Oceans in Peril: ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and UNCLOS Obligation – Intersection of Environmental Law and the Law of the Sea
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 *
The manuscript contained three consecutive sections addressing the relationship between the Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Paris Agreement, of which the second reproduced the argument of the first, retaining a heading and internal numbering from an earlier draft. That section has been removed; the argument it made is preserved in the two sections retained.
ABSTRACT
The advisory hearings before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, initiated by the Commission of Small Island States, created a crucial precedent, as they interpreted state obligations under the Convention on the Law of the Sea regarding transboundary environmental damage caused by climate change, and specifically the cross-border effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the marine environment. Article 194 states that states should take all necessary steps, according to their capabilities, to prevent, reduce and manage the pollution of the sea, including pollution within their jurisdiction that can spread to other states or regions under their control. In its recent opinion, the Tribunal applied these obligations clearly to transboundary harm, holding that the prevention of actual damage is not enough, but that potential damage must also be anticipated and prevented before it arises.
This obligation is more demanding than the principles of the Stockholm and Rio Declarations, because the Convention imposes proactive obligations: states have to act where harm is only probable, and not only after it has occurred. The Tribunal confirms that states are obliged to ensure that their activities do not cause ecological damage to other countries or to the wider seas, because emissions from fossil fuels travel through atmospheric and oceanic routes. This method is indicative of a precautionary legal approach, which underlines the primary environmental law principle of avoiding transboundary pollution, and holds states responsible where their policies or actions jeopardise biodiversity and human rights, and may expose vulnerable coastal and island societies to cross-border climate effects.
KEYWORDS
Intersection, climate change, United Nations Convention, transboundary harm, Rio Declaration, Stockholm Declaration
INTRODUCTION
Climate change caused by human beings endangers the life of the oceans
Anthropogenic climate change is threatening the oceans, which are a habitat for life on Earth. The most noticeable effects include warming, acidification, and sea level rise, which not only pose a threat to the survival and biodiversity of marine life but also jeopardise the lives of coastal and island communities. These are environmental changes that cross boundaries and hence constitute transboundary environmental loss that defies existing legal orders. Climate change is an existential and transboundary threat to the integrity of the world’s oceans, manifested in the degradation of ecosystems and even the displacement of whole communities. This crisis points to the need to establish a clear position on international legal responsibility and state accountability.
The advisory opinion: redefinitions of environmental and maritime law
The Tribunal issued a rare kind of advisory opinion in May 2024, reconsidering the outlines of international environmental and maritime law for the future. In it, the Tribunal clearly expressed the obligations of states under the Convention in relation to transboundary damage to the oceans occasioned by climate change. This has taken the law of the sea to a new stage that is not directly connected to traditional maritime regulation, but rather rooted in modern demands of climate and environmental governance, and is a manifestation of the relationship between the Convention and international climate instruments such as the Paris Agreement.
The Convention as ocean constitution and its environmental mandate
The Convention, adopted in 1982, is commonly referred to as the constitution of the oceans, since it provides the fundamental framework for how the seas of the world will be managed and cared for. Part XII is a crucial one because it is concerned with protecting and conserving the marine environment. It imposes binding obligations on states in their own interest as well as on behalf of the international community in general, so that states have a duty erga omnes to ensure that the oceans are left clean and free of pollution and other perilous practices.
High standards of state due diligence and Article 194(1)
One of the key provisions of this framework is Article 194(1), which obliges states to adopt every measure necessary to avert, mitigate, and manage any type of marine pollution. The Tribunal has construed this obligation to imply that a high standard of due diligence should be adopted by states. Such a standard is not only forward-looking, in that it prevents harm before it happens, but also backward-looking, in that it provides remedies where harm has already occurred. The legal problem of primary interest to the Tribunal was whether the emission of greenhouse gases within the sovereign territory of a state, causing environmental pollutants to reach the oceans and whose damaging impacts extend internationally, could give rise to international responsibility.
MAIN CORPUS
In its advisory opinion, the Tribunal provided a far-reaching interpretation of Article 1(4) of the Convention, which stipulates what constitutes pollution of the marine environment. The Tribunal stated that human-made greenhouse gas emissions, after being absorbed by the oceans, should be considered as marine pollution. This is transformative in the sense that it applies the full body of environmental requirements of Part XII to climate change. It carries the implication that issues such as the warming of the oceans, acidity and depletion of oxygen are not merely scientific facts but legally cognisable negative impacts of human action.
Another matter that the Tribunal clarified is the standard of conduct under which states must operate. It emphasised that states should practise a high standard of due diligence in their handling of greenhouse gas emissions, an obligation strongly connected with the precautionary principle of international environmental law. The duty is preventive in character, which implies that states must act before the damage is done. They have a duty to take proactive measures to reduce likely damage, particularly since the scientific community agrees that climate change is a reality. States also need to base their decisions on the best available scientific evidence, and constantly revise their policies as science progresses. Any failure to comply with this commitment constitutes a violation of international law, and it opens the way to state accountability for transboundary damage resulting from climate change.
