The Dynamics of Polarized Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This chapter analyses the ever-changing global political environment and offers key insights that underpin the understanding of the term world order. In doing so, a brief journey through time will reveal conceptual insights into an ongoing dynamic process between the two extremes of multipolarism and unipolarism, the M.U.M. model, its dynamics, and how it relates to potential concepts such as balance, imbalance, and the subjective restoration of what has been lost. Based on these general findings and clarifications, a look into the future will allow the reader to add a prominent individual value to currently existing ideologies such as a unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar world order, and will stimulate the creation of a more personal, lasting, and independent conceptual understanding beyond such terminology in common use.

KEYWORDS

Unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, world order, fragmentation, political divergence, global alliance

INTRODUCTION

Starting this journey into the depth of the meaning of the terminology of world order and its impact on our daily life, I strongly believe that we first of all need to agree on two specific aspects: namely, that a political or global order per se is only a temporary phenomenon, and that we may always identify a previous epoch and follow up on the time lapse in question. Based on such agreements and findings, we are able to see that the world community potentially finds itself in the fortunate situation of learning from the past and building a future in a more meaningful and sustainable way. Even though analysing the political past does not sound like a ground-breaking innovation, we still need to assume that this source of knowledge is broadly ignored in today’s political decision-making. Accepting that such historical resources are ignored and claiming that the persons in charge of building a secure global environment fumble in the dark turns out to be the only option to save the face of a large number of politicians with regard to their professional executive strategies. More often than not, such actions are made in an egocentric way, suppressing the global community’s needs. The Secretary-General of the United Nations questions the number of men in executive positions, and calls for an increasing number of women in decision-making processes, counting on female rational competencies (Besheer 2023). But let us go back in history, learn from the past, and find out how we can make better decisions in a constantly changing world.

Accordingly, we will need to verify what the term world order potentially meant through the ages, how it impacted regional and global affairs, and how it developed over the last centuries. We all may further agree that the topic of global politics and international affairs is a complex and complicated one. Therefore, we need to start inhabiting this field carefully and step by step, ensuring that our common understanding grows from one headline to the next. Thus, we should start discussing the topics of unipolarism, bipolarism, and multipolarism in this proper logical sequence. We will end the chapter by having a look at historical global affairs from a more holistic perspective, giving a prominent focus to a crucial aspect that has always ruled global politics, namely communication.

In order to start off with the fundamental core term, namely world order, I must point out that there is no concrete and sole definition per se. While some scholars describe it as an arrangement between major powers on how to rule the rest of the world, others define it as a concept of regional rules that are applicable to the rest of the globe (Rodrik and Walt 2021). Let us proceed and build our own understanding of this term and construct.

MAIN CORPUS

Unipolarism on a regional and global level

As briefly outlined in the introduction, regional, national, continental, and intercontinental affairs are of a temporary character and, therefore, highly dynamic. Therefore, we are not able to adequately label a specific starting point from when international connections gave birth to strategic alliances. A lack of documentation prevents us going further back in history than a few thousand years.

Basically, we could go back some 3,000 to 4,000 years, when nomadic tribes started to settle in Sumer (Lawson 2016) and establish trade alliances. Such micro alliances potentially gave birth to more complex settings of interconnectivity and could be seen as a concrete cradle of regional impact, as trust, acceptance, and interregional relations must have existed, since these tribes could not have moved peacefully and securely on their specific routes without an infrastructure based on mutual acceptance. Interpersonal connections are a fundamental need of a human being, not only in the professional environment, but also in the social setting. Based on the fact that humans are social creatures, a social structure of interaction and exchange builds part of the first education of a being. Therefore, we are conditioned to interact with other parties from our childhood on, and it is logical that each type of order or harmony represents the balancing processes between order and disorder (Blackwill and Wright 2020). This is a strong hint towards the fact that trust and acceptance are not birth rights, but need to be established, in all environments of human interaction.

This primary education builds the cornerstone of a human’s interactive superstructure that may grow and become more complex, with reference to each individual’s setting and ability. At this point, we are able to see that the concept of unipolarism starts at an individual level, namely within the family. From a baby’s egocentric perspective, the family forms the first functional cell, namely the child’s world per se. As time goes by, the child will discover that there are more families living in the same area and that connecting with such parallel cells forms part of a social individual’s life. Such connections are the root cause of social aid, exchange, stability, and growth. Thus we can say that concepts of polarism are born with the individual’s self-realisation and by placing such findings into a wider environment.

Lifting this content up to the level of clans, ethnicities, nations, and even professional environments, we will see that the value of personal interaction does not lose importance while the size of the setting grows. On an international level, heads of state foster their relations on a personal level by dialogue and mutual visits. Based on common trust and understanding, international projects, such as trade alliances, educational exchanges, and health care support, are planned and initiated. These generally have mutual stability from a multilevel aspect as a goal.

Reviewing the news as well as historical references, we may learn that such interactions can be found all over the globe, throughout all ages, following a diverse range of strategies. The intensity of one’s network does not label a stakeholder automatically as the ruling force of a unipolar concept. Aside from this, it is important to realise that several strong stakeholders and even empires coexisted globally at the same time. The term unipolarism became crucially relevant not long ago. Basically, it outlines a period when one regional superpower does not face any other major power as a competitor (Ahere 2011), and potentially identifies several minor powers that may play a specific role with or without crucial abilities. A tremendous change in the global community was needed to initiate this phenomenon.

An intermediate process before finally arriving at what we may consider to be truly, but temporarily, unipolar in the modern age is the imperialistic epochs. Here, we may consider empires such as the Mongolian, the Ottoman, the Mayan, and the Roman (Blackwill and Wright 2020), and the epoch of European colonialism. Consequently, we may realise that the wealth and dominance of Western European countries were based on historical circumstances and exploitation (Lawson 2016), which caused a significant imbalance in global markets and selective access by the global community to such markets. The prominent period generated by these circumstances led the Western European imperialists to being comfortably settled for over three hundred years. During this time, they managed to create lasting benefits from their imperialistic activities (Lawson 2016), with these benefits lasting, in some cases, up to the present age.

In order to return to the initially mentioned dynamics of global politics, we may connect deeper with the topic of globally spread coexisting regional dominant parties. Even though we can count several of them at a global level, they remain locally and regionally eminent and do not generate an overall global impact, which means that they follow a locally unipolar concept. To regionally bound citizens, such sociopolitical constructs represent the world per se, obviously assuming that such individuals do not travel or do not envision looking over their shoulder.

Keeping in mind that terms like polarism strongly depend on external factors, of a hard-skill or soft-skill nature, we can further put these thoughts into practice and create some examples. Applied hard skills materialise, for example, in regional dominance related to trade or military power, while relevant soft skills are more likely to refer to the importance and impact of external alliances. We can now go further and even integrate the terms bipolarism and multipolarism into our reflection, but we are not there yet.

What has changed over the last centuries, and this is identified as a soft skill or fact, is the speed and quantity of communication. The ability to send a telegram within minutes, to make a phone call, and, more recently, to have access to the internet made the world community gather much more closely side by side and turned likely regional wallflowers into parties with an increasing level of global impact. This initiated a new level of dynamics, namely that individuals, nations, and companies could react within minutes to decisions made or statements shared at the other extreme of the globe. This was the moment when even individual travelling and the shipping of goods sped up, and the worldwide spread of super, major, and minor powers turned into one global community. Now, forming one global community, it is obvious that the terms related to polarism reach another level of importance and relevance.

Bipolarism and its dramatic birth

The global community, as described above, arranged itself within a balance of existing regional and interregional ruling authorities. According to global dynamics and circumstances, such empires bloomed and disappeared from time to time, as such developments strongly depend on the specific and overall circumstances of such historical sequences (Koechler 2023). More recently, European colonialism pushed this naturally balanced process to collapse. Caught up in an extreme rivalry of expanding global impact, gathering natural resources, and shifting ethnic groups from one continent to another, such invasive behaviour challenged the existing world order, of a multitude of globally spread unipolar empires, to its limits, and this existing order was widely taken over by European intruders, acting under the egocentric banner of imperialism.

Interestingly, the timeline between 1871 and 1914 is recognised as the great period of peace within the Western European alliance (Flanagan 2011). Obviously, this statement places its focus on the European territory, excluding the proceedings and dramas that took place in the territories to be annexed, where fierce fighting between existing civilisations and European invaders formed, more often than not, a long-lasting, brutal, and sad reality.

The above-mentioned 43 years of European peace imply the assumption that countries involved in the conquest of regions abroad were simply too busy looting their new territories to fight each other on European terrain. However, this changed when inter-European relations were stressed and the fear of a German takeover of continental political power arose (Flanagan 2011). As a consequence of this fear, and other circumstances, the political balance between the European cluster powers, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy on the one side, and Britain, France, and Russia on the other, got out of balance (Sakhawat 2019) and culminated in the beginning of the First World War. Obviously, this is only one of several theories on the causes that supported its start.

The global community unfortunately experienced not only the First World War, but also the Second within a period of only about three decades. As a consequence of the first, Germany was bound to fulfil the constituent parts of the Treaty of Versailles, while the second gave birth to another scenario, namely the long-lasting split of the victorious powers, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America, and as a consequence of this, to the Cold War (Schweitzer 2014).

As there are no conflicts without the building of new alliances, we may briefly say that as a consequence of the early and ongoing stages of the Cold War there appeared the long-lasting desire within the world community to finally obtain ordo ab chao. Accordingly, each party of the former united victorious powers attempted to establish, support, and materialise their own concept of global order. The major players of the world community split into two camps, namely the American and the Soviet ones (Blackwill and Wright 2020). One attempt at global order was realised by the Western alliance by founding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while the counter-movement by Eastern European nations was to sign the Warsaw Pact and create the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Mastny 2001). Based on their economic relevance, both Russia and the United States had a crucial impact within their alliances and played a key role in building today’s global political scenario (Varisco 2013).

In order to support our common understanding of this situation, we need to explore some additional information on the topic of bipolarism, namely that two types of this phenomenon exist. On one side, we have power-based polarism. This describes two major stakeholders facing each other on one level of economic power or military opportunity. On the other side, and this one is more relevant for us here, we find cluster-based polarism, which is a setting where one major camp is built out of several like-minded previously minor powers. Obviously, the Cold War period was a mix of both (Ahere 2011), as we may identify the East and the West with the Soviet Union and the United States only, ignoring their minor partners.

Giving historical credit to all the above-mentioned sociopolitical events, we finally arrive at the epoch after the Second World War, in the middle of the Cold War, when twelve Western European countries and the United States founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO 2024), while seven Eastern European nations signed the Warsaw Pact and founded the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Mastny 2001).

Summing up our findings briefly, we started our journey throughout time when a multitude of most likely unipolar empires coexisted globally. Here, we may see that polarity describes a temporary balance of power and impact between or within the conglomerate of main actors (Ahere 2011). This balance was interrupted by the colonialist activities of Western European countries, when these lost themselves in an imperialist trade war, not focusing on internal European affairs. Even though none of the colonialists owned a proper empire, most of them longed for this by extending their territories abroad. The two World Wars finalised the imperialistic epoch. The pre-colonialist order gave birth, due to the colonialist transformative centuries, to even more stakeholders looking for an impactful status that they could not cope with afterwards. After the Second World War, the early stages of creating political order were overshadowed by the fundamental desire to foster economic impact and advantage. In this way, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, as a response, the Warsaw Treaty Organization were founded. Both attempted to receive and secure the largest piece of the cake.

As the success and impact of both organisations were measured in economic strength, NATO placed itself into a comfortable and eminent position, dominating international markets for several decades, surpassing its counterpart by far and turning it into an irrelevant body that is hardly remembered. When the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 exposed to the public its inability to uphold the desired leadership position (Ciambra 2007), the former Eastern Bloc focused on reorganising itself and thus gave even more space for NATO to rise to its top position (Adams 2023). This unipolar epoch led by NATO established a short period of major peace and less international rivalry between the aforementioned blocs (Ahere 2011), based on the fact that Russia and China were simply too weak to challenge the United States at that time (Blackwill and Wright 2020).

The unrivalled global standing of the United States did not promote a mandatorily quiet and balanced world at all (Mastanduno 2009). Even though it was fairly peaceful, we may ascertain that such unstable political circumstances basically call for further development on the potential opponent’s side, in one direction or the other (Ciambra 2007). This status of political unipolar autonomy enabled NATO to focus on building new alliances (Ciambra 2007). This seemed to be highly necessary, as a unipolar standing within the global community of indecisive states tends to appear like a one against all situation, and could easily turn out to be a bipolar setting of one major power and a fragmented opponent, totally unpredictable in its development. Facing and maintaining such a status quo, in a highly dynamic context, is built on political and economic costs that remain prohibitive (Dall’Agnol 2018). Furthermore, with the continuous economic growth of such formerly minor powers, these continuously qualify for more crucial positions of impact within world politics and need to be taken into future account (Wade 2011).

However, the founding of the Warsaw Treaty Organization should not have been the last and only attempt to build a counterpart to NATO. In 2001, an economic researcher introduced the term BRIC nations for the first time and thereby indirectly initiated the existence of what later on became a proper intergovernmental organisation, starting off with members Brazil, Russia, India, and China (Erdmann 2024b). Afterwards, South Africa was accepted to provide a solid fifth member. In 2024, additional states joined, namely Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (Jütten and Falkenberg 2024), looking for credibility and legitimacy while most of them follow authoritarian concepts (Adams 2023).

While the proper building process of BRICS is outlined in my above-mentioned article, I wish to call to your attention the fact that nowadays BRICS, like NATO, is a relic of Cold War dynamics and keeps the potential rivalry between the West and the East alive (Stares et al. 2020). Needless to say, human nature attempts to constantly develop and change, that is, to improve. Such moderate competitive behaviour may support a sound and stable growth. But where does such rivalry lead at a state level, especially when a rational balance might be missing and one party only longs for external power, while it struggles with internal corruption, institutional weaknesses, and political instability (Adams 2023)? I strongly believe that two opposing parties can still follow common overall goals, in particular when we live in an epoch when terms such as you and me are more likely replaced by us.

As previously discussed, nowadays all of us form part of the global community, a setting that is built upon communication abilities and which distinguishes itself by the necessity for responsibility towards oneself and the global community per se. Therefore, it is obvious that decisions need to be taken in favour of humankind and planet Earth, and that personal interests need to be weighed up and examined in relation to the necessities of the world community. Obviously, there is no place for blind rivalry and politicians who act as if they are playing egocentric games in a sandbox. War and violence do not form part of a mature person’s mindset per se. Based on this finding, we may all agree that politicians and citizens need to overcome their most basic intrinsic instincts and master their mindsets in order to start thinking truly as one. There is obviously nothing to lose, as we can only generate global benefits in a conglomerate of like-thinking minds. In the history of humankind, fragmentation has likely always been a tool of, or a door to, isolation, destructiveness, shortsighted decision-making, and weakness (Erdmann 2024a).

The fact that BRICS countries make up about 50 per cent of the global population (Adams 2023) does not automatically support peace, balance, or constructive dialogue. In order to understand NATO’s counterpart better, we need to grasp what BRICS truly stands for. BRICS is not only an ideological antipole, but an economic power, a military might, and a political alliance that is constantly developing itself (Adams 2023). Even Russia’s ongoing aggression towards Ukraine could not deter several states from officially joining BRICS in 2024.

At this point, we may recognise that another fundamental change in the global trade war has taken place. Misled by the Cold War scenario, the global community still labels the two camps as major actors in a potentially bipolar world: Russia and the United States. Here, we need to admit that China has replaced Russia by having a stronger economic impact and a more significant military might (Ashford and Cooper 2023). It is interesting to consider what this fact may mean for the power balance within BRICS itself.

Such happenings are only a slight hint of how complex the interlinkages are, how static international negotiations can become, and how the global community distances itself more and more from a crucial and sustainable oneness, while it is noteworthy that a lasting oneness could also have a bipolar foundation.

Multipolarism in the past and nowadays

As we can see, based on the previous two sections, there has always been more than one single truly unipolar empire or ruling concept throughout the history of humankind. Wherever we find a ruling authority, there may also exist a dynamic of resistance, struggling for power itself or at least for a broader availability of choice and opportunity. Such dynamics do not form a solid platform for sustainable peace, are most likely fragile (Wolforth 1999), and do not represent a power balance per se. Although we had several regional empires coexisting in the past, we moved on to an epoch when this multipolar balance of coexistence collapsed. Taking advantage of these chaotic circumstances, with the colonial interlude and the two World Wars, the NATO partners took over and formed a unipolar and economically dominant concept that ruled over the global markets for several decades (Blackwill and Wright 2020). Such a development caused a debate on a global scale (Mastanduno 2009), and directly results in our timeline from the previously described appearance of a multipolar balance (Straus 1997).

Then, based on this unipolar setting, something very interesting happened. It is not only the fact that BRICS built a counterpart to NATO and challenged the recently existing main world order (Adams 2023), but also the shift from a fragmented world order towards an interconnected global community. The two main characters, namely the Western and the Eastern alliances, struggling for economic dominance and impact, are only two parts of the triad. We now need to take a third party into account and realise that we are talking about a new setting of multipolarism in a new epoch. Personally, I label this journey the M.U.M. model, as it describes a move from one specific form of multipolarism towards a temporary unipolarism, a process that enabled a new setting of multipolarism. This model outlines the notion that terms and concepts repeat themselves but change their setting from time to time. The process of improving repetition can be visualised by imagining a spiral staircase: you arrive at the same spot over and over again, but on a new level.

The third party in building modern multipolarism is formed by a group of fragmented, isolated, or indecisive nations that do not wish to affiliate to one of the main parties or that wait and see which alignment could generate the most significant benefit in the short or in the long term. Such a conglomerate of opportunist nations is able to initiate unpredictable dynamics in world politics. Based on the fact that the United States does not nowadays show as strong an economic impact as it used to do (Ashford and Cooper 2023), the potential fragmented minor powers are free to choose which superpower they may follow and which alliance will turn out to be more beneficial in the long run. Countries such as India, Japan, and Australia would appreciate a stronger American commitment against China (Burrows 2017), while India, being a BRICS member like China, has the ability to become a major power by itself. All these tensions, inside and outside of BRICS, complicate the balancing process towards an overall oneness.

Accordingly, these minor powers, and nations with a great deal of development potential, not only consume a lot of the main stakeholders’ time and energy while they are courted, but they also imply the capacity to properly organise themselves and to establish a functioning third party, longing for the position of a proper main character for itself. In this way, modern multipolarism would be born (Ahere 2011). The fact that all stakeholders, at all their levels of impact, still depend on and interact with each other, often at an economic level, describes the absurdity of this global overall interconnectivity (Tella 2015).

