Helen Chauncey

The Coexistence Initiative

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

A: There is a certain amount of frustration by people who are not part of the conflict resolution field as to why the conflict resolution field doesn't seem to have resolved a lot of conflicts. It is a fair question, but also a critical question when funding is short. Someone is going to come to you and say, "Well what have you done? Why aren't conflicts A, B, and C resolved by now? You've been working at this for a while." We are making two arguments. One is to the funders. We say, "Look this is a long process." The other is to the practitioners. We then say, "Look you need this component." Some conflict resolution organizations are ahead of others. They would say, "Yes we already got that." There are a handful who really do.

Q: This component is coexistence?

A: Yes, the coexistence component.