This is a significant change in international law. Previous instruments, such as the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 and the Rio Declaration of 1992, were more concerned with responsibility once damage to the environment had been done. The Tribunal went a step further by making the law progressive through obligatory, preventive adherence by states; it is thus clear that it is no longer appropriate to wait until it is too late.
The principle of transboundary harm and the International Court of Justice
Among the most significant rules of international environmental law is the principle that states must not cause transboundary harm. It derives from the Latin sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, meaning use your property in such a manner as not to harm another. This concept has been confirmed in multiple landmark cases and international declarations. The well-known Trail Smelter Arbitration between the United States and Canada concluded that no state may use its territory to inflict severe harm on another state. On the same note, Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration and Principle 2 of the Rio Declaration affirmed that states have the sovereign right to use their resources, but must ensure that they do not cause environmental damage outside their territories.
The International Court of Justice has also contributed significantly to the development of this principle. In the Corfu Channel case of 1949, the Court pointed out that a state should not knowingly allow its territory to be used in a manner detrimental to other states. In the Pulp Mills case of 2010, the Court reiterated that states are under a responsibility of due diligence in order to prevent significant transboundary harm, and that this responsibility includes the conduct of environmental impact assessment and adequate monitoring. Through these developments, the principle of transboundary harm has become customary international law and is regarded as an obligation binding on all states irrespective of any particular treaty commitments.
The most important aspect of this principle is the due diligence standard. It does not make states liable for all cross-border damage; rather, states must apply the utmost care to avoid risks that can be foreseen. Proper regulation of activities that may be harmful, vigilance, and preventive measures are part of due diligence. The Court in Pulp Mills emphasised that this duty includes prior evaluation of the environmental impact of a project and the implementation of ongoing monitoring of its consequences.
The advisory opinion expands this idea of due diligence and puts it into an even more intensive application. Since climate change is a worldwide and existential issue, the Tribunal required a higher degree of care among states in handling greenhouse gas emissions. Through this, it incorporated the principle of transboundary harm alongside the obligations of the Convention to establish a new standard in the area of state responsibility in environmental law.
Legal issues raised by the advisory opinion
The case presented to the Tribunal by the Commission of Small Island States was based on two main and closely interrelated legal issues. Collectively, these questions were the focus of the Tribunal’s advisory opinion on climate change under the Convention.
First legal question: the current state of obligations under the Convention. The initial question required the Tribunal to clarify the current requirements of states under the Convention to safeguard the marine environment against the impacts of climate change. Notably, the Tribunal did not focus on past liabilities or compensation but rather on the nature of current responsibilities. In this way, it reinforced the point that the Convention is a living instrument, one that should develop in line with the latest scientific understanding and global environmental changes.
In its answer, the Tribunal stated that a state’s duties are not optional. They are obligations that must be performed with strict due diligence. This benchmark requires states to take proactive, effective, and science-based measures nationally. Articles 207 and 213 require states to create and implement rules that regulate marine pollution, especially land-based pollution. As greenhouse gas emissions are mainly land-based and their harmful effects occur in the ocean, these articles are directly related to the harm caused by climate change.
Second legal question: protection of the marine environment under Part XII. The second question required the Tribunal to give meaning to the protection and preservation of the marine environment within Part XII, particularly in a climate change context. Article 1(4) contains a broad definition of pollution of the marine environment, which includes the introduction of substances that could cause harm. The Tribunal confirmed that this definition ought to be read in context and in general terms so as to incorporate contemporary problems such as climate change.
The Tribunal acknowledged that greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and, consequently, into the ocean are directly associated with the most evident implications of climate change: warming of the oceans, acidification, and rising sea levels. These effects therefore fall squarely under marine pollution within the meaning of the Convention. The Tribunal also emphasised that under Article 194(5) there is a responsibility to conserve rare and fragile marine ecosystems. This combines biodiversity conservation with climate change control, demonstrating that states are responsible not only for limiting pollution but also for protecting ecosystems, particularly those endangered by climate change.
The connection between the two questions. The two legal questions are closely connected, though they are not framed as such. The elucidation of existing state obligations to prevent climate damage cannot be detached from the interpretation of marine environmental protection under Part XII. Both conclude that greenhouse gas emissions should be considered a type of marine pollution and that pre-emptive, precautionary actions should be legally required of states in order to avoid damage.
The Convention and the Paris Agreement: complementarity, not suspension
One of the recurrent arguments advanced by various states was that the Paris Agreement of 2015, being the treaty specifically devoted to climate change, should act as lex specialis and thus override the framework of the Convention when dealing with climate-related obligations. The Tribunal firmly rejected this claim and made clear that the connection between the two instruments is not one of superiority but of complementarity. Each has a particular normative scope and purpose, and they should be interpreted together in accordance with the principle of systemic integration expressed in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
The Tribunal highlighted the differences in the legal structures of the two regimes. The Paris Agreement operates mainly through nationally determined contributions, which are procedurally binding and substantively voluntary, and leaves states considerable room as to their level of ambition and their implementation of mitigation targets. In comparison, the Convention, and specifically Article 194, places a categorical obligation on states to take all possible action to prevent and regulate marine pollution, which specifically includes greenhouse gas emissions. This is a mandatory obligation operationalised by the due diligence and precautionary standards that are the cornerstone of Part XII.
