Africa Peace Point

Africa Peace Point is a Pan-African peace building resource organization committed to the realization of peace through conflict transformation and reconciliation in Africa. Its sole aim is to seek to influence policy in areas relevant to its mission, and promote reflection and learning from peace building practices.

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After Arusha : Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda

"The Gacaca courts were resurrected in Rwanda as an indigenous form of restorative justice. The principles and process of these courts hope to mitigate the failures of 'Arusha Justice' at the tribunal and seeks to punish or reintegrate over one hundred thousands genocide suspects. Its restorative foundations require that suspects will be tried and judged by neighbours in their community." -- from Abstract

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After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Looking back at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), this collection has two primary goals. First, it aims to provide an assessment of the TRC experience. Second, it asks where South Africa should go from here.

Book Summary

Amnesty

Many argue that amnesty can allow societies to wipe the slate clean after war crimes or other human rights abuses, to put the past behind them in favor of the future. Others argue, that this condones the perpetrators' actions and encourages such behavior.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Apology and Forgiveness

These are two sides of the mutli-faceted "diamond" of reconciliation. Both are necessary for true reconciliation to take place.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence

The rise of collective violence and genocide is the twentieth century's most terrible legacy. Writing with informed, searching prose of the extraordinary drama of the truth commissions in Argentina, East Germany, and most notably South Africa; war-crime prosecutions in Nuremberg and Bosnia; and reparations in America, Minow looks at the strategies and results of these riveting national experiments in justice and healing.

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Bottom-up Peace Building in Bosnia

Article Summary

Children of Genocide - Cambodia

April 1995 Cambodia is a still deeply scarred by Pol Pot's holocaust. More than a million people may have died during his reign. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot were at the heart of the circumstances which brought the USA into the Vietnam War - one of the cruellest of the Cold War disputes. This feature paints a picture of a people still struggling to forget the devastation of Pot's own special brand of social reform. Mental illness is rife and neighbour still fears neighbour.

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Coexistence Community Consultations in South Africa

Sarah Peterson describes a negotiation process in South Africa involving land reform that has, with effort, led to longer-term coexistence. But maintenance of coexistence takes continual effort, she explains.

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Compensation and Reparations

In 1951, the first Chancellor of Germany announced, "In our name, unspeakable crimes have been committed and demand compensation and restitution, both moral and material, for the persons and properties of the Jews who have been so seriously harmed." In cases such as the Nazi's genocide against the Jews in WWII, governments sometimes offer compensation to try to make amends for past grievances and to promote healing.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Conflict Transformation

Many people believe that conflict happens for a reason and that it brings much-needed change. Therefore, to eliminate conflict would also be to eliminate conflict's dynamic power. In transformation, a conflict is changed into something constructive, rather being eliminated altogether.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Costs of Intractable Conflict

The twentieth century was the deadliest in all of human history. With eight million Jews murdered and one million Rwandans, it was named "the age of genocide." However, human casualties merely scratch the surface of the true cost of conflict. This essay discusses the human, economic, social, and political costs of intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Damaged or Destroyed Relationships

People on opposite sides of a long-running conflict tend to distrust or even hate each other. This takes an emotional toll on both parties and prevents them from working together in the future.

Beyond Intractability Essay

De-escalating Gestures

A de-escalating gesture could be an act of kindness or an attempt to compromise. Although risky and difficult to pull-off, these gestures are necessary for de-escalating a conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants

Disarming and demobilizing military forces (especially militias) and successfully reintegrating the former warriors into a peaceful society is one of the major challenges of a post-violence or "post-conflict" peacebuilding stage of a violent conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Do We Understand Life after Genocide?: Center and Periphery in the Construction of Knowledge in Postgenocide Rwanda

A reflection on the construction of knowledge in and on Rwanda reveals that it is rife with contradictory assertions and images, and that there is a discrepancy between image and reality. This article attempts to map the center(s) of knowledge construction in postgenocide Rwanda, the place not only where policy is made, but also where knowledge is actively construed, managed, and controlled. It argues that an overall cultivation of the aesthetics of progress and a culturally specific communication code have contributed to an active interference in the scientific construction of knowledge. It stresses the need for scholars and observers to reveal the social and historical context for the knowledge being generated. It also urges them to physically and mentally move away from the center of society: to adopt a bottom-up perspective that captures the voices of ordinary people.

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Engaging Religion in the Prevention of Genocide

"The idea of engaging religious leaders and organizations in order to resist the spread of genocide has been ignored by those working in the growing field of genocide prevention. This idea, however, has... potential."