We can identify several states that, even though they are economically weak, try to upgrade their standing within the global community, individually or as part of a proper camp, by increasing their relevance as regards peace by building nuclear weapons (Blackwill and Wright 2020). While nuclear weapons were used in the past in a dissuasive way, it is questionable whether countries such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea would follow the same concept if a potential national threat occurred (Burrows 2017). Based on these developments, this period in time entails radical international uncertainty (Blackwill and Wright 2020), and an ongoing rivalry between major nuclear powers does not build a lasting stable and peaceful time at all (Martin 2022).

SUMMARY

The chapter’s organising claim is that the categories in common use, unipolar, bipolar and multipolar, describe positions in a cycle rather than alternative states of the world, and that treating them as alternatives obscures what is actually happening. The spiral figure carries the argument: the same configuration recurs, but never at the same level, because each passage through it leaves behind institutions, grievances and capabilities that the previous one did not have. From this the author derives the observation that gives the chapter its title, namely that what is emerging is not a return to any earlier multipolarity but something the older vocabulary cannot name, since the decisive third element is not a power but a set of states that have declined to choose, and whose unpredictability is itself a structural feature rather than a transitional one.

CONCLUSION

The benefits, challenges, and threats of such a complex construct as polarism are obvious. Even though it seems to be a natural process to identify competition between poles (Ahere 2011), stakeholders find themselves in a setting that does not really promote constructive and sustainable decision-making in favour of the world community. All initially listed terms lose their constructive potential based on the fact that, being driven by the basic fear of ending up neglected by global business, political decision-makers select paths that further promote fragmentation, restlessness, and egocentric behaviour, instead of initiating and strengthening global unity and responsibility.

In order to accurately label our status quo, we find ourselves in a political environment where we shift from a more likely natural setting of two poles to an absurd, obscure construct of three poles. The third pole completes the construct of a fragmented and polarised pluralism and represents a variable that is unpredictable in itself. These minor parties may connect individually with a more settled and impactful major party, or they may complete the scramble for power and impact by forming an authority of their own. Nowadays, we see fragmented third parties being connected to both major players. India has the potential to become a sole major power, but also forms part of BRICS and the G20 at the same time.

Even splitting and reorganising such an entity turns out to be highly complex. Russia and China, obviously both members of BRICS, cooperate on one platform but struggle against each other on another, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Here, Russia tried to make India and Pakistan join, even though the two countries suffer a highly tense relationship, in order to weaken China’s impact within this Eurasian partnership (Burrows 2017). Potentially, this was also one reason for the acceptance of a multitude of new BRICS members in 2024.

In order to challenge our reality a bit further and to breathe even more life into the term pluralism, it is mandatory to outline that none of the main stakeholder parties is bound to such a major camp forever. Potential fragmentation, as we can see, does not only happen on the level of ideological ideas and visions, but also on an economic level, as seen in Latin America when it removed itself from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to follow its own development bank (Alexander 2014). Something similar happened when BRICS nations connected to the New Development Bank (Erdmann 2024b). Potentially, the constant back and forth of the non-Western states is their weakest point and the one that truly prevents them from obtaining a lasting leadership role.

On a global scale, we can witness new entries and withdrawals from the networks of main players that potentially add further fuel to the global political fire. Accordingly, lots of obviously paradoxical political decisions take place that stress existing alliances and question the participants’ overall loyal positions, for example the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the fact that India hosts a G20 gathering (Ashford and Cooper 2023). The only way to master today’s global tasks and challenges is by making use of constructive dialogue that guarantees the individual’s necessity to be heard, and that makes all people and political stakeholders understand that only unity enables victory over the destructive forces. Historic rivalry and egocentric decision-making do not take us, as a community, anywhere. Living in a multipolar global order requires, from all parties, flexibility and openness (Ashford and Cooper 2023) in order to accept one’s diversity, and to achieve what was scheduled as a common goal. Having taken a spiral staircase through history, we were able to discover the dynamics of the M.U.M. model. Now, we have no other option than to act more wisely than our predecessors, and to implement our findings in today’s decision-making.

The age of maturity calls global citizens to get rid of egocentric fears, to believe in the importance and strength of community, to mutually improve, and to live life alongside our peers. Man is a social being, and life implies being surrounded by individuals who respect each other, and love life itself. This love of life means caring for the community. Therefore, personal interests can never surpass the community’s needs. Life is a sum of mindful moments, truths, and discoveries: let us read between the lines, look behind the curtain, and swim against the stream. Think twice, and act wise. Future generations may not pardon the tensions that currently occur; most likely, they will demand mature decision-making from people in charge. Humankind is built on diversity, and accepting diverse mindsets does not diminish one’s value or strength. We form one human race, and life shows us its colours in the broad quantity of differences. Such do not separate us, but enrich our common ability to discuss, exchange, and improve. Thus, we are diverse, but united in diversity, and such a conglomerate of thoughts, ideas, and visions adds a unique value to our common life. This is the path, the path to unity. Let us overcome whatever seems to challenge our peace, let us become one.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The model’s central claim, that polarity is a phase rather than a state, is the part of the chapter with the widest application, and one distinction would extend it further.

The literature the chapter draws on measures polarity by the distribution of material capability, and on that measure the current period is genuinely difficult to classify, since one state retains a decisive lead in military reach while another has surpassed it in manufacturing and holds the chokepoints in several supply chains, and neither can act without the other’s participation. The more useful measure, and the one the chapter is reaching toward with its third pole, is not who holds capability but who can be compelled. A world in which most states can decline to choose is structurally different from one in which alignment is enforced, whatever the distribution of capability, and the difference is not captured by any of the three terms in use. The states the chapter describes as fragmented, isolated, or indecisive are better understood as having acquired an option that did not exist during the Cold War, and their exercising it is a rational response to circumstance rather than opportunism.

That reading changes what follows practically. A state that hedges is not withholding a decision it will eventually make; it is pursuing a strategy that works precisely because it is not resolved, and the states in question have said so explicitly. The consequence for anyone seeking to build coalitions is that offers requiring exclusivity will be declined by parties who would otherwise accept them, and that arrangements permitting simultaneous membership elsewhere are the ones that will attract participation. This is why several institutions of the present period are deliberately overlapping rather than exclusive, and it explains the pattern the chapter identifies as contradictory: a state belonging to both the G20 and BRICS is not confused but is doing what the structure rewards.

Two additions on the historical account. The period of relative European peace the chapter dates from 1871 was, as the author correctly notes, peace only within Europe, and the point can be pressed further: the arrangements that produced it, in particular the settlement of colonial claims at Berlin in 1884 and 1885, exported the conflict rather than resolving it, and the boundaries drawn there are among the standing causes of the conflicts this journal examines. And the interpretation of the period after 1990 as unipolar is contested in a way that supports the chapter’s argument: the states that experienced it did not describe it as a period of peace, and the number of interventions undertaken during it exceeded that of the preceding decades, which is evidence for the author’s claim that unipolarity is not the same thing as stability.

Finally, the closing passage moves from analysis to appeal, and the transition is worth marking because the analysis supports the appeal less directly than the text suggests. If the cycle is structural, then it will recur regardless of anyone’s maturity, and the practical question is not how to escape it but how to reduce what it costs on each passage. The instruments for that are unglamorous and known: channels of communication maintained between adversaries during periods when they have nothing to say to one another, institutions that survive the alignment that created them, and rules that constrain the strongest party at the moment when it has least reason to accept constraint. Each is a mediator’s instrument, and each is available whether or not anyone becomes one.

*Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Adams, M. (2023). BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order.

Ahere, J. R. (2011). Does Unipolarity Foster Global Stability? A Critical Analysis.

Alexander, N. (2014). The Emerging Multi-Polar World Order: Its Unprecedented Consensus on a New Model for Financing Infrastructure Investment and Development.

Ashford, E., and E. Cooper (2023). Yes, the World Is Multipolar. Foreign Policy, 5 October 2023.

Besheer, M. (2023). UN Chief Outlines Peace Agenda for Multipolar World. VOA News, 20 July 2023.

Blackwill, R. D., and T. Wright (2020). The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy. Council on Foreign Relations.

Burrows, M. J. (2017). Western Options in a Multipolar World. Atlantic Council.

Ciambra, A. (2007). Unipolarity and Hegemony in the Global Political System. Working paper, Università degli Studi di Catania.

Dall’Agnol, A. C. (2018). Balancing in Unipolarity: Who Is Afraid of Balance of Power? Brazilian Journal of International Relations, 7(3), 494 to 515.

Erdmann, D. (2024a). Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. In Kiyala, J. C. K., and N. Chivasa (Eds.), Climate Change and Socio-political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene, 681 to 688. Springer, Cham.

Erdmann, D. (2024b). BRICS: Minus x Minus = Plus? WMO Conflict Insight.

Flanagan, B. (2011). The Origins of World War I. Essays in History.

Jütten, M., and D. Falkenberg (2024). Expansion of BRICS: A Quest for Greater Global Influence? European Parliamentary Research Service.

Koechler, H. (2023). The Emerging Multipolar Balance of Power.

Lawson, G. (2016). The Rise of Modern International Order. London School of Economics.

Martin, G. T. (2022). The False Dilemma of Unipolar versus Multipolar World Systems.

Mastanduno, M. (2009). Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences.

Mastny, V. (2001). Learning from the Enemy: NATO as a Model for the Warsaw Pact.

NATO (2024). NATO Member Countries.

Rodrik, D., and S. Walt (2021). How to Construct a New Global Order. Harvard University.

Sakhawat, F. (2019). Nationalism and Imperialism: The Role of Germany before World War I.

Schweitzer, A. (2014). The Origins of the Cold War: A Review Essay.

Stares, P. B., Jia, Q., Tocci, N., Jaishankar, D., and A. Kortunov (2020). Perspectives on a Changing World Order. Council on Foreign Relations.

Straus, I. (1997). Unipolarity: The Concentric Structure of the World Order.

Tella, O. (2015). Polarity in Contemporary International Politics: A Uni-Interpolar Order.

Varisco, A. E. (2013). Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?

Wade, R. H. (2011). Emerging World Order? From Multipolarity to Multilateralism in the G20, the World Bank, and the IMF. Politics and Society, 39(3), 347 to 378.

Wohlforth, W. (1999). The Stability of a Unipolar World. International Security, 24(1), 5 to 41.

Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team

Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Gilpin, R. (1981). War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Ikenberry, G. J. (2001). After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Acharya, A. (2018). The End of American World Order (2nd edition). Polity Press, Cambridge.

Kupchan, C. A. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford University Press, New York.

Organski, A. F. K., & Kugler, J. (1980). The War Ledger. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Charter, 2002, and subsequent accession protocols.

Building a Transborder Social Identity within BRICS+ and a Fragmented Multilateral World

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the ongoing difficulties and future challenges that BRICS nations face on their way to a meaningful political impact and supplementary relevance on a global level. More often than not, stakeholders and decision-makers ignore crucial and fundamental necessities that societies request in order to enable and initiate a sustainable and lasting process of growth. Potentially, politicians in charge may be aware of the importance of such anthropological puzzle pieces and, accordingly, should put them on their agenda. Reality seems to prove that the general focus is widely placed on targeting and canvassing short-term financial turnovers and outcomes related to the balancing or unbalancing process of global impact only. Forecasting the failure of such progress, this chapter offers a more convenient strategy to find one’s position within the global community based on mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a holistic approach to peacebuilding.

KEYWORDS

Social identity, global alliance, political divergence, multilateral fragmentation, global stability, sustainable world order, holistic peacebuilding

INTRODUCTION

Starting off our journey through this chapter, I would like to create a common ground of understanding by having a brief look at the status quo of the BRICS community in the year 2026. Being initially a group of interest, Goldman Sachs researcher Jim O’Neill discussed the geopolitical relevance of Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2001 (O’Neill 2001) and thereby potentially introduced the proper term and existence of BRIC (Mostafa 2013). It only makes sense to mention that South Africa was accepted as the first additional or joining member in 2010 (Harrison 2018). Based on this action, South Africa formed the fifth member of the alliance, made the name change to the common term of BRICS, and complemented the group in a meaningful geopolitical way (Erdmann 2024b).

By reviewing the economic history of the group’s members, we can see that all such states underwent crucial economic changes and faced challenging financial situations in the late 20th century (EFSAS 2023). The awareness of the members’ natural resources, the increasing level of global consumption, the improvement of price strategies, and the expanding worldwide interlinked trade established later overall economic stability within the above-listed states (EFSAS 2023). Nowadays, this group finds itself in an economically comfortable situation (Erdmann 2024a), controlling a meaningful quantity of worldwide natural resources and obtaining a key role in global trade (Iqbal 2021).

Being still a purely economic-oriented alliance, the group could not be more diverse in a multitude of aspects. Potentially, this and the complexity of the alliance per se are one reason why it took the group 25 years to grow from the initial four states to a more significant number of members (Glogowski 2024). Even though the number of states being interested in partnering with BRICS extends this number by far, we may still find a lack of a focused and determined agenda explaining what BRICS actually stands for.

The currently available communiqués look like lists of interests stated by the broad quantity of members and partners, while every country intends to get the individual points on. Especially the vague formulation of an agenda bears many uncertain aspects that can turn out to become an uncomfortable setting for countries that find themselves in this specific economic alliance. While being part of BRICS, many of these members strengthen their independence and stability by trading with potential opponents of the group (Erdmann 2024b). This inconformity and contradiction gives birth to an inner instability that prevents BRICS from building the solid and impactful global force that it might look for, namely to become an entity that strongly leads or manages the worldwide economy and politics at the same time, based on its all-embracing network and level of fundamental natural resources.

MAIN CORPUS

A hyper-diverse global alliance called BRICS

The subject of our analysis often presents itself as a fast-growing economic unity that stands up in order to challenge the potentially existing Western financial trade order and to reorganize such towards a much-needed balance or towards leading it into the opposite extreme. Even though such a balancing and unbalancing process, depending on one’s perspective, takes place continuously, we are now having a look at the uniqueness of the M.U.M. Model (Erdmann 2024b). This model relates to global politics and describes the ongoing shift between multipolarism and unipolarism and vice versa, as it presents itself specifically at the beginning of this millennium.

The nature of this phenomenon is based on the struggle between the often labelled and perceived Western and Eastern alliances, targeting economic dominance and impact on a global level. This process entails dynamics that describe a constant movement from multipolarism towards a potentially brief phase of balance, and a further development to the status of unipolarism, before setting the frame for a new epoch of multipolarism. This concept outlines the notion that terms and concepts repeat themselves over and over again. The process of improving repetition can be visualized by imagining a spiral staircase, showing that one constantly arrives at the same spot, but on a new level of escalation (Erdmann 2024b).

Putting this into practice and being aware of the scheduled picture of global dominance, we also want to paint a picture based on our own research and on our own understanding of this situation, being highly interlinked with the world community and with what is potentially needed by mankind and less by a few stakeholders. When we talk about BRICS, we exchange on a global alliance that stretches over four continents, currently counts nine full member countries, and recently accepted thirteen partner countries (Norton 2024). In order to identify even more complexity, we need to say that its members are spread over four continents, while some of them economically partner with and on all five continents. We also see that a common understanding of what BRICS stands for and what it targets is lacking in the portfolio of the alliance. As such a common ground is missing, it turns out to be highly difficult to create or even imagine a strategy that supports the achievement of such a goal, and a path that maintains such a status once it was achieved. Furthermore, it remains entirely unclear how full members derive greater benefits from their membership status compared to countries that are recognized solely as partners.

The fact that BRICS finds itself being completely decentralized turns out to be often communicated as an impactful selling point, while it could also materialize as being the weakest point in the portfolio. Sharing the mutual interest of common economic growth, the alliance includes a broad quantity of languages, cultures, political systems, diverse trade partners, and foremost a wide frame of economic competencies and capabilities of its members (Solomon 2022), while the last point may not match with all partners, as many of them suffer tremendously from their economic instability. This level of diversity turns this alliance into a highly heterogeneous group (BpB 2023) and maybe into the most diverse group that ever existed in modern history on a global scale. The ongoing strategic expansion of BRICS forms part of the alliance’s goal to raise its economic power and natural resources based on global relevance (Tseen Fu 2024). A closer and critical view may disclose that the potential goal of the alliance is simply to create a trade network of natural resource owners, producers and consumers, excluding what may be labelled as Western countries. A far too long potential exclusion from the so-called Western world order makes members of the alliance wish to strike back by continuously admitting new members, propagating inclusiveness (Tseen Fu 2024), and increasing the level of country-based diversity to a more extensive and questionable level. Obviously, the claimed inclusiveness turns out to be highly selective.

Based on such a diverse range of starting points, interests, and capabilities, setting up such an alliance turns out to be an extraordinary challenge, while the transcontinental and inter-political character of its members specifically reinforces the complexity of making such a construct grow in a sound and sustainable way (Erdmann 2024a), especially when potential authoritarian regimes and opposing economic relations are compressed into one group. Nonetheless, besides already being extraordinarily diverse, BRICS continues to extend the quantity of its members and partners and thereby raises the level of inner complexity. A brief look at some fundamental core members of BRICS, namely China and India, shows how two almost historic rivals find themselves put into one alliance, still being and remaining highly competitive opponents on a multitude of levels. Interestingly enough, Russia takes over the role of a mediator in order to bring such members closer together (Baunov 2024). Four of the recently admitted members are likewise involved in complex disputes. Saudi Arabia and Iran are trapped in a long-term dispute on regional predominance and political integrity (Desta 2011), while Egypt and Ethiopia find themselves involved in an ongoing contradiction on natural resources, namely the Nile’s water dispute (BpB 2023).

A baseless iceberg?

Considering the ambitious growth and overall potential target of BRICS, namely to be the rebalancing tool in world economics, we may wonder where this vision and motivation actually comes from. The worldwide economic playground offers a multitude of alliances for countries to join, to actively participate in, and to create overall lasting benefits. Forming part of or being a member of the G20 and BRICS at the same time is such an ambivalent example that it raises many questions. All founding members of BRICS, including South Africa, are members of the G20, while they identified the need not only to join a more likely Western-run alliance, but also to be part of an opposing alliance that challenges the economic stability of several member states from the previously mentioned compound. Such a contradiction does not support one’s credibility in having one clear vision but more likely creates uncertainty on a global scale, actually a feature that mankind currently does not need at all, and potentially turns out to be a very poor political strategy that supports fragmentation instead of unification.

When features like mutual exchange, respect, and understanding support socio-economic peace and balance, what does fragmentation and exclusion mean to global society? It can be stated that the process of fragmentation turns out to be an impactful strategic tool, especially when a group achieves and thereby defines a certain level of self-confidence and power within the global scale. Sufficient resources show that fragmenting groups strategically exclude broad parts of a community in order to destabilize it, and to create a specific image of an enemy (Erdmann 2024c). Hereby, the recently created splinter groups are subject to the aggressor in number and power. Such dynamics can also be found during prosecution and ethnic cleansing (Zartman 2010).