To maintain the binding normative content of the Convention, it was therefore necessary to reject the lex specialis argument. Were the Paris Agreement to override it, states could use the voluntary and minimalist nature of their contributions as a barrier to liability for failure to take sufficient action to reduce marine pollution. The Tribunal held that the Paris Agreement cannot be instrumentalised to dilute existing obligations under the Convention, insisting instead that the two must be harmonised rather than one displaced by the other. The Paris Agreement enhances progressive political aspiration, whereas the Convention attaches duties that are legally binding in nature.
This clarification has considerable jurisprudential implications. It makes the Convention a strong legal instrument capable of bringing the climate policies of states under judicial scrutiny by reference to due diligence, as opposed to the essentially political review framework of the Paris regime. In doing so, the Tribunal reinforced the normative framework of international environmental law, ensuring that climate change mitigation cannot be immunised against binding duties to protect and preserve the marine environment. The ruling thus fosters coherence across regimes and enhances the standing of the Convention in the protection of the marine environment in the context of climate change.
Making the two regimes complementary
Although declining to adopt the lex specialis argument, the Tribunal emphasised that the Convention and the Paris Agreement should not be interpreted in isolation but as complementary instruments within the larger context of international environmental governance. This uses a systemic approach to interpretation under Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention, which requires that treaties be interpreted in the light of any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties.
The Convention provides binding and enforceable obligations to promote and conserve the marine environment under Article 192 and to take action against all types of marine pollution under Articles 194 to 212. These provisions give the normative foundation for state action in connection with marine protection and the duty to control land-based sources of pollution such as greenhouse gas emissions under Articles 207 and 213. Conversely, the Paris Agreement operationalises cooperative and facilitative mechanisms: nationally determined contributions under Article 4, the global stocktake under Article 14, and climate finance under Article 9. Though not binding in quantitative terms, these mechanisms offer states structured processes for pursuing collective climate mitigation, and thus supplement the obligations of the Convention.
This is the strategy by which the Tribunal bridges the gap between hard law and the flexibility of a softer instrument. In doing so, it prevents a piecemeal application of international law and gives coherence across regimes, an interpretive approach long advocated by the International Law Commission in order to avert conflict between overlapping treaty regimes.
In addition, this reading supports climate justice: whereas the Paris Agreement gives states the freedom to determine their emissions reduction targets, the Convention asserts that this freedom should not come at the cost of marine environmental quality or of the entitlements of climate-vulnerable states, including small island developing states. The Tribunal affirmed that the obligations of the Paris Agreement operate as a complement and not a dilution of the duties under the Convention, establishing a two-tier structure of cooperative action on climate change alongside binding marine protection. Overall, the Tribunal has made clear that the Convention gives marine environmental protection its binding legal floor while the Paris Agreement gives global climate ambition its political and cooperative reach. They can be read together as establishing a comprehensive system of governance capable of addressing the interrelation of climate change and the protection of the ocean.
SUMMARY *
The article’s central legal point is that the Tribunal solved a definitional problem in a way that transferred a whole body of binding obligation onto a subject it was not written for. Once carbon dioxide absorbed by the sea is characterised as pollution of the marine environment within the meaning of a treaty of 1982, everything Part XII requires of states in respect of pollution applies to emissions, and the standard is due diligence rather than best endeavours. The second finding follows and is the one with immediate practical consequence: the rejection of the argument that the Paris Agreement occupies the field means that a state cannot answer a claim about marine pollution by pointing to its nationally determined contribution. What the article thereby identifies is a route by which climate obligations become justiciable, since the Convention provides for compulsory dispute settlement while the Paris regime provides for facilitative review.
CONCLUSION
The advisory opinion on climate change is a landmark development that recasts the relationship between international environmental law and the law of the sea. By applying an interpretative innovation to a treaty concluded more than forty years ago, the Tribunal has demonstrated that legal instruments are dynamic living instruments, able to evolve to address current and unexpected challenges.
Far from being symbolic, this opinion is a significant legal step, setting out clear, well-established principles to inform state action and deepening the legal basis for climate regulation. It underscores the positive, science-based duty of states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, acknowledging such emissions as a type of marine pollution. By providing this authoritative view of the law, the Tribunal gives a voice to vulnerable states and to civil society in pressing for more ambitious climate action and in holding governments and corporations to account for the harm visited on the oceans. The impact of the opinion on other international tribunals and on national legal systems is likely to be considerable, marking a new era in which international law becomes a key driver of the global response to the climate crisis.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s analysis is careful and one development since the opinion transforms its significance, because the reasoning it describes has now been adopted by the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
In July 2025 the International Court of Justice delivered its own advisory opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, and it reached conclusions consistent with those set out here: that obligations arise from the whole corpus of international law rather than from the climate treaties alone, that the standard is stringent due diligence, that the climate regime does not displace other applicable obligations, and that a breach engages state responsibility with the ordinary consequences of cessation and reparation. What was in May 2024 the opinion of a specialised tribunal on a specialised treaty is now the settled view of both, and the alignment is what gives the article’s subject its weight. A practitioner advising a state can no longer treat the reasoning as confined to the law of the sea.