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Envisioning

Envisioning is a process in which people try to see into the future--not only what they expect to happen, but what they would like to happen. In order to attain "peace," people must have an image of what "peace" would look like. Only then can they figure out what they need to do to get there.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Equipo Nizkor - Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador

"Between 1980 and 1991, the Republic of El Salvador in Central America was engulfed in a war which plunged Salvadorian society into violence, left it with thousands and thousands of people dead and exposed it to appalling crimes, until the day -- 16 January 1992 -- when the parties, reconciled, signed the Peace Agreement in the Castle of Chapultepec, Mexico, and brought back the light and the chance to re-emerge from madness to hope." -- from Website

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Forgiveness, Amnesty and Justice: The Case of the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda

By analysing the role that forgiveness is playing in bringing almost two decades of conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government to an end, this article demonstrates that a disjuncture exists between the theoretical treatment of forgiveness and the practice of political forgiveness. That is, it demonstrates, contrary to arguments made by both its supporters and critics, that political forgiveness, even when conceived in conjunction with amnesties, may contribute to both restorative and retributive forms of justice.

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Getting Even or Getting Equal? Retributive Desires and Transitional Justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution.

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Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy

This work emerged from a conference in Denmark, and explores the legacy of past trauma in countries that do not receive much attention in transitional justice literature.

Book Summary

Human Rights Protection

There is growing consensus that the protection of human rights is important for the resolution of conflict. This essay discusses various ways the international community is attempting to bring an end to human rights abuses.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Humanitarian Aid and Development Assistance

Humanitarian aid is assistance given by an organization and/or foreign government to countries who are experiencing need because of mass migration, hunger, disease, and/or other crisis conditions.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Identity Issues

Israelis and Palestinians, Protestants and Catholics, whites and blacks, labor and management...these are all examples of identities that have resulted in conflicts. This essay discusses the importance of identity in intractable conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Ingando Solidarity Camps: Reconciliation and Political Indoctrination in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Based primarily on interviews with government officials, journalists, genocide survivors, and solidarity camp participants, this article evaluates the merits and limits of these post conflict solidarity camps in fostering reconciliation in the complicated social landscape of Rwanda. The article argues the failure of these solidarity camps as a reconciliation mechanism.

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International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala

"The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG, was established as an independent investigative body by a treaty-level agreement between the United Nations and Guatemala. CICIG began its operations in January 2008 with the objective of assisting the Guatemalan State in investigating and dismantling violent criminal organizations believed to be responsible for widespread crime and the paralysis in the country's justice system." -- from Website

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Into-the-Sea Framing

When a conflict becomes intractable, many people hope that their enemy will simply disappear. They pursue overwhelming victory without ever really considering the fact that they will still have to live with their enemies after the conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Justice, Democracy, and Impunity in Post-genocide Rwanda: Searching for Solutions to Impossible Problems

In discussing Rwanda, the author asserts that bold and innovative solutions have been required, and more will be needed as the prosecutions continue. These have already included the creation of specialized chambers for genocide, and the implementation of innovative schemes like the confession and guilty plea procedure of the new legislation. Foreign experts may play an essential, albeit secondary, role as trainers and advisors in this process. The goal should not be to replace the existing judicial system, which must recover from the genocide at its own pace and according to its own requirements.

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Land and Property Rights in the Peace Process

Land and property rights disputes can be very difficult to resolve, especially in transitional societies where land ownership is murky. Often two (or more people) say they own a particular piece of land, and all the evidence of ownership has been destroyed. Systems must be established to resolve competing claims that are seen to be fair and effective.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Liberia on the Brink...of Peace

"Liberia, for all of its progress, remains largely defined by the civil war that ravaged it for 14 years. This small West African country of 3.5 million people, after all, was once infamous for child soldiers, blood diamonds, and Charles Taylor -- the country's former president now on trial for crimes against humanity in neighboring Sierra Leone." -- from Website

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Media Strategies

The media can be used for good or bad in conflict processes. This set of materials examines how the media can be used to help deal with conflicts constructively.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Mediators Without Borders: A Proposal to Resolve Political Conflicts

This essay gives guidelines for mediators who are working in cultures different from their own. It explains the nature of the problem such mediators face, gives strategies for addressing the problem and then outlines a "twelve-step program" for increasing the capacity of hostile communities to prevent, resolve, and recover from violent conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Meta-Conflict Resolution