The more we challenge the peak of the iceberg, namely the image of BRICS that is communicated to the broad public, the more complex and confusing the setting of this potential alliance becomes. Step by step, we may discover that it looks like a bottomless construct that is lost in its own complexity. You may see that one can even challenge the term alliance, as such traditionally identifies a group of countries or parties that share one common goal or interest (Cambridge 2025). The previously mentioned communiqués and the global economic interlinkages of the group’s members show more likely interests in all possible political directions, while some look for economic growth, others target financial stability, still others try to enrich their global network, and finally some aim to look as challenging as possible towards potential Western opponents and to impress such in a meaningful way (Baunov 2024). This seems to be the new identity of BRICS in the present era, namely to focus on the number of members and potentially less on the realistic, productive impact new partners may provide. Hereby, it seems to be worth noting that potential natural resources that a partner or member may provide, in combination with an unstable political system, do not turn out automatically to be a supportive feature to such an alliance. Furthermore, members need to observe the overall political behaviour of member and partner countries. Forming part of a group also means that other stakeholders’ actions look to be supported or at least tolerated. Accordingly, admitting new members to BRICS while continuously battling Ukraine may also serve as a wider legitimation for the Russian leadership to proceed in this political direction.

Nobody can deny that joining BRICS as a member or partner in these times serves as a clear political message towards the global community. Such countries should be well aware of the meaning of this symbolic act, namely that they support what BRICS members commonly stand up for or what they tolerate. Here, a potential anti-Western perspective may serve as a common point of interest (Baunov 2024), while most members remain involved in trading with a multitude of such Western countries. Generally, we can observe that joining a group incorporates and requests two fundamental points, namely that each member supports the overall group target and supports what, more precisely, individual peer members stand up for. This simple fact perfectly underlines the level of contradiction that BRICS finds itself in, especially referring to handling dual memberships in pro and contra Western alliances. Whether it may be the potentially anti-Western course, the unclear overall target of BRICS, or the Russian dominance in constantly inviting new members (Baunov 2024), this uncertainty does not attract everyone. It is worth noting that Argentina and Kazakhstan resigned from joining, while the role of Saudi Arabia actually remains unclear as no official confirmation of a joining act can be identified (Baunov 2024). The fact that Russia, based on its activism, put itself apparently into the position of a presidency of BRICS made the group’s character change from an initially cooperative alliance that targets mutual development into some sort of a plaything of unpredictable anti-Western propaganda, losing itself in the baseless complexity of a self-focused worldview and biased global interests.

Even though such a global partnership has the potential to float solidly like an iceberg, its intransparency beneath the surface extends to such a crucial level that its baselessness starts creating a downforce instead of supporting the complete superstructure. The fundamental question may be what measures need to be taken to turn the currently existing construct into a globally responsible, well-respected alliance that supports peace, mutual respect, and socio-economic growth, if this is the goal at all.

An unfortunate coincidence?

The topic of the organization’s credibility is far more complex than only the issue of socio-economic transparency. Currently, there does not exist one single updated document that displays, in a transparent way, all members of this construct. Even though potential members are listed on websites, on platforms, and in media channels, the specific level of membership is not clear. Hereby, the public cannot easily identify which country is a full member, which one is a partner country, which one maintains friendly relations, which country is an applicant for membership, and which country delayed or cancelled the joining process and for what reason (Council on Foreign Relations 2025). Furthermore, no officially signed joining memoranda are accessible to the public. Such are circumstances that truly challenge a belief in an upright ambition to increase one’s membership numbers and global impact in a sound way. Far more confusing remains the fact that it is constantly highlighted how many countries participate in the annual summits, while it remains unclear which role they play in such events. The question is, what kind of countries are attracted by such a foggy environment?

Unfortunately, there is another critical topic that needs to be discussed, especially when talking about transparency and international standards. This context overshadows the current setting of the alliance but is seldom addressed. The reason therefore may be the unpopularity of the topic per se, but it absolutely needs to be brought to the table, especially by representing the perspectives and the interests of being heard by potential victims. Third party reports communicate that several member countries of this alliance show human rights violations within their territories (U.S. Department of State 2025).

In order to use an additional source and to be able to analyze, from another angle, how deep-rooted and complex the issue presents itself in the current era, the reports of Amnesty International may offer additional insights (Amnesty International 2026), in order to better comprehend the information shared by other reporting bodies. Based on these burdening reports, it may not be sufficient to proclaim a condemnation of war, as commonly done during annual summits, especially when the addressed conflicts solely take place between labelled Western countries and potential BRICS members (Lima 2025), while issues that take place within the members’ own territories are not addressed and are silenced. Here, a superficial polishing of the topic may not be sufficient. It is definitely needed to address the topic in a seriously critical way and to create a path of getting back on track, following what was agreed on in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948), a document that was signed by a significant number of BRICS related countries.

Addressing this critical topic and initiating credible requested action, in order to counter the current circumstances, may generate a higher level of global acceptance of member countries or of the alliance at all, while the question remains why not all member countries signed this document and what this specifically means to the other associated countries that automatically stand in for or back up the other joining members’ political setting by attending one common alliance.

Ordo ab chao

Considering BRICS is currently more likely a rag rug of nations longing for sustainable economic growth and wealth management, we may commonly agree that there is no access to wealth without prior management. Such management needs to initiate a process that all members, partners, and joining applicants evaluate as useful and that all of them are willing to follow up on. This common understanding can be a cornerstone of an overall identity that supports a much needed ordo ab chao, order out of chaos. Obviously, such a process of change takes time and definitely starts by every one of such partners before possibly spreading from partner to partner or generating an overall code of conduct, or better said, a common identity that supports the respectful and peaceful growth of the global community. And of course, such an achievement may only be possible by leaving behind the constant labelling and setting up of Western and Eastern opposing countries, in order to finally understand all of us being global citizens.

Here, we need to face one specific reality, namely that the level of diversity that BRICS covers surpasses existing regional and continental alliances and unions by far. In this way, BRICS may not be compared to any other existing union, such as the European Union, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or the Union of South American Nations. Its complexity of cultures, languages, religions, and economic necessities makes this construct face very unique challenges. Currently, we do not see indications that support the understanding that BRICS will grow from within in order to become sound (Erdmann 2024a), grow in a sustainable way, and build a lasting global value for mankind, as previously requested. This status might continue, while the focus remains on growing, promising new members credibility and legitimacy (Adams 2023).

Having such widespread diversity as a foundation, we may understand that what is needed looks like a common creed or a transborder identity that reconciles differences and harmonizes diversity in an all-embracing way. So, the term identity offers us a very complex nature and a rich scale of interpretations. As soon as the consciousness is sharpened and a human individual realizes their proper existence, the quest for an identity is born. Identity per se is a multilayered word that is of importance on an individual level, a group level, a regional level, a national level, a continental level, and may reach its climax on a global level, including ethnicities, languages, creeds, and cultures. Even though we may identify a multitude of different sorts of identities, they all seem to have one common denominator, namely the quest for a harmonic and organized aspect.

Accordingly, we may imagine that it is basically a very tricky and challenging project to create or build a truly transborder identity, while what is needed is something that people can believe in, that connects them, and that motivates them to start talking about themselves as a sound community. What we are looking for is the still missing central puzzle piece that completes the artwork and that gives a higher meaning to angles, visions, and perspectives. This puzzle piece could turn chaos into order and provide BRICS with the opportunity to stop being a potentially unpredictable underdog who challenges an existing global construct. BRICS could leave this image behind and start growing solidly within itself and within the global community in order to become a cornerstone for global balance, peace, and harmony. This missing link, or still transborder identity, can only be identified and developed by the community of BRICS itself (Yzerbyt 1997), and starts with the discernment that only merged puzzle pieces complete the picture, or that all countries are needed to build a lasting global community. The form, structure, and character of a puzzle piece is crucial when we identify its place within the overall artwork, while the piece itself merges perfectly with the bigger picture by not focusing on its proper borders any longer. Thus, the ultimate goal, on a global level, should be to leave proper personal interests behind, and to merge into a community of conscious and truly interdependent partners.

SUMMARY

The revision sharpens the argument at the point where it is most easily dismissed as abstract, by asking what can actually be established about the association. The finding is that no authoritative document sets out who belongs to it and in what capacity, that no accession instruments are published, and that the annual summits report attendance without specifying the standing of those attending. From this the author draws a conclusion that does not depend on any political position: an association whose membership cannot be ascertained cannot be held to anything, because there is no record of who undertook what. The second addition applies the same test to conduct rather than to form, observing that declarations condemning wars between others sit alongside silence about conditions within the members’ own territories, and that a group whose members are documented as violating undertakings they have signed acquires a collective problem of credibility whether or not it acknowledges one.

CONCLUSION

In order to be able to build a transborder identity that truly combines a high level of diverse members of a group, we need to understand the uniqueness of this common goal, and the specific challenges of the setting in question. Traditionally, a group identifies itself as such based on a common language, dialect, culture, history, or tradition (Akuche 2016). Obviously, not all members of the wider BRICS circle are completely different, but they are potentially diverse. Some of them share languages, but not dialects; others share religions, but not their traditions within them. Here, we can clearly see that diversity is unequal to fragmentation, which more likely is the counterpart of unity. This gives us a very crucial hint, namely that diversity can still be or become the starting point that has its peak in some level of unity. Having stated in the beginning that the high level of nations’ diversity may be the weak spot of BRICS, we find ourselves at the point of turning a fragile ornament into the truss of a superstructure. This means that if it turns out to be possible to build an identity of BRICS members, it should also be realistic to build an even stronger identity, namely the identity of a global community, incorporating all puzzle pieces, as previously mentioned and requested.

We may have learned so far that building a transborder identity is more likely an extensive task, especially as setting the foundation of a common understanding begins with each participant and targets the overall conformity of the sum of such diverse individuals, longing to label themselves members of a homogeneous group. Here, we may challenge the traditional concepts of strategic economic growth and the methods that accordingly are based on building inclusive and exclusive alliances, such as the G20, the G7, BRICS, and NATO, more often than not benefitting from this process of economic and political fragmentation. The question that we need to analyze for ourselves is whether such an exclusive mindset still meets today’s necessities, in a global and multilateral world, and if we can justify such a path in a dialogue with upcoming generations.

Reflections may unveil that exclusive behaviour often turns out to be a strong hint towards an advanced level of fear of loss, of disadvantage, and of being left behind in general. Based on the general global connectivity, referring to individuals, companies, organizations, and countries, one may strongly doubt that building economic borders supports global growth. Accordingly, and as previously stated, putting a name on everything and everyone supports exclusiveness, which per se is often a door opener for fragmentation and extremism (Erdmann 2024c). What mankind potentially needs in a time of economic and social insecurity is a common creed that binds all humans together at the bottom of their hearts. Namely a creed that is so fundamental that it touches and supports basic human necessities, namely stability, peace, and harmony. If we do not build harmony at the grassroots level of the individual and their family, we have no space to further develop a sound identity that surpasses borders and that embraces the wealth of mankind.

It may already be sensed where this will possibly take the global community. BRICS, but more likely mankind per se, needs to create a real consciousness of a global community and, more specifically, the awareness that today’s exclusiveness and fragmentation do not support real stability and global growth in the long term but always support that only very selective groups that initiate such processes benefit from those dynamics. In order to initiate such a change, we need politicians who act like responsible adults and who understand that owning the biggest piece of the cake does not automatically grant satisfaction, not in the long run, and potentially less to all of us. Based on what has been written so far, we all may imagine a world without the previously mentioned trade associations and unions. Mankind may envision that a common level of true responsibility towards the planet Earth and mankind is much needed, far beyond self-centred and ignorant behaviour that is based on and that supports chaotic circumstances in the human mindset and on the surface that we walk on.

Therefore, BRICS, and again mankind in general, needs an agenda that clearly communicates, in a reasonable and realistic way, shared values that offer tranquillity on a global level and enable mankind to develop a common identity, not as individuals but as a global community. Such a common identity could also be the true recognition of the Declaration of Human Rights, that would enable all countries to meet upon one level, to exchange and to treat each other based on righteousness. Hereby, it is crucial to discharge the importance of a labelling name and not to put an excluding acronym in the front row, such as BRICS, the G20 or the G7. Now, it is humankind that counts first, it is humankind that needs to turn into a global community of mutual respect and responsibility, it is humankind that needs to connect and grow from within, and it is humankind that does not need a name to differ, because it already got a name that binds all of them together, citizens of the world.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The transparency argument is the strongest thing in this revision and it is worth separating from the political assessment that surrounds it, because it stands on its own and is harder to answer.

An association that publishes no accession instruments, maintains no authoritative list of members and their status, and reports attendance at summits without specifying capacity, has no ascertainable membership. The consequence is not merely presentational. Commitments made in a communiqué bind whoever agreed to them, and where it cannot be established who agreed, nothing binds anyone. The comparison the author sets aside is instructive here rather than inapt: the European Union publishes its treaties, the African Union its Constitutive Act, and both maintain registers of ratification precisely because an institution that cannot demonstrate who is a member cannot enforce anything against anyone. This is an institutional design question rather than a political one, and it admits of a straightforward remedy that costs nothing and that no member could reasonably oppose.

Two observations on the human rights passage. The most difficult version of the argument is not that member states have poor records, which is true of members of every large grouping including those the author contrasts them with, but the one the text arrives at in its final paragraph: that association implies a degree of endorsement, and that a body which condemns conduct by non-members while remaining silent about equivalent conduct among its own acquires a selectivity problem that undermines the standing from which it speaks. That argument applies with equal force to every grouping, which is what makes it a general proposition about multilateral bodies rather than a criticism of one, and stating it that way makes it considerably harder to dismiss. Relatedly, the sourcing would be strengthened by drawing on bodies whose reports cannot be characterised as partisan by the states concerned: the treaty bodies of the United Nations, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, and the universal periodic review examine every member state on the same criteria, including those whose governments commissioned the reports the author cites.

Two further points bear on the constructive proposal. A minimal standard of association is achievable in a way that a shared identity is not, and it is what comparable groupings have adopted: published criteria for admission, an accessible register, a code of conduct, and a procedure for suspension. None of these requires anyone to agree about values, and each would answer the specific defect the author identifies. And the concluding proposal that the Universal Declaration serve as the common ground is well chosen for a reason worth stating: it was adopted without a dissenting vote, its substance has been incorporated into instruments ratified by every state in the grouping, and it is therefore the one text on the table that no member can characterise as an external imposition. Where a shared identity must be built and cannot be invented, an existing common undertaking is the only available foundation.

Finally, the metaphor of the puzzle piece that ceases to attend to its own borders states, in the author’s own terms, the finding this journal has reached repeatedly from other directions. Identities are not dissolved by the discovery of a larger one; they are held within it, and the arrangements that work are those in which belonging to the whole does not require anyone to stop being what they were. That is the dual identity finding, and it is the mechanism by which the aspiration in the closing paragraph could become something other than an aspiration.

*Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Adams, Mubarak (2023) BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order.

Akuche, Andre Ben Moses (2016) Nation Building and the Impediments of Building the Nigerian Nation.

Amnesty International (2026) Country Reports. https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/

Baunov, Alexander (2024) New Identity of BRICS. Carnegie Endowment.

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2023) Erweiterung der BRICS Gruppe.

Cambridge Dictionary (2025) Alliance.

Council on Foreign Relations (2025) What Is the BRICS Group and Why Is It Expanding?

Desta, Teddy (2011) The Iran and Saudi Arabia Power Struggle.

EFSAS (2023) The BRICS: Origins, Evolution and 2023 Expansion.

Erdmann, Daniel (2024a) BRICS: Minus × Minus = Plus? About the Art and Challenges of Growing from Within. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., Tshikovhi, N., Ngwenya, D. M., and F. Netswera (eds) Expanded BRICS Nations. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Erdmann, Daniel (2024b) The Dynamics of Polarised Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., Tshikovhi, N., Ngwenya, D. M., and F. Netswera (eds) Expanded BRICS Nations. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Erdmann, Daniel (2024c) Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., and N. Chivasa (eds) Climate Change and Socio-political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene. Springer, Cham.

Glogowski, Aleksander (2024) India, Pakistan and BRICS after the 2024 Kazan Summit.

Harrison, Philip (2018) South Africa in the BRICS.

Iqbal, Badar Alam (2021) BRICS as a Driver of Global Economic Growth and Development.

Lima, Julia (2025) BRICS Leaders’ Declaration Condemns Wars and Calls for Reform of Global Governance.

Mostafa, Mahmood (2013) The Rise of the BRICS and Their Challenge to the G7.

Norton, Ben (2024) BRICS Keeps Growing in a Multipolar World.

O’Neill, Jim (2001) Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs.

Solomon, Mussie (2022) BRICS Plus and Its Major Impacts on Poor Members.

Tseen Fu, Brice Lee (2024) Legitimacy through Diversity: China’s Leadership in the BRICS Plus Expansion for Global Balance.

United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2025) 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

Yzerbyt, Vincent (1997) Building a European Identity.

Zartman, I. William (2010) Identity Conflicts. International Peace Institute.

Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team

Agreement on the New Development Bank, Fortaleza, 15 July 2014, and the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, 2014.

Kazan Declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit, 23 October 2024, and subsequent summit declarations.

Constitutive Act of the African Union, 2000, and the Treaty on European Union, consolidated version, on the publication of accession instruments and criteria for membership.

Universal Periodic Review, Human Rights Council, and the reports of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies.

Acharya, A. (2018). Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Stuenkel, O. (2020). The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (2nd edition). Lexington Books, Lanham.

Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Psychology Press, Philadelphia.

Risse, T. (2010). A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Building a Transborder Social Identity within BRICS+ and a Fragmented Multilateral World

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This editorial discusses the ongoing difficulties and future challenges that BRICS nations face on their way to a meaningful political impact and supplementary relevance on a global level. More often than not, stakeholders and decision-makers ignore crucial and fundamental necessities that societies require in order to enable and initiate a sustainable and lasting process of growth. Potentially, politicians in charge may be aware of the importance of such anthropological pieces of the puzzle and should accordingly put them on their agenda. Reality seems to prove that the general focus is widely placed on targeting and canvassing short-term financial turnovers and outcomes related to the balancing or unbalancing of global impact only. Forecasting the failure of such progress, this text offers a more convenient strategy for finding one’s position within the global community, based on mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a holistic approach to peacebuilding.

KEYWORDS

Social identity, global alliance, political divergence, multilateral fragmentation, global stability, sustainable world order, holistic peacebuilding

INTRODUCTION

Starting off our journey, I would like to create a common ground of understanding by having a brief look at the status quo of the BRICS community in the year 2025. Being initially a group of interest, the geopolitical relevance of Brazil, Russia, India, and China was discussed by the Goldman Sachs researcher Jim O’Neill in 2001 (O’Neill 2001), thereby introducing the term and the notion of the BRIC states (Mostafa 2013). It makes sense to mention that South Africa was accepted as the first additional member in 2010 (Harrison 2018). South Africa thereby formed the fifth member of the alliance, occasioned the name change to the common term BRICS, and complemented the group in a meaningful geopolitical way (Erdmann 2024b).