The consequence that matters most is procedural rather than substantive, and it deserves emphasis because it is where the article’s argument becomes actionable. The Convention contains compulsory dispute settlement: a state party may bring proceedings against another before the Tribunal, an arbitral tribunal, or the Court, without the respondent’s separate consent. The Paris Agreement contains nothing of the kind. If emissions are marine pollution and the obligations of Part XII apply to them, then the forum exists and is open, which is precisely why the lex specialis argument was pressed and precisely why its rejection matters. Whether any state will use that route is a political question; that it exists is now a legal fact.
Two qualifications strengthen the argument rather than weakening it. An advisory opinion is not binding on anyone, and its authority is persuasive; what gives it force is uniformity, the quality of the reasoning, and subsequent adoption by other courts, all of which are present here. And the hardest question is one the opinion did not resolve: how a breach is established where the harm results from the cumulative emissions of every state over two centuries. Causation, attribution and apportionment remain to be worked out, and they will be worked out in contentious proceedings rather than in advisory ones.
Finally, one observation for readers of this journal. The strategy adopted by the Commission of Small Island States is instructive well beyond its subject. A group of parties with no military weight, no economic leverage, and no prospect of prevailing in a negotiation obtained an authoritative statement of the law from an international tribunal, and thereby altered what every other party must now argue. That is a mediator’s insight applied at the scale of the international system: where the balance of power at the table cannot be changed, the alternative is to change what the table is obliged to discuss. Weak parties in any dispute have more often than they realise the option of establishing the framework rather than contesting the outcome within it.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Afzal, J., and I. Ahmad (2025). The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and Marine Pollution: Some Reflections. Environmental Policy and Law.
American Society of International Law (2025). The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: A Brief Review. ASIL Insights 29(5).
American Society of International Law (2025). The ICJ’s Opinion on Climate Change: Pushing the Boundaries of International Law. ASIL Insights 29(13).
American Society of International Law. Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay: The International Court of Justice Recognizes Environmental Impact Assessment as a Duty under International Law. ASIL Insights 14(9).
British Institute of International and Comparative Law (2024). A Commentary on ITLOS’ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change.
Clyde and Co (2024). Landmark ITLOS Legal Opinion: States Must Protect Oceans and Marine Biodiversity from GHG Emissions.
EJIL: Talk! (2024). Stringent Due Diligence, Duties of Cooperation and Assistance to Climate Vulnerable States, and the Selective Integration of External Rules in the ITLOS Advisory Opinion.
EJIL: Talk! (2024). The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Selected Issues of Treaty Interpretation.
Fietta (2024). ITLOS Delivers Unanimous Advisory Opinion on Obligations of UNCLOS Parties to Confront Climate Change.
He, Q., and B. R. Silliman (2019). Climate Change, Human Impacts, and Coastal Ecosystems in the Anthropocene. Current Biology 29(19), R1021 to R1035.
International Court of Justice (1949). Corfu Channel (United Kingdom v. Albania).
International Court of Justice (2010). Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v. Uruguay).
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024). Press Release: Tribunal Delivers Unanimous Advisory Opinion in Case No. 31.
Klerk, B. E. (2025). The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Revisiting the Relationship between the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Paris Agreement. Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law.
Nguyen, L. N. (2021). Expanding the Environmental Regulatory Scope of UNCLOS Through the Rule of Reference: Potentials and Limits. Ocean Development and International Law 52(4), 419 to 444.
Papanicolopulu, I. (2023). The Climate Change Advisory Opinion Request at the ITLOS. Questions of International Law.
Ridings, P. Due Diligence in International Law. Annex II to the Report of the International Law Commission, 2024.
Shivanna, K. R. (2022). Climate Change and Its Impact on Biodiversity and Human Welfare. Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy 88(2), 160 to 171.
Sirohi, N. (2025). Redefining Horizons: ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Obligations. Observer Research Foundation.
Thin, S. (2025). Playing Fast and Loose with Article 31(3)(c) VCLT: Lessons on Systemic Integration from the ITLOS Climate Change Opinion. Netherlands International Law Review 72(1), 31 to 57.
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Wewerinke-Singh, M., and J. E. Viñuales (2024). More than a Sink: The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and State Responsibility. Climate Law Blog, Columbia Law School.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, Case No. 31, Advisory Opinion of 21 May 2024.
International Court of Justice, Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025.
Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on the climate emergency and human rights, 2025.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, Articles 192, 194, 207, 213 and Part XV on the settlement of disputes.
Paris Agreement, 2015, Articles 2, 4, 9 and 14.
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, Articles 30 and 31(3)(c).
Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, International Law Commission, 2001, Articles 30, 31 and 47 to 48.
Boyle, A. (2012). Law of the Sea Perspectives on Climate Change. International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 27(4), 831 to 838.
Fragmented Germany: An analysis of the European Elections 2024
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
The 2024 European Parliament elections highlight Germany’s deepening social and political fragmentation, with the AfD emerging as the second-strongest party. This article explores the historical context, rising extremism, and societal divisions, concluding with a call to reinforce democratic values, enhance social cohesion, and counter extremism for a more united future.
Editorial note: the assessment of the parties and movements discussed reflects the author’s own perspective. This journal’s editorial position is neutral on contested questions of party politics. *
KEYWORDS *
Germany, political fragmentation, social cohesion, European elections 2024, AfD, right wing extremism, populism, East and West Germany, political education, radicalisation, democracy, trust in institutions
INTRODUCTION
The results of the elections of the European Parliament 2024 show that the social fragmentation Germany has been experiencing for years has made its way into the political landscape. The AfD has become the second strongest force, overtaking the party of the Social Democrats (European Parliament 2024). After months of mass protests against right-wing extremism on German streets (Tagesschau 2024a) and court proceedings concerning the classification of the AfD as a suspected case of right-wing extremism (Jeske et al. 2024), this election certainly shows how fragmented German society is at the moment.
MAIN CORPUS
Election results of the European election 2024
In Germany, the conservative parties of CDU and CSU are clearly the winners of the European elections, with around twice as many votes as the second-placed party, the AfD. Interestingly, the AfD, the SPD, and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen only differ by 1.5 to 2 percentage points each in their votes. Also, other parties reached very similar shares of the votes. In total, 11 parties got more than 1 per cent of the votes (European Parliament 2024). This shows how fragmented German voters are. How can this political fragmentation be explained? Let us take a step back and look at Germany’s civil society.
Drifting apart: social fragmentation in Germany
Humans are social beings. Having social relations with the people of our surroundings is therefore crucial for humans in order to feel content. In an ideal society, humans deal with each other based on respect to reach the best possible circumstances for society. “Therefore, personal interests can never surpass the community’s needs” (Erdmann 2024a). Unfortunately, citizens of a country usually strongly disagree on what is best for the community. While most, maybe all, individuals of a group might agree that peace is the best option for the community, what this “peace” would look like may be different to each individual (Erdmann 2024b).
German society has arguably been fragmented for decades. Looking at historical events like the separation of Germany and its reunification, the divide between West Germany and East Germany is still noticeable today (Regev 2020). There are many attempts at explaining the economic disadvantage of the eastern part of Germany, which is evident even three decades after Germany’s reunification. Stereotypes about people from East Germany are still present in German civil society. One especially relevant stereotype is the tendency of East Germans towards extremism, be it left-wing or right-wing extremism.
Looking at empirical data, however, this stereotype cannot be supported in the simple form in which it is usually stated (Högele 2019). However, whether due to distorted media coverage or a different form of right-wing extremism, East Germany seems to be in the news more often on topics related to right-wing extremism. In the new federal states the PEGIDA movement evolved and has been holding regular protests since the arrival of many Syrian refugees in 2015. An attack on a synagogue by a right-wing extremist, in which two people were killed, also happened in East Germany (bpb 2020). However, there are also signs of racism and other right-wing tendencies noticeable in the western parts of Germany. In May, a video of young adults partying and chanting racist slogans on Sylt went viral on social media (Tagesschau 2024b), just to mention one example.
The question arises: where does this radicalisation come from? While right-wing extremism has a long history in Germany, for many decades right-wing extremism seemed to have been a marginal appearance only. Perhaps the most prominent example is the murder series of the NSU, a neo-Nazi group that killed ten people over the course of more than a decade (Radke 2013). For some years, however, extreme right-wing beliefs and patterns of racism and antisemitism like the above-mentioned incidents have made their way more and more into the midst of society. This radicalisation can have several reasons.
Maybe these beliefs have been there the whole time and they only now surface because of new media types like social media. But that can hardly suffice as a full explanation. Radicalisation seems to be rooted in “profound discontent and scepticism at a fundamental level towards their political system” (Erdmann 2024b). Political fragmentation as shown in the European elections is thus rooted in social fragmentation. What does this fragmentation mean for the political landscape?
Political fragmentation in Germany
Compared to other nations, Germany has always been politically more fragmented than most other nations which rely on a two-party system. Even at the beginning of the Federal Republic of Germany, at least three parties held political power: the CDU and CSU as the conservative camp, the SPD as the social democratic camp, and the FDP as the liberal party. A few decades later, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Die Linke joined. For a long time, four or five parties were represented in the German parliament. Since 2017, with the AfD moving into parliament for the first time, six parliamentary groups have been forming the Bundestag. Another trend can be noticed: the vote totals of the individual parties are converging in some cases, blurring the boundaries between the traditional large parties and the smaller ones. This can at least be noticed with votes of CDU and CSU, with exceptions, as well as SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and the AfD.