Many conflict resolvers emphasize mediation, dialogue, or problem solving workshops as solutions to conflict. But intractable conflicts usually need a much more comprehensive approach. This article describes such an approach and articulates the various roles that must be carried out to successfully transform these conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Narratives and Story-Telling

Stories have been vital to all cultures throughout history. Recently, they have been purposefully employed as tools to promote empathy between adversaries and to help people heal from past trauma.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Peace Education

Peace education involves practical and philosophical training that uses empowerment and nonviolence to build a more democratic, harmonious community.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Peacebuilding

Peacebuilding is a long-term process that occurs after violent conflict has stopped. It is the phase of the peace process that takes place after peacemaking and peacekeeping.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Peacebuilding and Reconciliation Stage

In long-running inter-group conflicts, after successful negotiation, peacebuilding and reconciliation is necessary to prevent a return to the conflict. In this stage, disputants begin to heal and to rebuild relationships, slowly putting their society back together.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Peaceful Change Strategies

Many distinguish between the "soft path" of negotiation and the "hard path" of force. This essay argues that this is a false dichotomy and that both strategies should be combined in order to transform conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Political Forgiveness: Lessons from South Africa

Political forgiveness is often a necessary precondition for transcending the negative effects of a conflict. Daye discusses political forgiveness and develops a framework for success, and then applies this framework to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Book Summary

Prejudice

Harry Bridges wrote, "No man has ever been born a Negro hater, a Jew hater, or any other kind of hater. Nature refused to be involved in such suicidal practices." This essay discusses how prejudice develops, what its effects are, and what can be done to change it.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Rape Warfare: the Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia

In this highly personal account, Beverly Allen provides a compelling testimony and analysis of the horrifying phenomenon of "a military policy of rape for the purpose of genocide."In Rape Warfare, Allen examines the complexity of identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia through the accounts of rape/death camp survivors and those who work to help them. Allen concludes with an impassioned argument for bringing to trial the perpetrators of genocidal rape. By turns personal, polemical, and informative, Rape Warfare is a lucid guide for anyone seeking to make sense of what is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

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Rape, Genocide, and Women's Human Rights

Human rights have not been women's rights - not in theory or in reality, not legally or socially, not domestically or internationally. This article examines the implications of rape in genocides and the future for women's rights.

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Reconciliation

Reconciliation is seen as the ultimate goal of peacebuilding, in which parties re-establish relationships and attempt to move beyond the past.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict: Understanding the Roots of Violence, Psychological Recovery, and Steps Toward a General Theory

This article explores psychological avenues to reconciliation between groups. It describes the psychological changes in survivors, perpetrators, and passive bystanders in the course of the evolution of increasing violence and points to healing from the psychological wounds created as an essential component of reconciliation. It also explores the role of understanding the roots of genocide, and of violence between groups in general, in contributing to healing, to the creation of a shared history in place of the usually contradictory histories held by groups that have been in violent conflict, and to reconciliation in general.

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Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation

The conventional wisdom is that reconciliation can only begin once a peace agreement has ended the conflict (at least temporarily). However, if one adopts the perspective of conflict transformation, rather than conflict resolution, then reconciliation becomes a crucial part and parcel of conflict transformation. Along that line of thinking, this essay aims to examine how reconciliation can fit into the framework of conflict transformation.

Case Study

Reconciliation in Bosnia

Almost everyone living in Bosnia has deep emotional scars from the war. Despite their suffering, perpetrators and victims have to learn to work together to rebuild their country.

Case Study

Reconstruction

These materials explore programs that can revitalize the economies of communities ravaged by conflict. These programs can build prosperity and limit the poverty and despair that underlies so many intractable conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Response to Catherine MacKinnon's Article Turning Rape into Pornography: A Postmodern Genocide

Though Catherine MacKinnon has spearheaded the civil lawsuit against Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, for genocidal acts of rape and forms of torture and killings, this review analyzes the gaps in MacKinnon's works and theories on genocide and rape. The author of this review suggests the works of many other feminists of this issue to help fill in the facts left out by MacKinnon.

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Rwanda, Ten Years On: From Genocide to Dictatorship

Ten years after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda is experiencing not democracy and reconciliation but dictatorship and exclusion. It has caused protracted regional instability and derailed the transition process in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The international community has been complicit in the rebuilding of a dictatorship under the guise of democracy. In years to come, this may well lead to renewed acute violence.