By reviewing the economic history of the group’s members, we can see that all these states underwent crucial economic changes and faced challenging financial situations in the late twentieth century (EFSAS 2023). Awareness of the members’ natural resources, the increasing level of global consumption, the improvement of pricing strategies, and the expanding interlinkage of world trade later established overall economic stability (EFSAS 2023) within these states. Nowadays this group finds itself in an economically comfortable situation (Erdmann 2024a), controlling a meaningful quantity of the world’s natural resources and holding a key role in global trade (Iqbal 2021).

Being still a purely economically oriented alliance, the group could not be more diverse in a multitude of aspects. Potentially this, and the complexity of the alliance in itself, is one reason why it took the group 24 years to grow from the initial four states to a more significant number of members (Glogowski 2024). Even though the number of states interested in partnering with BRICS extends this number by far, we may still find a lack of a focused and determined agenda explaining what BRICS actually stands for. The currently available communiqués look like lists of interests stated by the broad quantity of members and partners, while every country intends to get its individual points onto the paper. In particular, the vague formulation of an agenda bears many uncertain aspects that can turn out to be uncomfortable for countries finding themselves in this specific economic alliance. While being part of BRICS, many of these members strengthen their independence and stability by trading with potential opponents of the group (Erdmann 2024b). This inconsistency and contradiction give birth to an inner instability that prevents BRICS from building the solid and impactful global force that it might be looking for, namely an entity that strongly leads or manages the world economy and world politics at the same time, based on its all-embracing network and its holdings of fundamental natural resources.

MAIN CORPUS

A hyper-diverse global alliance called BRICS

The subject of our analysis often presents itself as a fast-growing economic unity that stands up in order to challenge the potentially existing Western financial and trade order, and to reorganise it towards a much-needed balance, or towards leading it into the opposite extreme. Even though such a balancing and unbalancing process, depending on one’s perspective, takes place continuously, we are now having a look at the uniqueness of the M.U.M. model (Erdmann 2024b). This model describes the ongoing shift between multipolarism and unipolarism and back again, as it presents itself at the beginning of this millennium. In my previous article on the dynamics of polarized pluralism, I already explained and outlined the nature of this phenomenon, while the present text extends the previous dynamics in global reach and impact.

Being aware of the picture that potentially underlies a specific strategic plan, and that is therefore projected towards the public, we also want to paint a picture based on our own research and our own understanding of this situation, which is highly interlinked with the world community. Basically, we are talking about a global alliance that stretches over four continents, currently counts nine full member countries, and has recently accepted thirteen partner countries (Norton 2024). In order to identify even more complexity, we need to say that its members are spread over four continents, while economic partnership with selected members of BRICS spans all five.

The fact that BRICS finds itself completely decentralised often turns out to be an impactful selling point, while it could also materialise as the weakest point in the portfolio. Sharing a mutual interest in common economic growth, the alliance includes a broad quantity of languages, cultures, political systems, and diverse trade partners, and above all a wide range of economic competencies and capabilities (Solomon 2022) among its members, although this last point may not apply to all partners, as many of them suffer considerable economic instability. This level of diversity turns the alliance into a highly heterogeneous group (BpB 2023), and perhaps into the most diverse group that has ever existed in modern history on a global scale. The ongoing strategic expansion of BRICS forms part of the alliance’s goal of raising its economic power and its global relevance based on natural resources (Tseen Fu 2024). A closer but unreflected view may suggest that the goal of the alliance is simply to create a trade network of producers and consumers excluding what may be labelled as Western countries. A protracted exclusion from the so-called Western world order makes members of the alliance strike back by continuously admitting new members, propagating inclusiveness (Tseen Fu 2024), and increasing the level of country-based diversity to a more extensive and questionable degree.

My article on BRICS and the art of growing from within already discussed the extraordinary challenge for a transcontinental and inter-political alliance to grow in a sound and sustainable way (Erdmann 2024a), especially when potentially authoritarian regimes and opposing economic relations are compressed into one group. Nonetheless, besides already being extraordinarily diverse, BRICS continues to extend the number of its members and partners and thereby raises the level of internal complexity. A brief look at some of the core members of BRICS, namely China and India, shows how two almost historic rivals find themselves placed in one alliance while remaining highly competitive opponents on a multitude of levels. Interestingly enough, Russia takes over the role of a mediator in order to bring such members closer together (Baunov 2024). Four of the recently admitted members are likewise involved in complex disputes. Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in a long-term dispute over regional predominance and political integrity (Desta 2011), while Egypt and Ethiopia find themselves in an ongoing contention over natural resources, namely the dispute over the waters of the Nile (BpB 2023).

A baseless iceberg?

Considering the ambitious growth and the overall target of BRICS, namely to be the rebalancing tool in world economics, we may wonder where this vision and motivation actually come from. The worldwide economic playing field offers a multitude of alliances for countries to join, to participate in actively, and through which to create lasting benefits. Forming part of the G20 and BRICS at the same time is such an ambivalent example that it raises many questions. All founding members of BRICS, including South Africa, are members of the G20, while they identified the need not only to join a more Western-run alliance but also to be part of an opposing one that challenges the economic stability of several member states of the former. Such a contradiction does not support one’s credibility in having a clear vision, but more likely creates uncertainty on a global scale, a feature that mankind currently does not need at all, and potentially turns out to be a very poor political strategy that supports fragmentation instead of unification.

The more we examine the peak of the iceberg, namely the image of BRICS that is communicated to the broad public, the more complex and confusing the setting of this potential alliance becomes. Step by step, we may discover what looks like a bottomless construct that is lost in its own complexity. You may see that I even challenge the term alliance as such, which traditionally identifies a group of countries or parties that share one common goal or interest (Cambridge 2025). The previously mentioned communiqués and the global economic interlinkages of the group’s members suggest interests pointing in all possible political directions, while some look for economic growth, others target financial stability, still others try to enrich their global network, and finally some aim to appear as challenging as possible towards potential Western opponents (Baunov 2024). This seems to be the new identity of a Russian-led BRICS, namely a focus on the number of members and potentially less on the realistic, productive impact that new partners may provide. Adding new members to BRICS while continuing to fight in Ukraine may also serve as a wider legitimation for the Russian leadership to proceed in this political direction.

Nobody can deny that joining BRICS as a member or partner in these times serves as a political message towards the global community. Such countries should be well aware of the meaning of this symbolic act, namely that they support what BRICS members commonly stand for. Here, a potentially anti-Western perspective (Baunov 2024) may serve as a common point of interest, while most members remain involved in trading with a multitude of Western countries. Generally, we can observe that joining a group incorporates or requires two fundamental points, namely that each member supports the overall group target and supports what individual peer members stand for. This simple fact perfectly underlines the level of contradiction in which BRICS finds itself, especially with reference to dual memberships in alliances that are for and against the Western order. Whether it be the potentially anti-Western course, the unclear overall target of BRICS, or the Russian prominence in constantly inviting new members (Baunov 2024), this uncertainty does not attract everyone. It is worth noting that Argentina declined to join and that the position of Saudi Arabia remains unclear, as no official confirmation of accession can be identified (Baunov 2024). The fact that Russia, on the basis of its activism, placed itself in a leading position within BRICS made the character of the group change from an initially cooperative alliance targeting mutual development into something closer to an instrument of unpredictable anti-Western messaging, losing itself in the baseless complexity of a self-focused worldview and partial global interests.

Even though such a global partnership has the potential to float solidly like an iceberg, its opacity beneath the surface extends to such a degree that its baselessness starts creating downforce instead of supporting the whole superstructure. The fundamental question may be what measures need to be taken to turn the currently existing construct into a globally responsible, well-respected alliance that supports peace, mutual respect, and socio-economic growth, if this is the goal at all.

Ordo ab chao

Considering that BRICS is currently more a rag rug of nations longing for sustainable economic growth and wealth management, we may commonly agree that there is no access to wealth without prior management. Such management needs to initiate or create the path towards wealth that may be taken by all members, partners, and applicants in the same way. In order to begin building such a path, we need to understand how to build a supportive order that enables the individual, whether a single person or a nation, to understand how it defines itself and where this conceptual structure comes from.

Here we need to face one specific reality, namely that the level of diversity that BRICS covers surpasses that of existing regional or continental alliances and unions by far. In this way BRICS may not be compared, on the basis of its complexity of cultures, languages, religions, and economic necessities, to any other existing union, such as the European Union, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or the Union of South American Nations. Currently we do not see indications supporting the understanding that BRICS needs to grow from within (Erdmann 2024a) in order to become sound, to grow in a sustainable way, and to build a lasting global value for mankind. In the meantime, the focus may be placed on growing by number, on the basis that more and more members and partners are accepted, promising them credibility and legitimacy (Adams 2023).

Having such widespread diversity as a foundation, we may understand that what is needed is a common creed or a transborder identity that reconciles differences and harmonises diversity in an all-embracing way. The term identity offers us a very complex nature and a rich scale of interpretations. As soon as consciousness is sharpened and the individual realises their own existence, the quest for an identity is born. Identity is a multilayered word that is of importance on an individual level, a group level, a regional level, a national level, a continental level, and that may reach its climax on a global level, including ethnicities, languages, creeds, and cultures. Even though we may identify a multitude of different sorts of identity, they all seem to have one common denominator, namely the quest for a harmonic and organised aspect.

Accordingly, we may imagine that it is a very tricky project to create or build a truly transborder identity, since what is needed is something that people can believe in, that connects them, and that motivates them to start speaking of themselves as a sound community. What we are looking for is the still missing central piece of the puzzle that completes the artwork and that gives a higher meaning to angles, visions, and perspectives. This piece could turn chaos into order and provide BRICS with the opportunity to stop being a potentially unpredictable challenger to the existing global construct. BRICS could leave this image behind and start growing solidly within itself and within the global community, in order to become a cornerstone for global balance, peace, and harmony. This missing link, or transborder identity, can only be identified and developed by the community of BRICS itself (Yzerbyt 1997), and starts with the discernment that only merged pieces complete the picture, or that all countries are needed to build a lasting global community.

SUMMARY

The argument advanced here moves from a diagnosis to a proposal that is deliberately larger than its subject. The diagnosis is that BRICS has grown by addition rather than from within, that its members hold interests which point in incompatible directions, and that an association defined chiefly by what it is not cannot supply the coherence that its stated ambitions require. The proposal is that what such a grouping lacks is not a better communiqué but a shared identity, and that identity cannot be manufactured from above because it forms among people rather than between governments. The final turn is the one that distinguishes this text from a policy assessment: if the difficulty is that alliances define themselves by exclusion, then the remedy cannot be a better alliance, and the author accordingly declines to offer BRICS a strategy and offers instead the observation that the only membership large enough to solve the problem is one that no one has to be admitted to.

CONCLUSION

In order to be able to build a transborder identity that truly combines a highly diverse membership, we need to understand the uniqueness of the common goal and the specific challenges of the setting in question. Traditionally a group identifies itself as such on the basis of a common language, dialect, culture, history, or tradition (Akuche 2016). Obviously, not all members of the wider BRICS circle are different, but they are potentially diverse. Some of them share languages but not dialects; others share religions but not their traditions within them. Here we can clearly see that diversity is not the same as fragmentation, which is more likely the counterpart of unity. Having stated at the beginning that the high level of diversity among the nations involved may be the weak spot of BRICS, we find ourselves at the point of turning a fragile ornament into the truss of a superstructure. This means that if it proves possible to build an identity among BRICS members, it should also be realistic to build an even stronger one, namely the identity of a global community, incorporating those previously mentioned.

We may have learned so far that building a transborder identity is an extensive task, especially as setting a foundation of common understanding begins with each person and targets the overall conformity of the sum of diverse individuals wishing to label themselves as members of the group. Here we may challenge the traditional concepts of strategic economic growth, and the methods accordingly based on building inclusive and exclusive alliances such as the G20, the G7, BRICS, and NATO. The question that we need to analyse for ourselves is whether such an exclusive mindset still meets the necessities of today’s global and multilateral world.

My reflection and analysis reveal to me that exclusive behaviour often turns out to be a strong indication of an advanced level of fear of loss or disadvantage. On the basis of our general global connectivity, referring to individuals, companies, organisations, and countries, I strongly doubt that building, separating, and fragmenting economic borders supports global growth. Accordingly, such labelling supports exclusiveness, which in itself is often a door opener for fragmentation and extremism (Erdmann 2024c). What mankind potentially needs in a time of economic and social insecurity is a common creed that binds all humans together at the bottom of their hearts, a creed that is so fundamental that it touches and supports basic human necessities, namely stability, peace, and harmony. If we do not build harmony at the grassroots level of the individual and their family, we have no space in which to develop a sound identity that surpasses borders and embraces the wealth of mankind.

You may already sense where this will possibly take us. BRICS, but more likely mankind itself, needs to create the consciousness of a global community, and more specifically the awareness that exclusiveness and fragmentation do not support real stability and global growth in the long term. In order to initiate such a process we need politicians who act like responsible adults and who understand that owning the biggest piece of the cake does not automatically grant satisfaction. On the basis of what has been written so far, we may all imagine a world without the trade associations and unions mentioned above, and we may envision that what we more likely need is a common level of true responsibility towards the planet Earth and towards mankind, far beyond self-centred and ignorant behaviour that rests on and reproduces chaotic circumstances in the human mindset and on the surface that we walk on.

Therefore BRICS, and again mankind in general, needs an agenda that clearly communicates, in a reasonable and realistic way, shared values that offer tranquillity on a global level and enable mankind to develop a common identity, not as individuals but as a global community. It is crucial here to emphasise the importance of a name, and not to place an excluding name in the front row, such as BRICS, the G20, or the G7. Now it is humankind that counts first, it is humankind that needs to turn into a global community of mutual respect and responsibility, it is humankind that needs to connect and grow from within, and it is humankind that does not need a name in order to differ, because it already has a name that binds all of us together, namely citizens of the world.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The central claim here, that an association without a shared identity cannot become more than the sum of its transactions, is well made and can be tested against what the group has actually built, which strengthens the argument in one direction and qualifies it in another.

The qualification first. Some of what BRICS has produced does not depend on shared identity at all. The New Development Bank lends, the contingent reserve arrangement exists, and the arrangements for settlement in national currencies have expanded, in each case because the members had a convergent interest in reducing dependence on a single financial system rather than because they agreed about anything else. This is the pattern the functionalist literature describes: cooperation in narrow technical domains proceeds among parties who share nothing else, and it sometimes generates the trust that broader cooperation requires. Judged as a coalition of convenience with limited objectives, the record is more substantial than the framing of an incoherent alliance suggests.

The support comes at the point where the ambition exceeds that. A common currency, a coordinated political position, or collective action against a third party each require members to accept costs for the group, and that is precisely what identity supplies and what interest alone does not. The author’s diagnosis therefore holds for everything BRICS says it wants to become, and the internal disputes he lists, between two members over a border, between two over regional primacy, and between two over a river, are the concrete form of the difficulty.

Two additions belong here. The observation that members trade extensively with those the group defines itself against is accurate and it points somewhere the text does not go: it is evidence that the anti-Western framing is a rhetorical register rather than an operating principle, and the states concerned have been explicit that they seek additional options rather than an alternative bloc. Read that way, the incoherence the author identifies is less a failure of the alliance than an accurate representation of what its members want, which is not to choose. And the difficulty of building identity in a heterogeneous grouping has been studied in the case the text sets aside as incomparable: the European experience suggests that shared identity followed decades of functional integration rather than preceding it, that it remains contested, and that the institutions which produced it were courts, parliaments, exchange programmes and a common market rather than declarations.

Finally, the closing turn deserves to be taken as seriously as it is meant. The argument that exclusive groupings reproduce the fragmentation they are formed to protect against is the same argument this journal makes about identity at every other scale, and its consistency is the point. It also carries the difficulty that every universalist proposal carries: an identity that excludes no one motivates no one, and the practical work therefore lies not in replacing particular loyalties but in nesting them, so that a person can be a citizen of a place and of the world without the first requiring the second to be false. That is the dual identity finding from the intergroup literature, and it is the mechanism by which the aspiration in the final paragraph could become something other than an aspiration.

*Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Adams, Mubarak (2023) BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371804604_BRICS_AND_THE_NEW_WORLD_ORDER_IMPLICATIONS_FOR_THE_EXISTING_WORLD_ORDER

Akuche, Andre Ben Moses (2016) Nation Building and the Impediments of Building the Nigerian Nation. https://www.academia.edu/31350929/Nation_Building_and_the_Impediments_of_Building_the_Nigerian_Nation

Baunov, Alexander (2024) New Identity of BRICS. Carnegie Endowment. https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/10/brics-russia-global-power-opposition?lang=en

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2023) Erweiterung der BRICS Gruppe. https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/hintergrund-aktuell/540816/erweiterung-der-brics-gruppe/

Cambridge Dictionary (2025) Alliance. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/alliance

Desta, Teddy (2011) The Iran Saudi Arabia Power Struggle. https://www.academia.edu/42105879/The_Iran_Saudi_Arabia_Power_Struggle

EFSAS (2023) The BRICS: Origins, Evolution and 2023 Expansion. https://www.efsas.org/publications/study-papers/the-brics-origins-evolution-and-expansion/

Erdmann, Daniel (2024a) BRICS: Minus x Minus = Plus? About the Art and Challenges of Growing from Within. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/brics-minus-x-minus-plus-about-the-art-and-challenges-of-growing-from-within/

Erdmann, Daniel (2024b) The Dynamics of Polarized Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/the-dynamics-of-polarized-pluralism-on-the-benefits-challenges-and-threats-of-a-constantly-changing-fragmented-world-order/

Erdmann, Daniel (2024c) Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/personal-identity-and-peace-building/

Glogowski, Aleksander (2024) India, Pakistan and BRICS after the 2024 Kazan Summit. https://www.academia.edu/125302884/India_Pakistan_and_BRICS_after_the_2024_Kazan_summit

Harrison, Philip (2018) South Africa in the BRICS. https://www.academia.edu/116590774/South_Africa_in_the_BRICS

Iqbal, Badar Alam (2021) BRICS as a Driver of Global Economic Growth and Development. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09749101211067096

Mostafa, Mahmood (2013) The Rise of the BRICS and Their Challenge to the G7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271724885_The_rise_of_the_BRICS_and_their_challenge_to_the_G7

Norton, Ben (2024) BRICS Keeps Growing in a Multipolar World. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/10/26/brics-13-partner-countries-summit-kazan-russia/

O’Neill, Jim (2001) Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/goldman-sachs-research/building-better

Solomon, Mussie (2022) BRICS Plus and Its Major Impacts on Poor Members. https://www.academia.edu/124839172/BRICS_and_its_Major_Impacts_on_Poor_Members

Tseen Fu, Brice Lee (2024) Legitimacy through Diversity: China’s Leadership in the BRICS Plus Expansion for Global Balance. https://www.academia.edu/122725632/Legitimacy_through_Diversity_Chinas_Leadership_in_the_BRICS_Expansion_for_Global_Balance

Yzerbyt, Vincent (1997) Building a European Identity. https://www.academia.edu/84255502/Building_a_European_identity

Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team

Agreement on the New Development Bank, Fortaleza, 15 July 2014, and the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, 2014.