Looking at the AfD, we can see the above-mentioned loss of confidence in the political system. Analysing statements, a populist speech pattern which uses racism and other forms of discrimination can be detected. In the election campaign of the AfD for the German parliament, the slogan was “Deutschland, aber normal” (AfD TV 2021). Traditional life concepts and highly regulated or closed borders are at the centre of the campaign video. The AfD’s election programme in the European elections was even clearer: there was talk of “Festung Europa”. The critical examination of the colonial era is also not desired by the AfD, as this would fuel what the programme calls “antiweißen Affekt” (AfD 2023). Traditional gender roles as well as the family of husband, wife and children are to be preferred to other life concepts.
Democracy: living with different ideologies
Living in a democracy means that every voter has the right to vote for whatever party they want. If we dismiss this fundamental right, we no longer believe in the basis of democracy. However, the electoral result of the AfD in the European election of 2024 still harbours dangers that need to be addressed. First, the tone in politics has changed very much. Campaign posters no longer set out the goals of the respective party; in the last election campaign, many campaign posters were used to differentiate one party from another. This was also very much the case with the established parties. The ÖDP, a minor party, used the slogan “Alternative ohne rechts” (ÖDP 2024), using the rhetoric of the AfD.
Blaming this trend on the rise of populism is too simplistic; however, it may play an important role. Second, aligning with the post-factual age, allegations concerning AfD politicians did not appear to matter to AfD voters. Even though an employee of one of the lead candidates was suspected of espionage for China and the other lead candidate faced allegations of unlawful conduct, the AfD came out much stronger than anticipated in the elections (Pfeffer and Schmidt 2024). This may be due to the AfD presenting itself as a victim of the media, or, as can also be seen in the United States (Murray 2024), to the fact that allegations against politicians no longer influence the voting decisions of their supporters.
This points to a blatant social divide, as people no longer recognise the same rules for social and communal life. Last but not least, slogans of the AfD and other right-wing parties can lead to people in Germany being put into an unsafe position. When a political party openly makes racist and other discriminatory statements or puts corresponding contents into its electoral programme, then it can also lead to individuals with the same views seeing their opinions reinforced and legitimised and behaving accordingly. In the last decade alone, the number of annual offences motivated by right-wing extremism has climbed from 16,557 offences in 2013 to 25,660 in 2023 (BMI 2024). This makes up more than 60 per cent of politically motivated extremist offences.
SUMMARY *
The article’s argument runs from society to politics rather than the reverse. On this reading, the distribution of votes in June 2024 did not create the fragmentation it displayed but registered a division that had been forming for years, along a line the author traces to the incomplete convergence of east and west and, more fundamentally, to a loss of confidence in the political system among people who feel unrepresented by it. The second half examines what follows from that within a democratic order: that the right to vote for any lawful party is not in question, that the tone of political competition has shifted from proposing programmes to positioning against opponents, that allegations against politicians appear to have lost their disciplining effect, and that party rhetoric shapes what individuals believe they may say and do, with the recorded increase in politically motivated offences cited as the measurable consequence.
CONCLUSION
The election result of the AfD in the European elections shows that the AfD and its ideology are an integral part of the German political landscape and an expression of a profound social divide in Germany. Speaking up against right-wing extremism will not be enough anymore; rather, we need to address the underlying social dilemmas of people drawn to right-wing extremism to rebuild trust in the state and democracy. Political education, a more targeted welfare state and integration processes for people who feel left behind by politics are crucial to achieve this goal. Of course, this will not erase right-wing extremism, as extremism is a part of democracy as well. However, the general public should be united to a certain degree so that extremism will be a marginal appearance only. Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive and coordinated effort from all sectors of society. By reinforcing democratic values, enhancing social cohesion, countering extremism, ensuring media responsibility, promoting political accountability, and encouraging civic engagement, Germany can work towards a more united and stable future.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s central proposition, that addressing grievances matters more than denouncing those who hold them, is well supported and requires one important qualification, because getting it wrong wastes effort and can make matters worse.
The research on this question does not find a simple relationship between economic disadvantage and support for radical parties. Regions in decline show elevated support even where individual incomes are not low, and the stronger predictors are perceived loss of status, the sense that one’s region or way of life is disregarded, and the experience of being spoken about rather than to. That finding points away from redistribution alone and toward what has been called the geography of discontent: the closure of the last bank branch, the bus route, the school, the clinic, the local paper. Places where people have no reason to encounter one another and no institution that belongs to them produce the conditions the author describes. Restoring that infrastructure is expensive, slow, and among the few interventions with a demonstrable effect.
