The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  The educational radio dramas and other radio programs were expanded to Burundi beginning in 2005 and to the Congo in 2006. While it is important to develop general principles of prevention and reconciliation, they need to be applied with sensitivity to particular contexts (Staub, 2011). The situation in the Congo is highly complex. Many groups, motivated by varied factors, have been involved in violence (Prunier, 2009, Staub, 2011). The government and military are highly dysfunctional. The radio drama aimed to apply the conceptual elements of the educational approach to the existing conditions in Burundi and the Congo. Evaluation studies found positive effects in Burundi and more complex effects in the Congo, mostly positive but not on all dimensions (Bilali, Vollhardt, and deBalzac, 2011). The limitation on the effects of the radio drama may have been due to the chaotic and insecure conditions in the Congo. However, the evaluation also showed what may have been too much conflict between groups within the radio drama, which in the context of ongoing violence could be responsible for the less positive effects. These findings of the evaluation now inform the continued development of the radio drama in the Congo.

  Understanding the Impact of Violence on Survivors, Perpetrators, and Bystanders

  Both the trainings and the radio programs aimed to foster understanding of the impact of violence on groups and individuals. One of the influences leading to violence by a group is past victimization of the group, which creates a feeling of vulnerability and seeing the world as dangerous, and may generate hostility to the world. When there is new conflict or other instigating conditions, previously victimized groups are more likely to respond with violence that they see as defensive but may be unnecessary, making them into perpetrators. At times victimization and unhealed trauma become persistent aspects of the group’s culture and identity. Such “chosen traumas,” as Vamik Volkan (2001) called them, shape the perceptions of and responses to new events (Staub, 1998, 2011).

  Understanding the impact of violence is an important beginning step on the road to healing and can motivate activities that promote healing. It helps people interpret certain emotions and actions of their own and others as the result of psychological woundedness or the way woundedness is passed down to children. This can improve social interactions and people’s quality of life. Seeing children as traumatized is likely to lead to more constructive reactions to them than seeing them as disobedient and bad.

  From the standpoint of both positive social relations and reconciliation, it is important to understand that engaging in violence is also wounding (McNair, 2002; Staub, 2011), as is to some extent remaining passive in the face of it. Even soldiers fighting wars are psychologically wounded (Maguen et al., 2009), and more so if they have perpetrated atrocities by killing civilians (McNair, 2002). The relatively new concept of moral injury was proposed because of the widespread psychological woundedness of soldiers returning from the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, a result of killing, witnessing killing, or being unable to take actions in situations when their fellow soldiers were killed (Litz et al., 2009). Perpetrators of group violence and passive bystanders are thus likely to be wounded; at the very least, they undergo personal transformation as they justify violence, increasingly devalue victims, and experience less empathy with their suffering. This lessening of empathy over time tends to generalize to other people as well, partly explaining the frequent expansion of group violence to new targets.

  Healing the Wounds of All Parties

  Healing by survivors can lessen their feelings of vulnerability and their perception of the world as dangerous, and open them to increasing engagement at least with members of the perpetrator group and, over time, even with actual perpetrators. Healing by perpetrators and passive members of the perpetrator group can diminish their (usually unacknowledged) guilt and shame (Staub and Pearlman, 2006), which may be limited at the time of the violence but can become more intense as the violence is brought to an end and the world points to the immorality and horror of their actions (Nadler Malloy, and Fisher, 2008; Staub, 2011, 2012).

  In order to heal, survivors of violence need to talk about their experiences (Pennebacker, 2000), ideally to empathic others (Herman, 1992; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995). Rather than individual therapy, healing in groups is usually preferable or even necessary. After group violence, usually huge numbers of people are psychologically wounded, and there are few resources available for healing. In addition, the violence was perpetrated by members of one group against members of another, and the culture may be collectivist, so that connection to the group is of special importance.

  Because of the widespread psychological woundedness, we have advocated in our workshops and in educational radio programs person-to-person engagement—people talking to each other about their experiences and providing support to each other. Doing this in a group setting can be especially beneficial (Herman, 1992; Staub and Pearlman, 2006). For example, in a religious community in Rwanda, Solace ministries, people give testimonies and describe their experiences during the genocide in front of the community, with others supporting them.

  Commemorations are also important for healing. However, they are likely to work best if, in addition to remembering the violence and their losses, and grieving, which by themselves can maintain psychological wounds, they point to the possibility of a better future. They can do this, for example, by including in remembrance “rescuers,” members of the perpetrator group who saved lives or attempted to save lives, endangering their own (Africa Rights, 2002; Oliner and Oliner, 1988; Staub, 2011). This can show the possibility of living together in peace as members of both groups are reminded that there have been caring and courageous people in the perpetrator group. Commemorations of mass violence will ideally include honoring rescuers.