Kazan Declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit, 23 October 2024.

Haas, E. B. (1958). The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces 1950 to 1957. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Acharya, A. (2018). Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Stuenkel, O. (2020). The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (2nd edition). Lexington Books, Lanham.

Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Psychology Press, Philadelphia.

Risse, T. (2010). A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Critical Thinking – A Starting Point for Impact Building

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This editorial proposes an alternative to the accumulation of theory as preparation for mediation practice. The author sets out what conventional preparation demands, namely conflict analysis, conflict theory, management strategies and de-escalation techniques, observes that the list is unmanageable, and asks the reader to consider setting it aside. What remains when the conceptual apparatus is put down is described as the practitioner themselves: the experiences gathered in a life, the social competencies developed over time, and the skills learned in family, friendship and neighbourhood. From this the author develops the idea of working from an inner centre characterised as empty mind and nothingness, from which questions arise that are formed by the situation rather than imposed on it. The reflection closes with the three competencies the author calls mindful mediation: deep listening, critical thinking and wise speaking.

KEYWORDS

Mindful mediation, empty mind, practitioner formation, letting go, self knowledge, questioning, authenticity, deep listening, critical thinking, wise speaking, inner logic, preparation

INTRODUCTION

When we talk about mediation, negotiation, and conflict management in general and in its widest sense, we face two main options of how to proceed and start our labour. The most common and most broadly practised concept is the one of getting as well prepared as possible, which may mean that we need to study as many conflict theories, conflict management strategies, and potential crisis de-escalation techniques as possible. This, obviously, is quite a task, but it is worth its price if we wish to impress our colleagues with our knowledge.

Being well equipped with all available conflict theories, conflict management strategies, and potential crisis de-escalation techniques, we still missed one very crucial point, namely the skills that we need to analyse and understand the conflict properly. By understanding the conflict, I do not only refer to ourselves but also to making the parties understand their dispute, as this may turn out to be the key for them to work towards a settlement.

MAIN CORPUS

We may find ourselves at a point where we genuinely need to question the concept that ought to prepare us fully for conflict counselling. Somehow, the list seems too long to me. We need to study all available skills of conflict analysis. We need to know all conflict theories to have an idea of the potential conflict dynamics that we may face during the mediation. We need to be able to put into practice, at least, the most common conflict management strategies in order to settle the dispute, while we hope that our strategies match the nature of the conflict. And we need to be able to make use of an endless list of potential crisis de-escalation techniques that may help us maintain a non-harming environment for dialoguing.

If you feel overwhelmed and pretty helpless at this point, you are not alone, as I totally feel the same. So the question is, what can be done, or better said, what is the other option of treating a conflict? When we talk about professionalism in conflict counselling, we should not misunderstand our task. First of all, we get in contact with real people, and therefore we need to be authentic, we shall create empathy, and we may set up an environment where dialogue can take place. As there is no mediation without dialogue.

In order to progress with our journey, I would like to ask you: what would you think about letting go? Namely, to detach from all these models, theories, dynamics, and strategies that you learned. Take your time, imagine such a setting, and try to identify how you might feel. Would you feel like you are unprepared, unequipped, and somehow not professional? Or would you say that being somehow professionally nude makes you feel uncomfortable?

So let us go into this topic much deeper. Who, by the way, told you that you are naturally unequipped, and who told you that you need to study this horrific number of topics to be an effective professional? Maybe it is the general impact of institutes, colleges, and universities that make you believe that they offer the solution to all our challenges in life. Please do not get me wrong. We are talking about a field within the theme of social science, and I simply believe that before you are able to appreciate or evaluate the content of such educational authorities, you need to take some preliminary steps, and this is what we are targeting.

It is my belief that first of all you need to commence a journey with a unique destination, which I will not communicate right now but a bit later, and yes, maybe you will be able to name it by yourself. So, in order to get started, I kindly ask you to detach mentally once again from everything that you heard of or learned so far. Just free your mind, detach, let go, and leave things behind.

The question is, what can you see and find right now, being rid of all this professional and conceptual luggage? Open your eyes and see, identify, and evaluate, but do not only look in an external way, look also in an internal way. So what you see, first of all, is yourself. You, being here, at this point in your life, in this specific spot, and at this very private level of your personal development.

See what your status of being unconscious veiled from you, and learn from what your status of being conscious now teaches you. The question is, who are you, where do you come from, and what do you bring with you? This is a simple example of a set of questions that breaks you free by offering you information about yourself. All you are going to work with is the set of the experiences that you gathered in your life, the social competencies that you obtained and that you developed up to a certain level, and the social skills that you learned within the environment where you received your initial education, namely in your family, with your friends, and in your neighbourhood.

See, listen, and understand, that these are the features that make you unique, and this is the starting point for critical thinking. Everything in life can be questioned, and it has an impact on the environment, as everything in life is interconnected and follows the rules of action and reaction. Now that you have learned about the initial starting point of discovering yourself, you will also understand that once you know who you are, you will be able to understand the interlinkages of life and the impact that our actions and reactions have. Being conscious about that, you are now free to break this rule up, and to become a change-maker.

Now that you have started the journey towards your inner self by questioning who you are and who or what made you be yourself today, you will see that once you understand and dominate the power of these questions, you do not need a vast quantity of techniques, strategies, and models. Once you know and understand who you are, you will find peace inside yourself. This specific peace, or status quo, will be guarded in your inner centre, where your empty mind and nothingness reign. This is where your journey ought to lead you, namely to your inner core, from where all your actions and questions may be born.

Being conscious regarding the empty mind and nothingness enables you to go professionally into the mediation setting and to place the proper questions. Learn to work with the questions that are born out of your nothingness and empty mind, focus on the content delivered by the parties, exclude assumptions, and keep the mediation setting clean and transparent.

SUMMARY

The text moves in one direction and arrives at a destination it withholds until the end. What is set down first is everything a practitioner is told they must carry; what is picked up in its place is the practitioner. The turn on which the piece rests is that the alternative to accumulated technique is not improvisation but self knowledge, since a person who has examined where they come from and what formed them can meet a situation without needing to sort it into a category first. From this follows the practical instruction that closes the argument: questions asked from an empty mind are formed by what the parties actually say, while questions asked from a framework are formed by the framework and arrive at the room already knowing what they expect to find.

CONCLUSION

This is correspondingly the setting that you can adapt to all conflict situations, settings, and environments. Act or work from your inner centre in a way that you now know everything about yourself but nothing at all about the rest of the world. Now you are free, able, and entitled to work from the core, showing you that all situations in life, including our mediative dialoguing, are based on an inner logic. You simply have to ask yourself what is required, what is expected, and what shall I do?

All these questions will now guide you the way to be a mindful mediator, a conflict counsellor who works from the inner core, following a situation’s inner logic, having an empty mind, and being a change-maker by creating a new and more peaceful reality. Put trust in yourself, as you are key to all your questions, answers, and the new and more peaceful reality that you can build.

Thank you for your attention, and I kindly ask you to practise Deep Listening, Critical Thinking, and Wise Speaking. The world needs people like you.

A NOTE FOR READERS AND TRAINERS

The instruction at the centre of this reflection carries a precondition that the text leaves unstated, and naming it makes the invitation safer to accept.

Setting something aside requires that it be there. A practitioner who has absorbed frameworks thoroughly enough that they no longer need to be consulted is describing expertise, and the research on decision making under pressure documents exactly that phenomenon: experts perceive situations whole and act on recognition rather than analysis, and they experience this as intuition precisely because the learning has ceased to feel like knowledge. A beginner who has learned nothing and calls the result intuition is describing something else, namely whatever assumptions they happened to arrive with. The reflection is therefore addressed to people who have already done the work, and it should be received that way.

Read with that qualification, the argument is stronger than it first appears and its consequence for training is the opposite of what a quick reading suggests. One studies frameworks in order to be able to stop consulting them. The list the author calls too long is not wrong, it is simply the wrong thing to be holding in the room, and the discipline being taught here is when to put it down rather than whether to pick it up.

Two further observations for those using this text in a group. The invitation to question who one is and what formed one is not neutral in its effect, and participants have on occasion arrived at material they were not prepared for. A trainer should be ready for that, should not press, and should be able to say plainly that the exercise is not therapy. And the emptiness described here is a working condition rather than a permanent state: it is what allows a question to be shaped by what was just said instead of by what one expected to hear, and it is entered and left rather than achieved once.

Finally, the same destination can be reached by a route that suits participants at the beginning of their training better. Rather than asking them to let go of what they know, ask what they already bring, and let them find that the list is longer than they assumed. The recognition is the same, and it does not require anyone to feel professionally undressed before they have had a chance to get dressed.

FURTHER READING

Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York.

Klein, G. (1998). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515 to 526.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Lang, M. D., & Taylor, A. (2000). The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Bowling, D., & Hoffman, D. (Eds.) (2003). Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Erdmann, D. (2021). Mindful Mediation: The Shapeless Art. Lulu Press.

Personal Identity and Peace Building

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the complex setting of a person’s identity and how it interferes with the process of peace building. The wide range of potential character strains is highlighted, and it is pointed out in which way an individual’s background supports the building of a specific person’s identity. The author places a crucial focus on how to deal with this wide range of potential diversity during professional dialog facilitation that ought to lead to peace building in the long run. In this course, he challenges traditional, mostly academic approaches towards peace building, in order to address the urgent necessity to equip people on all levels of society with an understanding of conflict management that finds its place beyond strategies, methods, structures, and models.

KEYWORDS

Personal Identity, Peace Building, Deep Listening, Critical Thinking, Wise Speaking

INTRODUCTION

Before we start, I would like to talk with you briefly about the nature of this article. Due to the fact that peace building in its most specific but also in its widest sense is definitely a practical art, the content of this article, its impact, and the practical application of what I am going to introduce is taken out of practice, was approved as valuable in real life, and is presented to you in a form that allows you to introduce it to your professional and private environment. By saying this, I refer to the point that my findings are based on practical experiences, accurate reflections, and many improving adjustments. This strong practical approach turns the article more likely into a practitioner’s diary, introducing the reader to a unique and heavily personal perspective of the topic. Accordingly, life itself approved these findings in the most reliable way. I hope this journey will take us far.

MAIN CORPUS

A balanced and unbalanced environment

Before we properly start our journey into the depth of an individual’s identity, we need to create a common ground of understanding or more likely, meet upon the level and part upon the square. Hereby, I refer to the same level of awareness towards the topic that this article deals with in the long run, specifically: building sustainable peace or simply peace building.

Prior to the examination of what building peace may mean, we may have a closer look at what peace itself actually may mean to you and me. More often than not, mankind demands far too fast a societal status of peace without properly understanding its nature, its requested fundament, and its potential impact on fragmented parts of such societies, as well as its potential support regarding fragmentation and extremism per se.

Having a superficial look at the term ‘peace’ may mean the same or at least something similar to all of us. A peaceful environment may be imagined by the majority of us by witnessing mutual respect between the citizens, who are enjoying social justice in their community, and a setting of coexistence without armed impact.

Leaving our urban communities for a moment and having a look at nature, we will see that nature itself does not offer peace, as we may understand it, but more likely a balancing environment that includes a wide variety of natural laws based on physical, chemical, and biological aspects. This indicates that such a balancing environment is set up by a multitude of variables. It is flexible, constantly changing, and stands for itself. The balancing process is not what we see and consider to be peaceful when we go hiking in a beautiful landscape. Environmental changes and balancing processes are moving slowly and by being a visitor to such a landscape, we take a snap-shot with us but are unable to look behind the scenes in order to obtain a true understanding of such processes. Save this indication and refer to it later on in this article.

Coming back to our social urban environments, we may wonder if all the personal’s diversity of locals and area-related citizens may identify with the term of ‘peace’ in such a general and inclusive way. At first sight, we may think that what works for nature, does also work for humans. But soon, we will need to learn more about the ambivalence of the term ‘peace’ and we will see that there are significant differences between nature and man-made society.

While natural laws exist due to their very own necessity of establishing an environmental balance and ensuring the creation of a biotope in order to enable the survival of the species, the laws that govern the human co-existence, apart of the biological needs, are man-made. Such man-made laws are an attempt to refrain from natural laws based on the previously listed physical, chemical, and biological aspects. Man-made laws are built on a rational understanding of how to establish a social order, but first of all by the perspective of the person in charge of drafting a corresponding law.

While nature’s laws give direct birth to the ongoing balancing process in the specific environment, man-made laws can be the first hindrances on our way to what we may consider to be peace. Potentially, a constitutional law shall provide a country with general, equal chances, justice, and order. By having a look at our daily news, we will see that, more likely in all countries, persons and groups appear who see their personal rights being violated by such a constitutional law. While in nature, such separatists are often important impulses for change, people who see themselves being shortened in their civil liberty may find themselves helpless to initiate changes at all or at least prompt changes regarding their constitutional law. Profound discontent and skepticism at a fundamental level towards their political system is born. The denial of one’s own constitutional law turns out to give a person basic instability in a field where confidence and acceptance potentially enable a person’s identity to develop in a sound way. Such instability, discontent, and skepticism support the creation of an enemy image and reinforce a group’s mutual belief system and identity (Sommer et al., 2004).

A more flexible and adjustable system in communities and countries is the political party that serves a fixed period of office. While being discontent with one’s constitutional law, an individual or group can try to find a matching identification via a political camp that potentially serves one’s fundamental interests in the short and long term. But what if mainstream separatists remain with the feeling of being violated and restrained by the ruling constitutional law, not being properly represented by one of the political parties, or even start or continue denying democracy and communism per se?

Obviously, it would be beyond the ruling constitutional law, beyond the established political system, and beyond the impact of the serving political party, where we could find a non-armed environment of mutual respect, tolerance, and social support, generally known as Peace, that properly includes all such perspectives. What peace may mean to one person may mean occupation to another. The fact that we find ‘peace’ on a fourth level, namely beyond the previously listed three instances, gives us a slight hint of how delicate and complex peace building turns out to be in real life and in a sustainable way.

Finding oneself a part of the constitutional law, the political system, and the serving political camp can have a multitude of reasons based on insufficient education, integration, tolerance, and sensitiveness on both sides. What we mainly see in the metropolises on our planet is that such persons and groups find themselves in the necessity of establishing their own doctrine and justice system, including honor killing, blood money, and arranged marriages, a parallel society is born, and the fragmentation in a way of tribalism is completed (Sommer et al., 2004).

A fragmented society or individual may live for decades for itself or as part of a parallel community or phenomenon in the shadow of the mainstream. While ignorance of such a fragmented society and individuals is no acceptable option, the question is how such will ever raise awareness towards their existence and necessities? From what can be learned by observing media, the step towards extremist activities and terrorism seems to be a very tiny one and turns out to be widely practiced. Assuming extremist activities and even terrorism to be a manner of communication and awareness raising, it is obvious that political camps ignored phenomena like insufficient education, integration and results like the establishment of parallel societies and complete fragmentation for far too long.

A person’s unpredictable identity

Now that we briefly discussed the complexity of the term ‘peace’ and now that we have a glimpse idea of how overwhelming sustainable peace building may be, we should start focussing on the kind of work that each of us can do on a private and professional level, namely to get into dialogue with another individual.

What we can imagine from the previously discussed content may be that learning about individuals and the impact of culture, religion, and politics in real life can not be learned by reading books or visiting an area being and remaining an alien person to more likely all kinds of processes, the visible and invisible ones, that take place.

We need to accept that studies and physical visits to certain areas may share with us only a slight idea of what regional individuals may face. A person’s identity remains bound to all kinds of environmental influences that accompany the individual during the process of becoming an adult. This is a strong hint that foreigners’ perspectives may offer new triggers towards possible changes only, but more often than not, hardly fail as all sorts of inner socio-cultural aspects are ignored in a conscious or unconscious way.

But still, claiming to be professionals in the field of international relations, intercultural exchange, and similar fields, alien experts need to be aware of their limitations and should not be claiming to have an overall understanding. An overall understanding, if this can ever be achieved by such professionals, is not what is needed for change. We need local experts to work on local issues, meaning activating experts from a certain region to work on contexts out of this proper area by making use of all kinds of insights and understanding that are not available to foreign experts. In order to improve a foreigner’s impact, we need far deeper insights and one-on-one dialog that may guide us step by step to a more comprehensive level, which obviously would require time, turning out to be a long-term process and guiding us from confidence to relationship building (Hartley et al., 1989).

In order to better prepare for real-life circumstances and tasks such as interpersonal dialog and crisis exchange, it is widely common and broadly advised to study character and personality traits. By achieving a broader understanding of the human mindset and potential identities, practitioners, by studying these concepts, shall be empowered to detect or identify such in order to take accurate measures during potential high-tension exchanges. At this point, we shall do a reality check and investigate if the creators of these theories and models ever served or offered their services in armed contexts or high-risk environments. More often than not, we can identify a gap between theoretical content being communicated as a mass solution to issues, while such was never approved to be of value in reality. Further, we may reflect on the true value of specific and truly approved actions in the field may have, and if such would ever be communicated in a detailed way in a book. Hereby, I kindly ask you once again to consider the setting of this article; is it delivering answers to proper questions, or does it push you to find, identify, and create your own and proper understanding.

What makes it so difficult to approve such theoretical content in practice? Mainly, it is the fact that the creators of theories and models rely on academic sources and long-term surveys but never had access to high-risk situations where intuitive and empathetic action is required, far beyond making use of theoretical content and being bound to decision-making within very limited time frames. Even long-term surveys may have a questionable impact in a tremendously fast-changing world. We need to consider on top of this fast-changing world, the fact that long-term surveys may potentially not give sufficient credit, if any at all, to unconscious personality disorders based on personal traumatic experiences that potentially end up by finding or creating a new set of safe harbor or social group per se (Schmitt et al., 2010). Belonging to such a safe harbor or social group is a mainly positive experience for the individual and forms part of one’s social identity (Sommer et al., 2004). Based on this positive experience, the individual will focus on strengthening the group’s impact, power, and prosperity. Leaving such a positive experienced environment turns out to be a highly difficult act.

Another point to consider is that real-life environments offer a high level of diverse and influential social impact that makes each situation and each individual totally unique. There is no way to make use of any kind of theoretical background, as real life will always be more complex than theories and models. The discrepancy is demonstrated by the fact that theoretical studies may offer us more likely an environment for meditative reflections, while practical reports always offer real-life insights and never give birth to theoretical concepts.