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Self-Determination Procedures

Since the end of the Cold War, more and more groups of people have demanded the right to "self-determination," meaning they have demanded their own nation-state or some degree of autonomy within another nation-state. This essay discusses the kinds of demands made and alternative responses to them.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Social Psychological Dimensions of Conflict

These dimensions include emotions (fear, distrust, hostility) as well as processes such as framing, stereotyping, and scapegoating. These factors significantly influence the way a conflict is perceived and responded to.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Strategic Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation: The Catholic Contribution to Peace

This essay tempers the popular idea that religion engenders violent conflict, by citing many examples in which religion (specifically the Roman Catholic Church and related entities) has worked to promote and sustain peace.

Case Study

The Acholi Traditional Approach to Justice and the War in Northern Uganda

This essay discusses the impact of the Northern Ugandan war on civilians and examines whether the traditional Acholi approach to forgiveness and reconciliation is beneficial in that extreme situation and how it relates to Western approaches to justice.

Case Study

The Failures of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Sierra Leone and The Threat to Peace

This article examines why post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction in Sierra Leone has failed to bring stable peace and examines the lessons to be learned for other peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts.

Case Study

The Social Psychology of Intergroup Reconciliation

Herbert Kelman discusses reconciliation as distinct from related processes of conflict settlement and conflict resolution. The volume focuses on intergroup reconciliation as consisting of moving beyond feelings of guilt and victimization (i.e., socio-emotional reconciliation). These processes include acceptance of responsibility for past wrongdoings and being forgiven in return.

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The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

"The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up by the Government of National Unity to help deal with what happened under apartheid. The conflict during this period resulted in violence and human rights abuses from all sides. No section of society escaped these abuses." -- from Website

External Resource

Trauma Exposure and Psychological Reactions to Genocide Among Rwandan Children

A total of 3030 children age 8--19 years from Rwanda was interviewed about their war experiences and reactions approximately 13 months after the genocide that started in April 1994. Rwandan children had been exposed to extreme levels of violence in the form of witnessing the death of close family members and others in massacres, as well as other violent acts. A majority of these children believed that they would die; most had to hide to survive, and others had to hide under dead bodies to survive. These children documented high levels of intrusion and avoidance. Analyses showed that reactions were associated with loss, violence exposure, and, most importantly, feeling their life was in danger.

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Trauma Healing

When conflict results in physical or psychological abuse, people can become traumatized. Trauma causes victims to continue to suffer, to be almost frozen in time.This essay details the effects of trauma and offer suggestions for healing.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea: Outline

"Under the 'Framework Act on Clearing up Past Incidents for Truth and Reconciliation', the Commission's purpose is to foster national legitimacy and reconcile the past for the sake of national unity by honoring those who participated in anti-Japanese movements and exposing the truth by investigating incidents regarding human rights abuses, violence, and massacres occurring since Japanese rule to the present time, specifically during the nation's authoritarian regimes." -- from Website

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Uncovering the Truth: Examining Truth Commission Success and Impact

Although a range of purposes have been put forward for truth commissions, there is little consensus on what criteria might be used to assess them. This issue is further compounded by a growing chorus of critics who see truth commissions as either ineffectual or dangerous. This article fleshes out the nature of these problems and outlines how a multimethod strategy might be effective in addressing them. Furthermore, it suggests two potential means of assessing the impact of truth commissions, specifically their effect on subsequent human rights practices and democratic development.

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Victimhood

In the early 1930s, millions of Ukranians died under Stalin's violent policy of forced collectivization. The depth of pain, fear, and hatred that continued to characterize the Ukrainian attitude toward Russians is typical of all victimized people. This essay examines the causes and consequences of a sense of victimhood.

Beyond Intractability Essay

We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

Utilizing personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities, towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and following the genocide.

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West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP)

WANEP envisions a peaceful and fair West African community where human rights are enforced and people can meet their human needs and dictate their own direction. WANEP carries out research on West African approaches to conflict resolution and publishes the results, operates a peace-building internship and training program, and works to strengthen the capacity of peacebuilding practitioners and organization in West Africa.

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Western and Local Approaches to Justice in Rwanda

This article discusses the three types of efforts ot deal with the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda that receive international support. The authors then juxtapose these with the internal politics within Rwanda, attempting to find a system of justice that will bring the most success at reconciliation.

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Women and Intractable Conflict

Women tend to be victimized more and gain less from intractable conflict than do men. Thus, women may be in a particularly strong position to work for peace.

Beyond Intractability Essay