that, for them, summed up the way in which PCIA challenges us to rethink the ways we do our conventional development and humanitarian work.
The original reason for developing the hypothetical case study was so that participants would not get hung up on disagreements over the details or minutiae of an actual case. Conflicts are complex, unpredictable phenomena. Dealing with conflict effectively requires a systematic approach , particularly under stress and pressure. Many people fear dealing with conflict. Withdrawing from conflict can be a legitimate response — for instance, when potential for violence is high.
However, if our fear of facing conflict leads us to avoid dealing with it at all costs, and in all situations, then avoidance can carry a high cost in perpetuating conflict. Gaining tools and confidence to deal with conflict can be an important part of overcoming our fear of it. Many cultural backgrounds have rich traditions, developed over centuries, for dealing with conflict — but globalisation and the destruction of the fabric of traditional societies means we are losing these resources.
Through reading, research and talking to the elders in your family and community, you may be able to regain access to some of these resources. Each style may be appropriate under certain circumstances, and we should make a conscious choice which approach to use. As part of a peacekeeping mission, you probably do not have complete freedom to respond to a conflict situation in any way that you want — you may need to follow protocol, lines of authority, and policy and guidelines.
You may also have to consider the safety and security of civilians or team members in a dangerous situation. Select your response to a conflict according to the particular demands of the environment in which you find yourself. A joint problem-solving solution may not always be the most appropriate response.
Please note: This action will also remove this member from your connections and send a report to the site admin. Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete. Your Personal Context. Quiz Lesson 2: Your Personal Context. Negotiate to Resolve Conflict. Quiz Lesson 5: Negotiate to Resolve Conflict. Using Translators and Interpreters. Quiz Lesson 8: Using Translators and Interpreters. Quiz Lesson 1: Introduction.
Understanding Conflict. Quiz Lesson 4: Understanding Conflict. What is Conflict? Quiz Lesson 3: What is Conflict? Mediation in Peacekeeping. Quiz Lesson 6: Mediation in Peacekeeping. Communication in Conflict Situations. Quiz Lesson 7: Communication in Conflict Situations. Module 1 of8.
In Progress. Ian Henderson 17 Feb Personal Conflict Map You are already part of — or are likely soon to be part of — a peace mission, where dealing with conflict is one of the challenges that will determine whether this is going to be a constructive experience for you.
Experience at work — I have a lot of experience of dealing with conflict successfully at work; I am utilised as a resource to help others resolve conflict; when I have difficulties with others, I am able to resolve them and have a constructive work relationship.
Learning and training — I have undergone training in conflict management; I have read books and papers on different ways to handle conflict; I know the theory of how to handle conflict. Framework — I have a personal framework for dealing with conflict; when facing a conflict situation in my mind, I can consciously imagine what steps to follow and what to do; over the years I have refined and developed my personal approach, and it works quite well for me. Culture and background — I am a person who knows my culture and history; I know about traditional methods for dealing with conflict in my family and culture, and I have integrated them into my personal approach; I see myself carrying on with my cultural rituals and practices.
0コメント