As previously outlined and confirmed by practice, several professional settings require prompt actions and do not allow any kind of analytical review of long-term studies in order to better prepare for a certain issue or task. Crisis dialoguing, crisis mediation, and crisis negotiation often take place in totally unpredictable settings, far afield of tranquility and non-distractive influences. But what is even more unpredictable is the personal identity of the individual that the exchange takes place with.

By reviewing external sources, we may find proper indications that explain the wide variety and quantity of personality traits and that it turns out to be almost impossible to even learn them all by heart (Matthews et al., 2003). In order to make things easier to handle, the term of the ‘Big 5’ was created (Goldberg, 1990). Such Big 5 are meant to be the five major personality traits where all of us may fit in, more or less. To fit in ‘more or less’ looks to me as a very critical point, keeping in mind the kind of potential dialogue we are referring to and the highly demanding environment we may be facing. Trying to find a matching major group for the dialogue partner’s personal identity may turn out not to be sufficiently matching and may be possibly cutting off crucial core points of his or her identity. Core points that may make the difference towards advancing in the conversation or pushing it to collapse. Having the broad variety of possible character traits and personalities on my mind while working in such environments proved to be totally unrealistic and to be more likely disturbing and distracting.

In order to slightly understand how unique all of us are, we need to sit back and reflect on the environmental impact that we face each day in our lives. Such impact includes every single aspect that we face, underlie, overcome, and take a lesson learned out of it. It is up to the reader to sharpen his or her mind and to unveil the complexity of the context described. Growing up remains a fragile process where more likely everything is absorbed and remains having an impact on the person’s maturing process. The process continues in an unreflected way, until the person starts questioning, thinking for oneself, and challenging what was previously admitted to one’s mindset. The process of questioning outlines a momentum that remains an optional turning point in one’s further personal development. Heinz-Rolf Lückert shares the perspective that radical aspects of one’s personality basically remain unconscious until they are identified by one’s own proper reflections. Such radical aspects are not limited to one’s own behavior but may also be copied from another person’s acting and added to one’s own key of behavior (Lückert, 1965).

Social aspects and social dynamics

Excluding the above-mentioned potential turning point in one’s further development process, we should briefly look at another important aspect, namely why a social identity is so crucial to a human being and what kind of dynamics it includes. Acting in a non-reflective way makes a person project one’s inner world of understanding onto the outer environment. This process is based on a social need that deals with security and feeling snug by building up a group of like-minded peers around oneself. Interestingly enough, it turns out to be an educative and selective process at the same time. While the individual may more likely communicate the proper inner world towards the outer environment in an educative way, he or she also admits persons using an ad hoc method to enrich the like-minded fragmented parallel society or community in number. The series of events and steps taken by the group creates a group’s history that co-builds and strengthens the group’s identity. Such memories are as important to the group as personal memories are to the individual (Bilali, 2012).

By seeing the number of like-minded peers increase, the initiator and group per se may note a rising level of conformity, stability, and power of impact. This confidence in one’s own actions, more often than not, turns out to be a strong motivation towards action that may be understood as a fundamental necessity to the further achievement of the potential group’s goals. Feeling oneself strong, grounded, and powerful opens the door to a possible agenda that was not originally part of the group’s identity. Such achieved levels of strength and confidence generate, more often than not, new targets and even change the group’s aims at all. Drifting off in such a way does not only create an uncertain destination for the individual’s further identity-developing process, but includes the manipulation of the complete group in an unpredictable way.

Further, it should be noted that fragmentation per se includes very impactful dynamics, especially when a group achieves, as previously outlined, a certain level of self-confidence or power within society. History shows that fragmented groups in positions of power and impact tend to potentially fragment the rest of society in order to destabilize it and to identify one or more of the newly fragmented groups as potential enemies. Hereby, the recently created splinter groups or factions, more often than not, are subject to the aggressor in number and power. Such dynamics can find its climax in prosecution and ethnic cleansing (Zartman, 2010).

Identity-based conversation

As previously outlined, progress requires dialogue. Therefore, we need to sum up the findings of this article and should try to create and identify a meaningful pathway for our professional activities and impact. Working with or trying to remember an overwhelming quantity of theories and models turned out to be a non-supportive aspect of dialog-related professional activities (Erdmann, 2018). Therefore, we need to identify the practicable take-away that grants sufficient space to truly focus on the task, issue, and environment we work with or work in. Having a conversation on this topic with a friend who works for one of the global intelligence agencies, both of us agreed that real-life crisis dialoguing requires an epic and brave step of the practitioner, namely to reject potentially studied theories, concepts, and models, including the vast list of personality traits and even the minimized version of the Big 5, and to truly follow one’s intuition, empathy, and inner voice.

This finding seems to be alien to all academia-based researchers and lecturers, but it describes the previously mentioned gap between theory and practice. In my case, the focused minimization of my professional tools towards the most essential core understandings turned out to be the door opened that granted space for my key tools of professional impact, namely: Deep Listening, Critical Thinking, Wise Speaking, or simply Living Empathy (Erdmann, 2021). Only such a liberating step enabled me to focus mindfully on what presented itself to me during my professional tasks. It is not about thinking outside the box or looking behind the curtain, but more likely to make a plumb role indicate the path to the proper center of a situation and to unveil the core necessities that such an environment requires, including the accurate handling of situations, high-tension dialoguing, and even the prevention of fragmentation. Such an applied dialogue may turn out to be one of the very few meaningful acts to prevent fragmented groups from initiating violent actions (Zartman, 2010).

SUMMARY

Two arguments run through the text and meet at its end. The first concerns societies: peace is not a state on which all parties agree but a condition experienced differently depending on whether one is represented by the constitutional order, the political system and the governing party, and where a person finds themselves outside all three, the sequence toward parallel structures and eventually violence becomes intelligible as a search for standing rather than as pathology. The second concerns practitioners: because every conflict and every person is singular, the classificatory apparatus a practitioner brings into the room competes for the attention that the person in front of them requires. From this the author derives a reduction rather than an addition, arguing that what is needed is not more categories but fewer, so that listening, thinking and speaking have room to operate.

CONCLUSION

Trying to solve our professional tasks within tremendously limited time frames, with lots of content on our minds to sort out and to make use of, turns us potentially into more likely stiff and inflexible individuals who ignore the character and the needs of conflict per se. Each conflict, as well as each person we talk to, has its own history, socio-cultural and religious environment, and impact. This indicates that a conflict and a person do have something in common, namely an outstanding uniqueness. Therefore, we need to work professionally with the previously listed tools in order to get to know the conflict or the person in depth and to handle our task without assumptions but only with our intuition, flexibility, and empathy.

This article hereby gives a strong hint that the art of dialoguing can not be learned from a book but is a naturally born ability based on mindfulness and empathy.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The claim that a practitioner should set aside theories and models in the moment of crisis dialogue is the sharpest thing in this text and the one most likely to be disputed, and it becomes considerably stronger when stated precisely.

Research on expertise, particularly the work of Dreyfus and of Klein on decision making under pressure, describes exactly what the author reports. Experts in high stakes fields do not run through classificatory schemes; they perceive situations as wholes and act on recognition rather than analysis. The crucial finding, however, is that this capacity is the product of extensive prior learning rather than a substitute for it. What has been thoroughly learned becomes perception and ceases to feel like knowledge, which is why practitioners of long standing genuinely experience themselves as working from intuition. The theories have not been discarded; they have been absorbed. Stated this way the argument holds and its consequence for training is the opposite of what a casual reading suggests: one studies frameworks in order to be able to stop consulting them.

That distinction matters because the same advice given to a beginner is dangerous. A person without a framework does not perceive a situation as a whole; they perceive it through whatever assumptions they happen to carry, and they call the result intuition. Unexamined intuition reproduces bias reliably, and in crisis settings the errors it produces are not recoverable. The honest formulation is therefore that intuition is what expertise feels like from the inside, that it must be built before it can be trusted, and that even then it needs the correction of supervision and of colleagues who saw the same encounter differently.

Two further observations follow from the article’s own material. The account of the Big Five is accurate as a description of what such instruments do, and the instruments were never designed for the purpose the author tests them against: they describe variation across populations and were built to predict tendencies over time, not to guide a conversation with one person in a room. Judged by that standard they fail, and so would a map judged by its usefulness as a photograph. Where personality research does bear on this work is in what it says about states rather than traits, since fear, threat and exhaustion alter behaviour more than disposition does, and those are the conditions crisis dialogue actually encounters.

And the argument for local expertise deserves to be pressed further than the text takes it. If outsiders cannot acquire the understanding that insiders possess, the conclusion is not merely that outsiders should be humble but that the structure of the field is wrong: the person who should be leading is frequently the one described as the local partner, and the international practitioner’s most useful function is often to convene, to resource and to withdraw. That is a more radical claim than this article makes and it follows from its premises.

Finally, a word on the closing sentence, which holds that the art of dialogue cannot be learned from a book but is a naturally born ability. The first half is well supported and the second sits uneasily with the training programme the author has spent years building. The reconciliation is available in the text itself: capacities present in everyone can be developed, and development requires practice, feedback and reflection rather than reading alone. What cannot be transmitted by a book is not the knowledge but the judgment, and judgment is acquired the way it is acquired in every practical field, by doing the work under the eye of someone who has done it longer.

*Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Bilali, Rezarta, 2012, Remembering Intergroup Conflict, https://www.academia.edu/14628218/Remembering_intergroup_conflict. Accessed 15 October 2023.

Erdmann, Daniel, 2021, Mindful Mediation: The Formless Art, ISBN 979-8775757892, Lulu Press Inc.

Erdmann, Daniel, 2018, Comprehensive Mediation: Towards an Educational Concept for the Training of Globally Effective Mediators, ISBN 9780244083137, Lulu Press Inc.

Erdmann, Daniel, 2020, Escaping the Training Trap in Mediation and Conflict Management, https://pin-negotiation.org/en/publications/pinpoints/pinpoints-48-49/ Accessed 15 August 2023.

Goldberg, Lewis, 1990, An Alternative “Description of Personality”: The Big-Five Factor Structure, https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc4333/Goldberg_BigFive_1990.pdf Accessed 15 October 2022.

Hartley, James, and Branthwaite, Alan, 1989, The Applied Psychologist, Open University Press, Buckingham and Philadelphia.

Lückert, Heinz-Rolf, 1965, Konflikt-Psychologie, Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, München und Basel.

Matthews, Gerald, Deary, Ian, Whiteman, Martha, 2003, Personality Traits, http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2003046259.pdf Accessed 15 October 2023.

Schmitt, Manfred, Altstötter-Gleich, Christine, 2010, Differentielle Psychologie und Persönlichkeitspsychologie, Beltz Verlag, Weinheim und Basel.

Sommer, Gert, Fuchs, Albert, 2004, Krieg und Frieden: Handbuch der Konflikt- und Friedenspsychologie, Beltz Verlag, Weinheim, Basel und Berlin.

Zartman, I. William, 2010, Identity Conflicts, International Peace Institute, https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/ipi_identity_conflicts_epub.pdf Accessed 15 October 2023.

Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team

Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York.

Klein, G. (1998). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, New York.

Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515 to 526.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict. In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Brooks Cole, Monterey.

Lederach, J. P. (1997). Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C.

Autesserre, S. (2021). The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World. Oxford University Press, New York.

ISIS Child Soldiers – Between Reintegration and Prosecution

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

EDITORIAL NOTE

This contribution documents a WMO Gathering held on 25 September 2021, the first conducted in Arabic. It records the substance of the discussion rather than advancing an argument of its own. The speakers are not named, and their institutions are not identified, at the discretion of this journal. The account of judicial practice given below reflects what was reported by the participants at that date and is not offered as a verified account of the position today.

ABSTRACT

This report documents the first WMO Gathering held in Arabic, on the situation of children recruited by armed groups in Iraq and the obstacles they face in building a life after the conflict. It sets out the pattern of recruitment described by the speakers, in which children were frequently sent by relatives for financial reasons rather than drawn by ideology, and records their observation that the population of the areas concerned largely rejected that ideology, with the consequence that families who gave up children are excluded by their own communities. The report then describes the difficulties former child recruits face in legal proceedings, and closes with the case for reintegration arrangements that a community will accept, noting a government programme that has enabled a limited number of families to relocate and begin again elsewhere.

KEYWORDS

Child soldiers, recruitment, reintegration, reconciliation, juvenile justice, stigma, community acceptance, family responsibility, livelihoods, post-conflict, children and armed conflict

INTRODUCTION

On September 25th, 2021, we had the pleasure to start with our WMO Gathering Series in the Arabic language. This, being the very first event in an alternative language to English, was chaired by Daniel Erdmann and moderated and partially translated by Yousra Hasona. The content was delivered by two speakers from Iraq, one from the academic field and one representing a foundation working on social questions.

Besides our speakers from Iraq, our event was blessed by an audience from India, France, Germany, Lebanon, Nigeria, Palestine, and Kenya. The central question or issue to analyze dealt with the challenge of understanding the difficulties that former child soldiers face, before and during the process of building a post-war life.

MAIN CORPUS

A different starting point

Having previously discussed the topic of child soldiers in African countries, we found out that many of these African children often were completely left alone, having no family that looked after them, and more often than not they join militant groups, in order to increase their means of livelihood. In the territories that were occupied in Iraq, this content has a different starting point. If children are not hired by fancy promises communicated by recruiters, their relatives often send them in order to maintain the families financially. Interestingly, that the ideology of such a group is often not of importance to child soldiers, but gains more motivational influence the older potential soldiers become.

To me, it is crucial to share once again what our speakers explained in detail, namely that the majority of people living in the occupied areas, reject the ideology of such a group, their targets, and their recruiting systems. This point gains importance when it comes to terms of dealing with children who left in order to become reintegrated into society. The fact that the majority of people and their communities do not follow such a group, drives people, who join it, into a status of exclusion, being rejected by their community and facing the consequences of the Criminal Law.

Law, crime, and the question of guilt

Talking about law, crime, and prosecution, we may reflect on the topic of guilt for a moment. The situation per se looks highly complicated as we do have recruiters and families, being active decision-makers, that make their children join for financial interests. Our speakers described proceedings in which the focus falls on the children rather than on the adults who delivered them, and in which little distinction is drawn between a child who was involved in active armed conflict and one who was engaged in non-armed activities like cooking. They also reported that the role of the adult within this setting, namely being a recruiter or a family that exchanges the child for financial income, is not generally taken into account.

Once a child went through the court procedures, there are mainly two options waiting for the young human being, namely detention or confinement in a camp. Both options exclude the possibility of a fruitful reintegration into society and non of these paths offer psychological support for the mental healing process of the children. But it is not only the child suffering the injustice of life, it is also the family itself that faces hard times. Once known by the public, that a family gave its child away, the family itself becomes excluded from the community and may suffer even more financial needs than before.

Towards reintegration

In order to handle this situation in a constructive way, we need a visionary project that targets social long-term healing. One of such steps was already taken by initiating a program that enables former child soldiers and their families to be moved to other places, to other communities, and to restart their lives without their critical past. Needless to say, that such programs may be available and practicable for only a few selected families.

What we need, at this point, are broadly accepted and widely practicable concepts of reintegration. Such concepts might have the purpose of dispersing the opposition towards any sort of reintegration. It seems to be highly necessary to make people commonly believe in the fact that a community can overcome such issues, and that the public can grow towards a stronger level of fellowship where such pitfalls are caused by financial needs, tricky recruiters, and fancy promises have no effect on the individual.

SUMMARY

The discussion establishes a distinction that determines everything else in it. Where children in the earlier Gathering on Africa joined armed groups because no one was looking after them, the children described here were handed over by the people whose protection they were entitled to, and for money. That difference does not alter what was done to the child, and it transforms the problem of what happens afterwards, because the household to which a child would ordinarily return is itself the party that gave them up, and because a community that rejected the group’s ideology has correspondingly little sympathy for families that supplied it. The second observation follows from the first: where responsibility for the recruitment lies with adults and the consequences fall on the child, reintegration begins from a position that is not only difficult but inverted.

CONCLUSION

Both sides need to do their own first steps towards common reconciliation. The child and its family need to understand the wrong that they committed, and the community needs to learn that by readmitting such a family to their middle, they all may become stronger in order to prevent such attacks on local peace in the future.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The questions raised in this discussion are among the most difficult in post-conflict practice, and the international framework that addresses them is well developed and worth setting out, because it offers a common reference point rather than a criticism of any particular jurisdiction.

The starting position is established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and elaborated in the Paris Principles: children recruited or used by armed groups are primarily victims of the offence of recruitment, and should be dealt with through rehabilitative rather than punitive measures, with detention used only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period. Two elements follow from this and both are achievable without substantial resources. The first is a juvenile procedure adapted to age, with legal representation and an assessment conducted by people trained for it. The second is individual assessment that distinguishes between children by age at recruitment, by the role they actually performed, and by the degree of coercion involved, since a child who was handed over at eleven and worked in a kitchen stands in a different position from an older adolescent who joined and fought.

The question of guilt the report raises is the right one and the law answers it clearly. Where an adult delivers a child into an armed group for payment, the offence is the adult’s, and the recruitment and use of children under fifteen is a war crime under the Rome Statute. Directing accountability toward recruiters and intermediaries is both the correct allocation of responsibility and, on the evidence from other settings, the most effective form of prevention available, since it addresses the supply chain rather than its youngest end.

Two elements of the discussion deserve development. Relocation can protect a family and it carries a cost that should be acknowledged: a person who must move in order to live safely has lost their community, their networks and often their livelihood, and the arrangement treats stigma as immovable rather than as something that can be worked on. Community based reintegration is harder and, where it succeeds, more complete, and the evidence points consistently to two conditions. Programmes that serve all war affected children, rather than former recruits alone, avoid creating the very stigma they are meant to overcome; and community leaders and religious authorities carry acceptance in a way that no external agency can, which makes their early involvement decisive rather than supplementary.

The economic dimension the report identifies should not be lost in the discussion of law and reconciliation. Where families gave up children because they could not otherwise eat, reintegration that does not address household income leaves the mechanism intact and the next child exposed. Livelihood support, schooling with the costs covered, and vocational training for the young people themselves are not adjuncts to reintegration but constitutive of it.

Finally, the closing passage asks that both sides take the first steps, and that the child and family understand the wrong they committed. That formulation deserves care. For the family that gave up a child, it is apt. For the child, it is not: a person who was handed over at eleven or twelve did not commit the wrong, and asking them to acknowledge one risks completing the injustice rather than repairing it. Reconciliation in these settings works best where it is precise about who owes what to whom, and here what the child is owed considerably exceeds what they owe.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 2000.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2)(e)(vii) on the conscription, enlistment and use of children under the age of fifteen.

The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007.

Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, United Nations, module 5.30 on children and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.

United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1612 (2005), 2225 (2015) and 2427 (2018) on children and armed conflict.

Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, annual editions, United Nations, New York.