  Empathy with perpetrators can contribute to their healing. It is daunting, of course, to feel and express empathy with perpetrators of extreme violence. One example of engagement with and over time empathy with a perpetrator seemingly leading to his regret about his actions was the conversations and interviews between Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and De Kirk, a notorious killer in the South African apartheid system (Gobodo-Madikezela, 2003). Including members of the perpetrator group in commemoration and over time as it becomes psychologically possible even perpetrators can also contribute to the healing of all parties.

  An aspect of healing important for both prevention and reconciliation is exploration within a group of past victimization, psychological woundedness of the group and the extent the culture has maintained or even built itself around past traumas. Woundednesss can be handed down through the generations and shape perceptions of and responses to events (Volkan, 2001; Vollhardt, 2012). Gaining societal self-awareness is likely to lessen the impact of past trauma on group life and call attention to the need for healing (Staub, 2011).

  An aspect of healing and community building is the reintegration of harm doers into the community and productive civilian life. There are many different kinds of harm doers, ranging from child soldiers who were abducted or enticed into rebel groups and often were led to engage in violence against their own communities, to adult perpetrators—of violence, rape, and genocide. Some can be reintegrated into the community only after appropriate justice processes and punishment, while others, such as child soldiers, may not need to be punished. Depending on who they are and what they have done and on the culture, different processes of reintegration are required. Often a combination of Western and traditional approaches is used. For example, in Angola and elsewhere, to reintegrate them into the community child soldiers are led to engage with the spirit of ancestors (Wessells, 2007). In another example, by providing the opportunity to talk about their experiences, to work and study, and to live in a community of their own, the community has led a group of former child soldiers to become a constructive group that helps others (Myers, 2008).

  While some individuals and groups that have been victimized have a propensity to turn against others, there are people who have been victimized who want t
o help those who have suffered, and prevent others’ suffering. An important aspect of reconciliation and stable peace is to learn how to develop what I have called altruism born of suffering (Staub, 2003, 2005b; Staub and Vollhardt, 2008) so that those who have suffered become agents of positive change. Positive experiences in childhood, others reaching out at times of persecution and violence to its targets, intended victims acting on their own behalf and helping others, can all mitigate the negative effects of victimization. Healing practices, caring, and support by other people and the world after suffering harm, strong human connections, and people who have been harmed beginning to help others so that they “learn by doing” can all contribute to altruism born of suffering.

  Humanizing the Other, Developing a Positive Orientation to the Other

  Among the influences leading to violence between groups differentiating between “us” and “them” and devaluing “them” is a central one. Moreover, devaluation increases in the course of the violence, as harm doers justify their actions, exclude the other from the moral and human realm, and even come to see killing their victim as right (Fein, 1993; Opotow; 1990; Staub, 1989, 2011).

  Humanizing the other, developing a more positive orientation to the other, is a crucial aspect of reconciliation and prevention. Others can be humanized by words: what people say about them, what they write about them. This is likely to be especially effective if the words refer to real and significant positive actions of the other, for example, Hutus saving the lives of Tutsis, or if they show communality in the lives of people, such as Macedonian journalists from different ethnic groups together interviewing and writing in their newspapers about the lives of people belonging to those groups (Burg, 1997). Print media, radio, and television can all humanize members of groups. Symbolic acts are also important, such as Arafat and Rabin shaking hands, and Willy Brandt, the chancellor of Germany, kneeling at Auschwitz and asking forgiveness.

  Contact has an important role in overcoming devaluation and coming to see the other’s humanity (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2066), especially significant, deep contact (Deutsch, 1973; Staub, 2011). Its varied forms can include working on joint projects, such as cooperative learning in schools (Aronson, Stephan, Sikes, Blaney, and Snapp, 1978), building houses together (Wessells and Montiero, 2001), deep engagement between Hindus and Muslims in work settings (Varshney, 2002), or persistent dialogue. One barrier to peace between Israelis and Palestinians has been the absence of persistent engagement and dialogue between leaders (Staub, 2011). However, even imagined contact can promote positive attitudes (Crisp and Turner, 2009) and give a positive start for actual contact.

  I have referred already to the importance of active bystandership. To create social change requires people joining together, building connections and networks (Thalhammer et al., 2007). This is necessary to create and maintain motivation, as well as to exert influence. However, single individuals sometimes have a dramatic role in limiting violence as well as initiating positive processes (Staub, 2011). An example of this is Joe Darby, who was instrumental in making public the photos of the treatment of prison inmates at Abu Ghraib.

  Another example is a woman who for a period of time settled in and studied the conflictual and potentially violent conditions in a community in Poland. She found that one segment of the community had access to most of its resources, and two groups, disorderly and aggressive youth and old people, were excluded from social processes. She organized the young people to collect recipes of traditional dishes from the old people, which they gathered in a book. The book was a success, and a later more formal edition became an even greater success (Praszkier, Nowak, and Coleman, 2010). Contact and cooperation changed attitudes toward the other and significantly affected the way the young people related to the world, benefiting the community as a whole.

