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Introduction:
Although outsiders may bring fresh perspectives and ideas to a conflict,
ultimately the peacemakers with the most credibility will
come from the inside. Mari Fitzduff, Executive Director of INCORE, talks about
the advantages of insider peacemaking.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Insider Peacemakers
Mari Fitzduff
Professor and Director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis
University
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A: I have seen
just the most extraordinary change process facilitated by people who were out
bombing, shooting, and murdering just a few years before.
Q: Is it actually an advantage to have those people turn rather than the
traditional peacemakers?
A: It absolutely is. I tell this story in my book of taking a taxi home. All
the taxi drivers are run by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, but you're never
quite sure which side you're getting. I sat in and there was this guy reading
loyalist tracks and I started a conversation and it turns out he was a
republican. It turned out he was a republican who'd actually taken one of our
training courses, and who was co-facilitating a lot of discussions on identity
down on the folds on Shankhill Road. Of course, he said, we have great
credibility, much more than you middle class folks. It was just an absolutely
brilliant example, and there are dozens of these people now, who, they're the
ones who call my book "the bible", because it's a very simple way if
you want to structure conversations on justice or whatever.
Q: Why do they have more credibility?
A: They're seen to have suffered for the cause and they're seen to have a
stake. They're seen as, in a way I suppose, being those who have, but often they're mostly in working class areas,
which are the areas that suffer most. They're not people who people can ever
reject as being, you know, they don't count. Because they count. They've been part of the
communities. There's huge credibility for
these people. Put it like this, we had a lot of problems in the workplace
because we had (???)s and emblems and people were being shot dead over all these
emblems, but a lot of our facilitators who would come from deep working class or
working men backgrounds who were able to go in and say, "okay lads, let's
sit down". Much more credibility than the people who came who were in a way protected from the conflict because the areas they lived in were not being bombed.
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