Betancourt, T. S., Borisova, I., Williams, T. P., et al. (2013). Research Review: Psychosocial Adjustment and Mental Health in Former Child Soldiers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(1), 17 to 36.

Wessells, M. (2006). Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

McMullen, J., O’Callaghan, P., Shannon, C., Black, A., & Eakin, J. (2013). Group Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Former Child Soldiers and Other War-Affected Boys. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(11), 1231 to 1241.

Insights on African Child Soldiers and their Living Paradox

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

EDITORIAL NOTE

This contribution documents a WMO Gathering held on 5 September 2021 and gathers the reflections of participants alongside those of the speaker. Its purpose is to record a conversation rather than to advance an argument, and the participants’ statements are reproduced as they were given.

ABSTRACT

This report documents a WMO Gathering on child soldiers and restorative practice, addressed by a researcher whose fieldwork was conducted in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rather than reproducing the lecture, it assembles the responses of participants from five continents and the speaker’s own reflections on the questions they raised. The discussion covers the conditions from which children enter armed groups, including the finding that some join in search of better circumstances than they have alone; the rejection and displacement that follow their return; and the use of community based restorative practice as an alternative to imprisonment, drawing on the Baraza in the Congo alongside comparable traditions in Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Burundi. Participants raise the tension between forgiveness and punishment, the absence of long term follow up on whether reintegration measures work, the necessity of adapting restorative models to local culture rather than importing them, and the limited attention the subject receives internationally. The speaker closes with an account of peacemaking circles conducted in North Kivu and with the question of where responsibility ultimately lies.

KEYWORDS

Child soldiers, restorative justice, reintegration, Democratic Republic of the Congo, peacemaking circles, indigenous practice, forgiveness, community acceptance, post-traumatic stress, rehabilitation, transitional justice, recruitment

INTRODUCTION

On September, 5th, 2021 – WMO members from 5 continents joined a common conference call under the project name of WMO Gathering. The event was chaired by Daniel Erdmann and moderated by Yousra Hasona. Prof. Chrys Kiyala, from Bandundu University, attended the meeting being the speaker.

Prof. Kiyala was kind enough to share with us his first-hand experiences and insights from his long-term field of research. The topic for this WMO Gathering was: ‘Child Soldiers and Restorative Practice’.

The purpose of this event summary is not to offer Prof. Kiyala’s content once again, but more likely to bring together selected reflections of some attendees. As we all witnessed the high-level content that was delivered by the speaker, we would like to give the same level of attention to the audience’s perspectives. Therefore, we will now learn more about such points of view by having a look at the attendee’s statements.

MAIN CORPUS

The conditions the children face

Tina Jones breaks the ice on a very emotional level by saying: ‘Listening to Prof. Kiyala describe the inhumane conditions and violence that child soldiers in the Republic of Congo are subjected to, was jarring and horrifying. These are children. I could not imagine their pain after surviving mental and physical abuse, abduction, rape and other unspeakable violence as a bystander or even worse as a child-offender holding the gun that they are then subjected to more trauma being ostracized and displaced in their communities or shamed by their own families. Forgiveness and acceptance is so desperately needed when a child soldier returns home to start the process of healing and redemption.’

The absence of long term evidence

Nana Amma Adjovu expressed her concern by sharing that ‘there is no long-term continuity plan to check whether rehabilitation and integration measures for child soldiers have worked.’

Her statement describes best the critical situation that all engaged parties of such rehabilitation projects face. Even though Child Soldiers are not a recent phenomenon, the projects to reintegrate Child and Youth Soldiers into society are commonly just starting. Thereby, these projects and researchers are currently creating their own case studies to learn from. This is one of the reasons why short-term reactions to socio-psychological findings during these rehabilitation processes are highly important. These projects intend to minimize the pain and to maximize a potential future for the ex-soldiers.

Alternatives to punishment

Bernie Bain stated that ‘it was commendable to hear that Restorative Adjustment and Rehabilitation is a focus in dealing with ‘Child Soldiers.’ That there are alternatives: to enhance child wellbeing and the promotion of educational and vocational programs for these children.’

This reaction shows how unfamiliar these approaches still are to many, and it perfectly confirms what Victor Berger adds by saying that he: ‘is afraid the West, generally, demonstrates extraordinary insensitivity and, dare I say, disinterest. As much as there are myriad of causes swirling around the world in the main, those who engage in them do so with very narrow perspectives, little beyond their own immediate self-interest and pursuit of self-gratification.’

Assuming that peace supportive action could be initiated if we only knew about the situation in full, we should ask ourselves who actually generates a benefit out of the fact that so little information on this topic is communicated in the western world, and the conflicts in the potential areas continue to exist. Obviously, the fact that child and youth soldiers join actively such war zones, make the conflict grow and sustain. So, what are the consequences that a destabilized country or area faces? I suggest that all kinds of price levels decrease and are kept at a minimum, including natural resources such as Cobalt, Lithium, etc.

Forgiveness and the demands of law

Building the bridge from the sustainable support of conflict and its consequences to the topic of restorative practice and reconciliation, Eloise Zeume makes us know that the point that caught her attention was: ‘that restorative justice was implemented in the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo concerning the child soldiers’ perpetrators of crime. Prof. Kiyala mentioned that within the framework of restorative justice in the community, the locals use forgiveness, compensation, and other practices such as cultural rituals, the alternative to imprisonment to maintain the peace in the community and to preserve the significant interest of the child, as stated in the convention on the rights of the child. All those practices and actions are perfect for maintaining peace in the community in a social view. Also, from the psychological point, forgiveness can powerfully heal the child soldiers’ mental. However, from a legal point of view, where crime was committed, must be punishment. So, I asked myself whether preserving the child’s interest in such a situation will not encourage other child soldiers or even the same perpetrator to commit further atrocities. And how far will the alternative to imprisonment of child soldiers for the crime committed be?

Another point is the psychological trauma and sufferings of children soldiers. When I listened to Prof. Kiyala, I had an impression there is no particular system put in place to take good care of those children, especially for the long-term care and insertion into the society. In this perspective, what is the future of child soldiers in general and in the East Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo?’

And yes, as previously stated, there is no long-term study or guideline on how to handle such a situation and reintegration process in the most beneficial way. Accordingly, we do not know yet, the impact of rehabilitation camps, the use of traditional reconciliation systems, and the possible lack of psychological trauma care.

What we can say is that the awareness and willingness to make use of local systems of social healing may have a positive impact on rehabilitation. Commonly known practices are deeply rooted in a cultural mindset and may have a deeper impact on the individual than imported practices only.

Local systems and the limits of imported models

Sokfa John outlines the importance of: ‘the use of indigenous community accountability and reconciliation systems are actually very effective in the context of transitional justice. They offer a more comprehensive and dynamic way to address the crimes, reintegration, rehabilitation of former child soldiers as well as achieve justice beyond how it is understood and pursued in the international criminal justice system. These indigenous systems do not only demonstrate a contextualization of justice, but also offer resources for continuous interrogation of the notion of justice in international law.’

Anne Kristine explains once more the importance of being flexible and of adopting the strategies and methods to the actual needs by saying: ‘Although Restorative Justice has universal principles, there is no single universally applicable system; it is thus not merely helpful but even essential to take into account the local context and specificities of culture and tradition etc in designing effective Restorative Justice models. Restorative Justice promotes peace and healing mechanisms but it cannot be only dictated from the top down, it needs to be (also) a grassroots movement, involving all members of the community, in a bottom-up approach. Furthermore, the event highlighted the importance of listening to the child’s voice, to always have that at the back or better: at the forefront of our minds when legislating.’

The speaker’s reflections

Prof. Kiyala sums up his proper findings while giving this lecture: ‘From my vantage point, the conference was very enriching in terms of attention paid to it by the participants, and the pragmatic and discursive nature of their interventions.

There were intriguing questions that opened up our research horizons and raised new interests in specific issues that need to be considered when applying restorative justice approaches for child soldiers in conflict zones. These include:

Restorative justice approaches should be cognizant of the religious beliefs, cultural contexts and ensure that the response by the affected communities met their needs.

How to assess the long-term effects of restorative justice after child soldiers have come out of hostilities. This is a complex problem. However, child soldiers could initiate support groups where former child soldiers could meet and share their experiences of social reintegration. My research of child soldiers’ life after exiting hostilities found that psychosocial rehabilitation programs framed within Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological systems theory had the potentials to enhance child soldiers’ well-being, human growth; and in reducing potential violent behavior. We could extrapolate that the resilience of child soldiers will increase if society does offer them rehabilitation programs.

Long-term benefits restorative indigenous approaches were another area of interest for participants. While appreciating the impact of restorative community-based practices of justice in Sub-Saharan Africa where these have brought about reconciliation, healing, reintegration for former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda, a suggestion emerged that such dynamic models of restorative justice be promoted at international level. Similar experiments are needed along the Baraza in the DRCongo, Ka pahla in Mozambique, Mato oput in Uganda, Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone; in the context of Rwanda, the Gacaca could be used as jurisprudence and Bushingantahe in Burundi as indigenous restorative jurisprudence. One way to lead global advocacy towards restorative justice could consist in involving the International Peace Research Association, World Mediation Organisation, Save the Children, UNICEF, etc.

There was a very critical problem with justice for child soldiers themselves. The speaker alluded to restorative justice peacemaking circles that took place in Rutshuru, North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the father of two rape and kidnapping survivors facilitated the circle. His surviving daughter and himself decided to forgive young soldiers who systematically abused the girls for two weeks. The benefits of such circles included vicarious justice, namely the plea by child soldiers to the audience to forgive dead child soldiers and those who never participated in the series of circles that the speaker organized in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the acceptance and reintegration of former child soldiers into their communities.

An emerging aspect of restorative justice to which the discussion turned was the mental healing and child soldiers’ well-being. Definitely, healing child soldiers who had developed post-traumatic stress disorders should be the priority of the justice and rehabilitation programs of all war-affected children including child soldiers.’

SUMMARY

The exchange recorded here turns on a tension the participants name from several directions and do not resolve, which is the more useful outcome than resolving it would have been. Restorative practice offers a child a route back into a community that would otherwise cast them out, and it does so by declining to punish acts that in any other context would be punished; one participant asks directly whether that invites repetition, and the question is not answered from the floor. Alongside it runs a second and quieter difficulty raised by another participant, namely that nobody knows whether any of this works over years, because the follow up has not been done. What the speaker’s own material supplies in place of proof is a description of what has happened in particular places: circles in North Kivu convened by the father of two girls who had been abused, at which former child soldiers were accepted back. The report’s closing question, whether the guilt belongs to the child or to the recruiter, is where the whole discussion has been heading.

CONCLUSION

To me, it was once again an eye-opener to hear Prof. Kiyala explaining that children and adolescents join such forces, not only by being kidnapped but also because of the motivation to find themselves in better living conditions than being on their own. And this fact also builds a heart-moving scenario, namely that many ex-soldiers stay in the rehabilitation camps for years, because they have no families to return to. Bringing the complexity of this content on the point, especially at the moment of a potential reintegration and act of forgiveness, is the question of who actually remains to be guilty, the Child Soldiers or the recruiter.

Tina Jones sums it once more up by sharing: ‘The Restorative Justice initiatives implemented by Dr. Kiyala to improve the lives of these child soldiers, their families and communities is truly remarkable. Dr. Kiyala’s work provides the opportunity for healing, forgiveness, reparations and the reintegration of child soldiers back to their communities. That is a gift too so many.’

While many questions stay with us for further reflection, I would like to give credit to all the attendees, to the moderator, and to the speaker. It remains to be my personal wish to hope that such findings will have a positive impact on our daily routine, and that the fact that we all came together in order to exchange on this topic, and to learn from each other’s experiences and insights, may support you on your path towards sharing a glimpse of hope and to initiate peace on a global level.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

Two questions posed by participants during this Gathering are among the most difficult in the field, and it is worth setting out where established practice stands on them, both for readers who were not present and for those who left with the questions unresolved.

The first was the question whether, a crime having been committed, there must not be punishment, and whether an alternative to imprisonment invites repetition. International law answers this more clearly than the discussion may have suggested. A child recruited into an armed force is, in law, primarily a victim of the crime of recruitment, and the framework adopted internationally in the Paris Principles holds that children associated with armed forces should be treated through restorative and rehabilitative measures rather than through prosecution and detention. This is not leniency but a judgment about responsibility: an eleven year old who was abducted, drugged and made to kill did not choose in any sense the law recognises. The deterrence concern is also weaker than it appears, since children are not recruited by their own decision and are therefore not deterred by the prospect of punishment. What deters is accountability directed at commanders and recruiters, which is where the closing question, who remains guilty, points.

The second was the observation that no long term follow up exists, and it identifies a real gap. Tracking former child soldiers over years is expensive, methodologically difficult and rarely funded, and the consequence is that programmes continue on the strength of plausibility rather than evidence. What research exists points consistently in one direction: community acceptance predicts long term outcomes more strongly than any programme component, and interventions that stigmatise former child soldiers by separating them from other war affected children tend to impede the acceptance they depend on. That finding argues for exactly the community based approaches described here, and it argues equally for the documentation the participant called for.

Two further observations follow from what participants raised. The point about grassroots involvement and the point about indigenous systems converge on something the field has learned repeatedly: reintegration succeeds where the community performs it and fails where it is administered to the community from outside. And the remark about attention, uncomfortable as it is, connects to the discussion of resources in a way worth stating plainly. Where a conflict economy makes instability profitable for those buying from it, recruitment does not stop because rehabilitation improves. Restorative practice repairs what recruitment has done; it does not by itself remove the reason recruitment continues.

Finally, the speaker’s own reflection deserves emphasis. The account of the father who facilitated a peacemaking circle and, with his daughter, chose to forgive the young soldiers who had abused her describes a moral act that no framework can require and none should. It is offered here as something that happened, not as a model to be replicated, and the distinction matters: forgiveness that is expected of survivors ceases to be forgiveness and becomes another thing asked of them.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 2000.

The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2)(e)(vii), and Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Judgment of 14 March 2012, on the conscription and use of children under the age of fifteen.

Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, United Nations, module 5.30 on children and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.

United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1612 (2005), 2225 (2015) and 2427 (2018) on children and armed conflict.

Kiyala, J. C. K. (2019). Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice: Participatory Action Research in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Springer, Cham.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Betancourt, T. S., Borisova, I., Williams, T. P., et al. (2013). Research Review: Psychosocial Adjustment and Mental Health in Former Child Soldiers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(1), 17 to 36.

Wessells, M. (2006). Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Baines, E. K. (2007). The Haunting of Alice: Local Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 1(1), 91 to 114.

Zehr, H. (2002). The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Good Books, Intercourse.

Escaping the training trap in mediation and conflict management

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This editorial addresses the difficulty of designing training in mediation and conflict management that participants can actually apply. The author distinguishes short intensive formats from extended programmes without judging between them, and identifies the recurring obstacle reported by practitioners as the gap between theoretical models and practice. From this he develops the position that trainees do not require an extensive set of tools but rather the identification and development of social core competencies they already possess and exercise daily outside professional settings. Training on this understanding works with the life stories, expertise and capacities participants bring rather than with content volume, which requires the trainer to set aside their own ego. The author argues against releasing practitioners who are full of information and afraid of error, and summarises the approach he calls mindful mediation in three competencies: deep listening, critical thinking and wise speaking.

KEYWORDS

Mindful mediation, training design, social core competencies, deep listening, critical thinking, wise speaking, practitioner development, trainer role, authenticity, theory and practice, self confidence, peacebuilding education

INTRODUCTION

This article deals with the challenges of creating a training session in mediation and conflict management that is effective and easy for participants to grasp. In my view, trainers should value the individual contexts each student or trainee brings to the table and tailor the training along those truths, using what I refer to as “mindful mediation” as a guideline.

When we talk about training in mediation and conflict management, we generally find two different types of educational programs: short-term sessions with a very limited time capacity, and long-term studies that cover a wide range of topics and demonstrate greater analytical depth. Trainees or students may ask themselves what these two concepts have in common, and which offers them the educational impact they are looking for. As this is a personal reflection, I am not going to judge or to put a value on either concept but will simply explain what has worked for me in the hopes that it makes sense to you.

MAIN CORPUS

Through reviewing outside training contents, discussing with trainees their expectations, and witnessing countless attempts to practice our art, it was easy for me to identify one very dominant and resistant issue that most practitioners face: the overwhelming challenge of implementing theoretical concepts, models, and structures to the actual practice of mediation. When I personally faced this challenge for the first time, I immediately started to work on the foundation of what I have come to call “mindful mediation.”

One valuable takeaway is that trainees and practitioners may not need an extensively broad set of tools, but should identify and concentrate on the development of social core competencies—ones that we all practice on a daily basis, but more often outside of the professional scope. Focusing on such competencies, trainees and practitioners learn that we naturally possess and unconsciously use effective skills that simply need to be identified and further developed for work in peacebuilding.

What was needed in the past and continues to be highly relevant in the present is to keep and communicate an open-minded and practice-oriented understanding of mediation, without putting this term (mediation) into an immutable frame or promising any particular outcome. Putting such a concept into practice requires mastering several challenges. The trainee needs to re-discover and re-develop self-confidence and the understanding that the key to change is to make use of one’s own life experiences in order to create an authentic practitioner’s personality and to have the desired positive impact on the environment.

We must support the development of fresh-minded and clear-thinking peacemakers who are longing to initiate positive changes in society. We should avoid releasing people from trainings whose minds we have jam-packed with information but who are afraid of making mistakes and unsure of how to practice what they have learned.

When it comes to the training sessions, the trainer should understand that it is not about content quantity, but rather about learning to work with the life stories, expertise, visions, and capacities of the trainees. While it is quite difficult to plan such a training, the true expertise of a trainer is indicated by her/his ability to couch her/his ego and to align themselves with the specific trainees’ competencies and work towards their needs.

I believe it is a great gift to understand what the trainees have to offer, to explain to them a few easy-to-grasp topics that fit their personalities and life stories and help mold them into authentic and unique practitioners who are able to put their own personal discoveries from such a training or development process into practice.

SUMMARY

The argument turns on a reversal of the usual assumption about what training does. Conventionally a programme adds: models, techniques, procedural steps, a vocabulary. The position taken here is that the capacities mediation requires are already present in anyone who has lived among other people, exercised daily and unrecognised, and that the task of training is to make them visible, deliberate and transferable to professional settings. From this the consequences follow: fewer topics rather than more, a curriculum shaped around who is in the room rather than settled in advance, and a trainer whose skill is measured by attentiveness rather than by the volume of what they transmit.

CONCLUSION

We should focus on keeping the training simple and transparent, as the conflict to work on will be complicated enough. “Mindful mediation” is based on the social core competencies of deep listening, critical thinking, and wise speaking.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The position taken here is defensible, and it becomes stronger when the objections against it are answered rather than left standing.