The article’s opening question about east and west deserves the answer the research supplies, since the alternative is the stereotype the author rightly rejects. Attitude surveys find the differences between east and west smaller than the electoral results suggest. What differs is the composition of civil society: fewer associations, unions, churches and local media, a consequence of the institutional collapse of 1990 rather than of any disposition, and a corresponding absence of the intermediary bodies through which discontent is ordinarily channelled and moderated. That is a structural account and it identifies something that can be rebuilt.
Three points belong here from this field’s own experience. First, on how such conversations are conducted: dialogue formats that succeed do not debate positions but begin from concrete local questions on which participants have direct experience, and they are facilitated rather than moderated. Formats that place opposed camps on a stage reliably harden both. Second, on what to expect: the evidence on deradicalisation and on cross camp dialogue shows small effects on entrenched views and considerably larger effects on the much bigger group who are undecided, disengaged or ambivalent. Programmes aimed at the committed frequently fail; programmes aimed at holding the middle generally do not. Third, on the boundary the article implicitly draws and could draw more explicitly: a democracy accommodates disagreement about policy and does not accommodate the denial of others’ equal standing. Locating that line clearly, and defending it consistently rather than selectively, is what makes engagement with grievance something other than concession.
Finally, the increase in politically motivated offences the article records is the point at which this ceases to be a debate about political competition. Where rhetoric is followed by threats against local officials, attacks on places of worship and violence against individuals, the people affected need protection now, and that is a matter of policing, prosecution and support for those targeted rather than of dialogue. The two tracks are not alternatives, and confusing them serves neither: the long work of rebuilding cohesion does not substitute for the immediate obligation to keep people safe, and the immediate obligation does not remove the need for the long work.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
AfD (2023) Europawahlprogramm 2024.
AfD TV (2021) Deutschland. Aber normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHNlw2tuuDk
Bundesministerium des Innern (2024) Anzahl der extremistischen Straftaten aus dem Bereich der politisch motivierten Kriminalität in Deutschland nach Bereichen von 2013 bis 2023.
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2020) Der Anschlag von Halle.
Deutscher Bundestag (w.D.) Bundestagswahlergebnisse seit 1949, Zweitstimmen.
Erdmann, D. (2024a) The Dynamics of Polarized Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. WMO Conflict Insight.
Erdmann, D. (2024b) Personal Identity and Peace Building. WMO Conflict Insight.
European Parliament (2024) Ergebnisse der Europawahl 2024, Deutschland. Results as of 10 June 2024.
Högele, T. (2019) So unterscheiden sich rechtsextreme Einstellungen in Ost- und Westdeutschland. Zeit Online.
Jeske, A., Baumbach, V. and Langer, S. (2024) AfD: Ein rechtsextremer Verdachtsfall. ZDF.
Murray, M. (2024) What the First Polls after Trump’s Conviction Show and Don’t Show. NBC News.
ÖDP (2024) Wir präsentieren: die Wahlplakate der ÖDP.
Pfeffer, K. and Schmidt, M. (2024) Stark trotz Gegenwind. Tagesschau.
Radke, J. (2013) Rechtsextremismus: Der Nationalsozialistische Untergrund (NSU). Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
Regev, D. (2020) German Reunification: What Still Divides East and West? Deutsche Welle.
Tagesschau (2024a) Die Menschen feiern die Demokratie.
Tagesschau (2024b) Große Empörung über rassistisches Partyvideo.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Verfassungsschutzbericht, annual editions, Cologne.
Rodríguez Pose, A. (2018). The Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter (and What to Do about It). Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1), 189 to 209.
Gidron, N., & Hall, P. A. (2017). The Politics of Social Status: Economic and Cultural Roots of the Populist Right. British Journal of Sociology, 68(S1), 57 to 84.
Mudde, C. (2019). The Far Right Today. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Kalla, J. L., & Broockman, D. E. (2020). Reducing Exclusionary Attitudes through Interpersonal Conversation. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 410 to 425.
Berghof Foundation, handbooks on dialogue facilitation and on preventing and countering violent extremism, Berlin.
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, materials on political education and democratic resilience, Bonn.
How good people turn evil – the Rwandan Genocide
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 article concerns the genocide committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. That genocide is an established historical and legal fact. The article addresses the question of why ordinary people participated in it, and the explanations it examines are offered as analysis and not as extenuation.
ABSTRACT
The following article explores the Rwandan genocide, highlighting the involvement of “ordinary” people in mass killings. Drawing on historical context and perpetrator testimonies, it reveals complex motivations behind genocide. It emphasizes the need for vigilant civil societies and robust institutions like the rule of law to prevent future atrocities.