  Each of the contributors to reconciliation listed in table 40.1 can have multiple effects. Understanding the influences that have led to violence, healing, and other influences can contribute to more positive attitudes towards members of the other group.

  Establishing (the Complex) Truth

  Truth is essential for survivors. Their society and the world establishing what was done to them, and proclaiming that the violence and victimization should not have happened, acknowledges their suffering, confirms their experience, and affirms the moral order. It thereby increases survivors’ feelings of security. Establishing the truth is also important to make it less likely that perpetrators deny their actions or claim that they had justifiable reasons such as self-defense or were the victims.

  While the truth can sometimes be simple, often it is complex. Both sides may have been violent. Or actions in the past by one side may have contributed to later violence by the other side, as in Rwanda (Mamdani, 2001; Staub, 2011). But perpetrators tend to deny or justify their actions, and even when the violence is clearly one sided, the two sides usually have different narratives or “truths.”

  The history of events is sometimes established through documents and testimonies during trials, such as of German leaders at Nuremberg. The aim of the people’s tribunals in Rwanda, the gacaca, was also both truth and justice. Offering testimony often has negative emotional consequences for witnesses. The gacaca took place in many locations, in front of local communities, with a large majority of the people Hutus, including the relatives of those who were being judged. The difficulty was even greater for Hutu than Tutsi witnesses, who probably felt that they betrayed their group. In addition to the emotional difficulty of talking about painful events in front of hostile people, there was often harassment before, during and after providing testimony (Bronéus, 2008).

  It has become common to use truth commissions, which interview many people and provide a report of events. An early example was Nunca Mas (1986), the report on the “disappearances” in Argentina in the late 1970s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa powerfully showed what the apartheid regime did. This had little effect on black people, who were the victims of the apartheid regime, but it contributed to reconciliation by affecting whites (Gibson, 2004), who either did not know or had avoided knowing the violence of the apartheid regime.

  Processes to Change Collective Memories and Move toward Shared Views of History

  Differing and conflicting views of history, usually each party blaming the other, are usually deeply held (Newbury, 1998) and are a likely source of new violence. Seeing the other as the one responsible maintains fear and antagonism. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has been difficult for people to engage with and seriously consider the other’s narrative (Staub, 2011). But exposing Israeli high school students to both sides’ narratives in a conflict removed from their own, the Northern Irish conflict, increased their ability to take the Palestinian perspective (Salomon, 2004). We have also found in our training in Rwanda that giving examples from other countries has been useful.

  Establishing who did what can move the two groups toward a shared narrative. The “new historians” in Israel, using historical documents, showed that Palestinians did not all leave voluntarily, that in part they were expelled in the course of the 1948 war (Morris, 1989, 2004). Autobiographical writings by soldiers and other witnesses describing their experiences at the time, supported the new history (Nets-Zehngut, 2009). These were published many years after the events due to a combination of government censorship and loyalty to the country that made people unwilling to write about questionable Israeli actions. Open communication in a society and positive active bystandership—an aspect of which is telling the truth—contribute to peacemaking. Four studies with groups of Palestinians living around the region also showed that contrary to the dominant Palestinian narrative, especially by leaders, while there was expulsion, it was not the only or even the primary reason for the Palestinian exodus. Many left because of fighting at or near their villages, as well as other reasons (Nets-Zehngut, 2011).

  Collective memory consists not only of facts, but also of their interpretation. Gro
ups often claim that their violent acts were necessary self-defense. Dialogue and negotiation between parties can shape their interpretation of events and, in domains where no common ground is found, at least acknowledge the other’s view of history. Moving toward a shared history can benefit from commissions composed of representatives of the two parties, as well as dialogue within populations (Staub, 2011).

  However, when the parties reach a limit in the extent to which they are able to create a shared history, a related task is to accept that they have different views of events—when neither view is clearly historically incorrect or morally unacceptable. It would indicate a significant level of reconciliation by Israelis and Palestinians if they taught in their schools some version of both groups’ views of the history of their conflict.

  JUSTICE PROCESSES

  There have been arguments among scholars and practitioners, some stressing the importance of human rights and justice, others claiming that punishment interferes with reconciliation and peace. I see justice as an integral part of reconciliation. It balances the relationship between members of perpetrator and victim groups and reestablishes a moral order. But the punishment of perpetrators is only one form of justice. Another is perpetrators or their group participating in restoring society. In Rwanda many perpetrators are sentenced to community labor. Working to compensate victims, at least by helping to rebuild society, is one meaning of restorative justice. Another, increasingly practiced in crimes committed against individuals and beginning to be used in cases of group violence, is to bring the parties together so that perpetrators can apologize and express regret. This requires a readiness by both parties and has beneficial effects on both victims and harm doers (Strang et al., 2007).