The most serious concerns the trainer. Where content is reduced and the programme is shaped around what participants bring, its quality rests almost entirely on the judgment of the person leading it. That is a genuine vulnerability, and it means an approach of this kind requires more institutional support than a standardised one, not less: trainer development, co teaching, peer observation, structured feedback from participants. The instruction that a trainer should set aside their own ego is sound as an aspiration and unenforceable as a rule, and what makes it real is the arrangement of the programme rather than the character of the individual.

Related to this is the question of a floor. If few topics are taught and those are chosen for the room, something must nonetheless guarantee that a graduate knows when mediation is inappropriate, how to recognise coercion, what confidentiality does and does not cover, and where legal obligations begin. These are not matters of personality and cannot be drawn out of life experience. The distinction worth drawing is therefore between a defined and non negotiable core covering safety, ethics and the limits of the method, and everything beyond it, which can be as flexible as this essay proposes. Simplicity belongs to the second, not the first.

Assessment follows the same logic. A programme that develops capacities rather than transmitting content still has to establish that the capacities are present, and self report will not establish it. Observed practice, whether in simulation or in supervised co mediation, is the only reliable measure, and it suits this philosophy better than examination does, since what is being tested is whether a person can listen, think and speak under pressure rather than whether they can reproduce a model.

Two observations strengthen the argument rather than qualifying it. The claim that adults learn by connecting new material to what they already know is not merely a preference but the consistent finding of research on adult education. And the essay’s warning about practitioners paralysed by fear of error describes something documented across every profession that has examined it; the literature on reflective practice names precisely the gap between what is taught and what is done, and the remedy it proposes, structured reflection on real cases after training ends, is the natural continuation of the approach argued for here.

Finally, the essay’s logic points toward something larger than it claims. If these capacities are already present in everyone, then training of this kind is not only professional formation but civic education, and its natural audience extends well beyond those who intend to practise. Teachers, nurses, managers, community leaders and parents all encounter conflict, and a programme built on drawing out what people already have is by design available to all of them.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

FURTHER READING

1. Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
2. Lang, M. D., & Taylor, A. (2000). The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
3. Bowling, D., & Hoffman, D. (Eds.) (2003). Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
4. Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
5. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2015). The Adult Learner (8th edition). Routledge, London.
6. Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York.
7. Macfarlane, J. (2002). Mediating Ethically: The Limits of Codes of Conduct and the Potential of a Reflective Practice Model. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 40(1), 49 to 87.
8. Moore, C. W. (2014). The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict (4th edition). Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
9. Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators (2005), provisions on competence and self determination.
10. European Code of Conduct for Mediators (2004), European Commission, Brussels.

Mediation – The Shapeless Art

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This editorial argues that mediation is not a recent discipline in need of definition but a social capacity that preceded its own name, and that the effort to give it a settled form risks diminishing what makes it work. The author observes that the field’s present activity, in research, in models, and in national associations competing for standing, suggests a subject newly born and still unformed, and proposes the opposite reading: that mediation has been practised wherever people have lived together, adapting itself to the customs of every region without displacing them, and that this adaptability is a property of its shapelessness rather than a deficiency awaiting correction. From this follows a claim about training. If the capacity is already present in every person, then instruction cannot consist in transmitting it, and the task is to help a person rediscover and refine what they already possess, with critical and reflective thinking as the principal instrument. The author closes by asking whether mediation is properly described as a profession at all, and suggests that its power to heal lies precisely in its refusal to take a fixed form, since only what has no shape can adapt to the shape of each conflict it meets.

KEYWORDS

Mindful mediation, shapeless art, social skill, critical thinking, transformative practice, cultural adaptation, professionalisation, self discovery, conflict management, social healing, awareness, vocation

INTRODUCTION

When we talk about mediation nowadays, we may see that this topic turned into a global phenomenon. There are endless research articles published, instructive video lectures available, theoretical concepts and models developed, and far too many national associations to be found, trying to become the branch leaders in their corresponding countries.

This activity within the field of mediation could indicate that we talk about a topic that was recently born, that still remains unshaped, and that strongly needs our helping hand in order to find its way into life itself.

But maybe, by being too focused on putting mediation into a specific shape, we overlook and ignore its true nature, and thereby, we more likely might violate and minimize it instead of learning from its inner core, its source, and its social healing potential in general.

MAIN CORPUS

A practice older than its name

Being of such a caring nature, we may not see that mediation might have existed even before we created and used its current name, and maybe it did its purpose in a latent way, forming ever since part of our social interaction in a shapeless way, without a form, a concept, and a name.

Being practiced even without bearing a proper name may have occurred, not because the fact of finding a name was ignored and not taken care of, but maybe because this specific mindset of conflict management already had its real-life impact and served society from the very beginning of the human social coexistence.

If we analyze this content further, we may also discover that mediation most likely possessed and still possesses the ability to be transformative in a way that it found and finds its way to and was practiced in all regions of this planet by respecting the socio-cultural and religious practices of tribes, nations, and races. And by being of such a sensitive, decent, and transformative nature, it adjusted itself to the variety of cultures on our planet without rejecting any territorial customs.

A skill owned by everybody

So, what does all this mean to us living in a world of paragraphs, articles, restrictions, and strict routines? I believe that mediation offers us a lot to learn from. First of all, I believe that we need to understand that mediation is a social skill that is owned by everybody, simply because peacekeeping is a natural necessity that we find within the pool of our own very basic needs.

So, being owned by the general public also means that mankind per se can and hopefully does practice its related tools and fragments on a daily basis. And yes, I do not even specify what it actually means to realize a mediation, as it is, first of all, a mindset to work with, and second, a way of open dialog.

Correspondingly, this means that the practice of this skill may differ due to the impact of a person’s silent educator, as well as the person’s level of awareness and specific improvement of this social art.

What then is training for?

So where in all this, do the people fit who learn mediation in professional pieces of training, or who study conflict management on an academic level?

Well, this is actually very easy to understand. Such individuals are aware of the topic, its importance, and potential positive impact on society and look for further instruction.

And this instruction is a very crucial point to talk about. As previously said, we discovered mediation to be a shapeless skill of a transformative and very individual nature that was born in the mindset of mankind in the moment of experiencing consciousness for the first time. And to communicate teaching that enables an individual to practice such a shapeless skill seems to be very tricky, but it is actually what mindful mediation is all about.

We do not teach what may be called mediation per se but we accompany the individual to rediscover and to reconnect to his or her own very personal understanding of shapeless and mindful mediation within.

So, mediation seems to be found and further developed more likely within the very core of a person’s character and only secondarily in external educational settings. The strong hint here, at this point, is that the most instructive tool to discover and to learn about mediation is the reflective and critical thinking skill a person may own.

Profession or calling?

Based on these findings, we all may wonder if we can still talk about a profession of a mediator, or if it is a proper individual’s call to serve mankind?

Well, while this remains to be answered by yourself and based on your own reflections, I would like to share that to me, it means that mediation is, first of all, a gift by nature that actually all people have access to. And it is wonderful to see that it is practiced by such a broad diversity of professional branches, like teachers, social workers, psychologists, business managers, and of course by lawyers.

So what exciting finding or plea does mediation offer all professionals today?

Maybe it is the advice to leave mediation as what we found it to be today, namely a shapeless art that offers us the ability to serve mankind, by not putting it into any kind of form or structure but to discover the exciting adventure to practice an open and non-defined social skill that, based on its proper intelligence and dynamics, offers us an extremely strong social healing impact, actually of heights that are far beyond our capability of selecting or identifying a matching name for it.

SUMMARY

The argument inverts the usual relationship between a discipline and its object. Where a growing field ordinarily takes its proliferation of models and associations as evidence of maturing, the author reads the same activity as a warning that something is being enclosed which works only while it remains open. The reasoning turns on a single property: a practice with a fixed form can only be applied to situations that fit the form, whereas a practice without one can meet whatever it encounters. From this follows the claim about training that the piece exists to make. If the capacity is universal, then a course cannot supply it, and what a course can do is help a person find what they already have and sharpen the instrument by which they will refine it, which the author identifies as critical thinking rather than technique. The closing question, whether this describes a profession or a calling, is left with the reader, and the text is more interested in having posed it than in settling it.

CONCLUSION

Closing this reflection, we may still wonder why it needs to remain shapeless.

Well, being shapeless is the only possibility to adapt itself to the diversity of its practitioners, to the diversity of disputed parties, and to the diversity of conflict itself.

So, once we advance to understand the true nature of mediation, we may see that what we understand to be or call mediation adapts itself to the environmental setting of conflict and not vice versa. And thereby it teaches us important and infinite lessons that we may integrate into our proper lives.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The central claim has more support in the comparative record than the essay’s reflective form suggests, and setting that out strengthens it.

Every society that has been studied possesses arrangements for handling disputes through a third party who persuades rather than decides, and the forms they take have almost nothing in common: the Baraza in the Congo, Mato oput in Uganda, the Yoruba practice of asking the person who offended you for an explanation, the councils of elders across the Arab world, the pancayat, the Melanesian arrangements built on exchange. What is shared is the function; what varies is everything else. The author’s proposition is therefore an empirical finding as well as a reflection, and it explains something the profession finds awkward, namely that the model taught in the training rooms of Europe and North America is one local tradition among many, distinguished chiefly by having been written down and exported.

Two qualifications sharpen rather than weaken the argument. Shapelessness protects adaptability and it does not by itself protect anyone in the room; the arrangements that turn out to be most local and most traditional are frequently also the ones in which a woman, a young person, or a member of a subordinate group cannot speak. A practice that adapts to a culture adapts to its hierarchies too. The distinction that holds the essay’s argument while addressing this is between form and floor: the form should adapt to every setting, and a small number of commitments should not, among them that participation is voluntary, that a party may leave, that no one is bound by an agreement they did not make, and that the process is not used to ratify a coercion that preceded it. Those are not a shape. They are the conditions under which shapelessness remains safe.

The second concerns training. The claim that mediation cannot be transmitted because it is already present is true of the disposition and not of everything that follows from it. The research on expertise is consistent on this point and it supports the essay’s conclusion by a different route: what distinguishes a practitioner who acts well under pressure is not that they consulted no framework but that they absorbed frameworks thoroughly enough to stop consulting them. One studies models in order to be able to put them down. That reading rescues the essay from the objection it invites, which is that a beginner told their intuition is sufficient will act on whatever assumptions they happened to arrive with.

Finally, the question the author leaves open, profession or calling, has a practical dimension worth naming. Professions build entry requirements, codes of conduct, and complaint procedures, and each of these excludes people while protecting parties from harm. A field that declines to professionalise remains open to the teacher, the nurse, and the neighbour who mediate well, and it offers a person who has been badly served by a mediator nowhere to go. Neither answer is free, and the choice between them is not settled by determining what mediation essentially is. It is settled by deciding whose protection matters more, and that is a question the field has largely avoided asking aloud.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

FURTHER READING

Erdmann, D. (2021). Mindful Mediation: The Shapeless Art. Lulu Press.

Wehr, P., & Lederach, J. P. (1991). Mediating Conflict in Central America. Journal of Peace Research, 28(1), 85 to 98, on the insider partial mediator.

Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.

Avruch, K. (1998). Culture and Conflict Resolution. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington D.C.

Zartman, I. W. (Ed.) (2000). Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict Medicine. Lynne Rienner, Boulder.

Boege, V. (2006). Traditional Approaches to Conflict Transformation: Potentials and Limits. Berghof Research Center, Berlin.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Bowling, D., & Hoffman, D. (Eds.) (2003). Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Global Education for a Global Generation

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This short reflection discusses the possibilities that the digital age offers to education. The author argues that reaching a generation accustomed to global networking requires meeting it on its own terms, and that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of tools that were already available but little used. The central proposition is that educational institutions can now function as an intersection between globally distributed expertise and a globally distributed body of students, so that neither faculty nor cohort is defined by location. The author observes that the resulting exchange runs in both directions, since a diverse teaching staff enriches students while diverse students inform those who teach them, and closes with the aim that has guided his own practice: a training in mediation designed for a global community that does not import European concepts into other people’s lives but works from the background each participant brings.

KEYWORDS

Digital education, global generation, online teaching, knowledge exchange, cultural adaptation, internationalism, faculty diversity, mediation training, accessibility, pandemic, higher education, globally inspired expertise

INTRODUCTION

Thank you very much for sharing your time with me, as I am about to share with you my perspective on how to reach a youth that is longing for interactivity, internationalism, and globalism in its widest meaning.

Being responsible for the education of a new generation means first of all to reach this community and to communicate on one common level. Nowadays, we need to accept that the digital age created enormous changes in our daily life. While I do not want to speak about digital addiction and burnouts caused by the restless use of mobile devices, I would like to focus on the chances that the digital age offers us.

MAIN CORPUS

Reaching those who could never have come

In order to fully appreciate what this development means, we may want to think for a moment about all those persons who, in the past, were simply not able to participate in higher education, not because they lacked the interest, the discipline, or the intellectual capacity, but because the doors that lead to such institutions were geographically, financially, or socially closed to them. I am thinking of the young woman in a rural area who cannot leave her family, of the practitioner in a region where no such training exists, of the person who works during the day and can only study at night, and of the many colleagues who would need a visa that will not be granted to them. For all of these, the campus was never an option, and their absence was never a decision they made.

Now, and this is what makes this development so meaningful to me, the question is no longer whether such a person can travel to us, but whether we are willing to organise ourselves in a way that allows them to reach us from where they are. Accordingly, the responsibility shifts, and it shifts towards the institution. We ought to ask ourselves whether our materials can be opened on a mobile device, whether our sessions can be attended from a different time zone, whether our language is accessible to those who did not grow up with it, and whether our fees reflect the economic reality of the regions that we claim to serve. These are not technical details. These are the very questions that decide who becomes part of our community and who remains outside of it.

The classroom as a place of encounter

By bringing together students from a broad diversity of countries, cultures, and professional backgrounds, we create something that goes far beyond the transfer of curricular content, namely a space in which difference becomes visible, tangible, and workable. In such a setting, a participant from one region may describe a practice of dispute settlement that a participant from another region has never heard of, and both of them may discover that what they considered to be the natural way of handling a conflict is, in fact, only one way among many.

To me, this is the most valuable aspect of what we are discussing here. In a field such as ours, where the ability to understand another person’s perspective forms the very foundation of our professional work, the diversity of the classroom is not a pleasant side effect but the essence of the education itself. Our students do not only learn about Cultural Sensitivity, they practise it every single time they speak and every single time they listen. And, as far as I understand and believe, a competence that has been lived is carried much further into a professional life than a competence that has only been described.

Therefore, we may say that the composition of a group forms part of its curriculum. Whoever sits in the room, or in the digital equivalent of it, teaches the others something that no lecturer can deliver.

The changing role of the lecturer

All of this asks something of us who teach, and I believe that we should be honest about it. In a traditional setting, the lecturer stands in front of a group that shares, more often than not, a common language, a common legal system, and a common set of assumptions about how things are done. Under such circumstances, it is comparatively easy to be the person who knows. In a globally composed group, this position is no longer available to us, and I would like to say clearly that this is a gain and not a loss.

Once we accept that we cannot possibly know the customs, the legal frameworks, and the social realities of every participant in our group, we are free to take a different role, namely that of the person who structures the exchange, who asks the questions that make knowledge visible, and who ensures that every voice in the room is actually heard. Accordingly, our authority no longer rests on possessing all the answers, but on our ability to create the conditions under which the group finds them together. This requires humility, it requires preparation, and it requires the willingness to be corrected by a student, publicly and in front of others.

So, by giving up a certain kind of authority, we receive something that is, in my view, far more valuable. We become part of the learning process instead of standing outside of it, and we grow alongside those whom we accompany.

SUMMARY

The reflection’s organising claim is that the possibility opened by digital teaching is not the delivery of existing courses to a larger audience but the removal of the constraint that made a faculty and a cohort local by default. Once neither teachers nor students need share a place, an institution becomes a meeting point rather than a location, and the author’s emphasis falls on what that changes about the direction of learning: a lecturer addressing students from a dozen countries is being taught as well as teaching. The point that carries the piece is the one made last, that a training designed for a global community must not consist in transmitting the concepts of one region to the rest, and that the aim is to work from what each participant already brings.

CONCLUSION

This reflection may encourage all of you to follow this path, to take the next step, and to reach out to a young generation that is longing for your individual expertise. Because only by unifying individual lecturers and students, we become a diverse community of global experts, that is equipped to manage the challenges of this millennium.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The argument the author makes last is the one that carries the most weight and it deserves to be separated from the general case for digital teaching, because the two can come apart.

Distance teaching removes the constraint of place, and it does not by itself remove the constraint that matters more, which is whose knowledge is being taught. A course delivered from one region to twenty others can reproduce the very asymmetry the author warns against, and at greater scale than a campus ever could, since the same materials now reach everyone. The field this journal serves has documented what follows: participants trained in a model developed elsewhere return to settings in which the model does not fit, and either abandon it or apply it against the grain of practices that were working. The author’s formulation, that the aim is to merge with the participant’s background rather than to introduce concepts into their lives, is therefore not a courtesy but the substantive design question, and it has practical answers. Curricula that treat the local tradition as material rather than as background. Case studies drawn from where the participants actually work. Assessment that asks a participant to apply what they have learned in their own setting rather than to reproduce a procedure. And, most consequentially, faculty drawn from the regions the students come from, which is the measure by which the author’s proposal about international teaching staff can actually be tested.

Two qualifications on access. The removal of distance is a genuine gain and the barriers that remain are not evenly distributed: connectivity, the cost of data, the availability of a quiet place to study, and the language of instruction each exclude, and each excludes precisely the participants whose settings most need the training. Design choices answer most of them, including materials that work at low bandwidth, sessions recorded for those in incompatible time zones, and mobile first delivery, and they answer them cheaply. The evidence on outcomes adds one more: distance courses that consist only of recorded material have very low completion, and those that combine it with regular contact between participants do not. The exchange the author describes is therefore not merely a benefit of the format but the condition on which it works.

Finally, the piece is a reflection on education and it belongs in a journal on conflict management for a reason worth stating. A classroom containing people from a dozen countries who disagree about what a fair process looks like is itself a setting in which difference has to be handled, and the way a course is conducted teaches more than its content does. A programme that models the practice it describes, in which participants are heard rather than instructed and their traditions treated as knowledge rather than as local colour, has taught the substance before reaching the syllabus. That is the strongest argument for the approach the author sets out, and it is available to any institution willing to organise itself accordingly.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

FURTHER READING

Avruch, K. (1998). Culture and Conflict Resolution. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington D.C.

Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.

Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. D. (2008). Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Bates, A. W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age (2nd edition). Tony Bates Associates, Vancouver.

Selwyn, N. (2016). Is Technology Good for Education? Polity Press, Cambridge.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2020). COVID 19 Education Response, Paris.

Reimers, F. M., & Schleicher, A. (2020). A Framework to Guide an Education Response to the COVID 19 Pandemic. OECD, Paris.