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Introduction:
Mari Fitzduff, Executive Director of INCORE, challenges the notion
that opposing leaders need to make each other weak in order to gain peace and discusses how they can work together to overcome internal political obstacles. She also suggests that there is much to be learned from the way conflict are handled in other parts of the world.
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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 ???).
Leading Peace
Mari Fitzduff
Professor and Director of the MA Conflict and
Coexistence Programme at Brandeis University
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Our work in leadership was also fascinating because
it'll tell you things like Sharon thinks he wants a weak Arafat. In fact, what
he needs is a strong Arafat who can deliver. Similarly, Arafat needs somebody
strong on the other side, whereas leaders always make the opposite assumption.
Also leaders actually have to help each other because each side is going to feel
they're being sold out. So the problem with us was Jerry Adams kept thinking he
had a harder job than David Trimble. David Trimble kept thinking he had a harder
job than Jerry Adams, instead of them both realizing they needed to sell this
compromise together.
So a lot of the leadership we would use also to inform, as it were, our
decisions. We'd be called in at the security council in Israel, you know looking
at diversity management , and Israel thinks it's the only one with problems just
as internally as it was with the border stuff. In fact the internal will become
even more important when the border is sorted out because what will happen will
be the differences within Israel are going to become probably much more to the fore.
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One thing I was
very proud of was that in our own case, the British government would commission
us and say, look, victims is a problem that's coming up now. Can you do a piece
for us on victims around the world and the way in which governments are dealing
with them so that we can learn from the best practices in South Africa or
Guatemala or wherever.
So we very much use the international to inform the local on the basis that
people who are in conflict often think there is nowhere else like them. They
feel their problems are not replicated elsewhere, but there is enormous
learning. Every conflict is different, but every conflict has also usually got
something to offer to different parts of the world.
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So what we try and do is the best learning in the field, and
bring it to bear on different conflicts.
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It's what we call a knowledge intervention.
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The final thing, I think is actually that learning from the
international was hugely important for us. Our folk could often take many things
from people who had been elsewhere. So we learned an enormous amount from, for
instance, South Africa. To a certain extent the United States, in terms of some
of their legal policies to do with diversity and race was also extremely
important. So, we have found that we have become very important in terms of all
of our processes to elsewhere. Because it is less threatening when you realize
that these are problems that are shared elsewhere, and there are ways that other
people are developing that actually can make it a lot easier for you in terms of
where you're going.
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