KEYWORDS *
Genocide, Rwanda, Tutsi, perpetrators, ordinary people, obedience, social dynamics, early warning signs, atrocity prevention, Gacaca, testimony, rule of law
INTRODUCTION
Humans are generally good, at least, that is what most people want to believe. This view is mirrored in the thoughts of countless philosophers like John Locke. Most people cannot imagine using violence against other human beings. Or at least, most people want to believe that. We want to have a positive self-image; we want to believe that we are intrinsically good people. That includes living peacefully with our neighbours. However, history is full of examples of humans persecuting other social groups who are knowingly harmed by others: the support of broad German society for the concentration camps in the Third Reich (Goeschel and Wachsmann 2010) or the violence against the Rohingya (OHCHR 2023). One historical example is even more shocking: in the genocide committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, “normal” people got involved in brutal violence, turning against and killing their neighbours and friends. How is such an escalation in genocides possible? What makes good people turn evil?
MAIN CORPUS
Causes of and motivations behind genocide
Genocides are a complex phenomenon and are never monocausal. Even though a common belief is that the main root of these atrocities is a deep-seated hatred amongst social groups, Straus (2016) contradicts that, as “deep social divisions, ethnic conflict, distrust between ethnic, regional, or religious groups, and the existence of prejudice and stereotypes, are fairly common globally”, while genocides, on the other hand, are relatively uncommon. He lists instability and conflict, ideology, and previous discrimination and violence as causal factors. These findings show that most people are not intrinsically motivated by their emotions to participate in a genocide. Rather, there seems to be a strategy behind it. This is supported by the fact that there are early warning signs, which of course are not bullet-proof, but can alert the international community (ibid.; USHMM w.D.a). These signs include tension and polarization, apocalyptic public rhetoric, labelling civilian groups as the “enemy”, and removing moderates from leadership or public service.
Naturally, there is no genocide without perpetrators. But how does a person become a perpetrator? Literature suggests that a specific percentage of every society are perpetrators, at least in theory (Baum 2008). While some sources put this percentage at 2 to 15 per cent, others put it at 15 to 20 per cent. Whatever the exact number may be, this social research suggests that in every society, there are people who do not share the same empathy and compassion towards other people as the majority of society. After committing an atrocity, those perpetrators do not feel remorse or guilt.
Hutu against Tutsi: the Rwandan genocide
After gaining independence in 1962, “Rwanda’s population was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa” (USHMM w.D.b). The Hutu population, being the majority, was in power, and Tutsi had been discriminated against from the 1960s on. During this period, there were already incidents of mass violence against Tutsi, and many had to flee the country. A turning point in the long-term conflict between both groups was when “a Tutsi rebel force invaded Rwanda from the north” in 1990 (ibid.). Hutu extremists became radicalized when the war between the government and rebels reached a stalemate, leading to a peace agreement that foresaw a government with power shared between Hutu and Tutsi. When Rwandan President Habyarimana was killed when his aircraft was shot down, Hutu extremists took advantage of the convoluted circumstances. Violence spread when the extremists killed moderate Hutu who stood in their way of promoting genocide against the Tutsi. Tutsi and suspected Tutsi were killed in major massacres when seeking refuge in churches, schools, and government buildings, as well as in their own homes. Actual numbers of the death toll vary; according to the USHMM (w.D.b), “as many as one million people, mostly Tutsis, were slaughtered in 100 days”, while other scholarly sources put the death toll lower. Straus (2004) puts the number at “at least 500,000 civilians”.
The genocide against the Tutsi is not only extremely shocking due to the high death toll in a short time but also because of the broad involvement of “ordinary” citizens. In the Gacaca system, a community court system implemented especially for the reconciliation process, more than 1.2 million cases were tried (USHMM w.D.b). How could that many people become involved in the mass killings?
Rwandan perpetrators
The violence of the Rwandan genocide puzzles scholars. “Neighbors are not supposed to kill neighbors, let alone commit genocide against them”, Fujii (2010) states. Not only is the killing of kith and kin on that scale very uncommon, but the question also arises why rural civilians became perpetrators when peace would have gained them more than violence (ibid.).
Straus (2016) focuses on emotions as a motivation behind participation in the genocide. He talks about a period of “emotional momentum”. In interviews and in the courts after the genocide, perpetrators gave two main motivations. One was built on this emotional momentum: many perpetrators allegedly were afraid because of the unrest and violence before the genocide. In fear for their lives, “they chose to take part in the violence” (Straus 2016). At the same time, they feared repercussions from the authorities, which had planned the genocide, if they did not take part in the violence.
However, Fujii (2010) gives a different explanation. According to her field study, there is little evidence that supports a strong hatred among Hutu against Tutsi. She also dismisses fear as the motivator for participation. Instead, she uses the social interaction argument. Most of the perpetrators who did not have any military training before the genocide and who only killed rather than planned the atrocities, “Joiners” in Fujii’s terms, seemed to have killed people who had been accused of something. Social dynamics were at the centre of changing behaviour. “Even the most active Joiners did not act the same offstage as on” (ibid.). Another important factor was group identity and strength in numbers; the creation of new groups produced more killings, which in turn created more and stronger groups. A vicious cycle started.
But who exactly were the perpetrators or “Joiners”? Reviewing certain testimonies shows different personality types. In the testimony of Jean de Dieu Twahirwa, a convicted perpetrator of the Rwandan genocide, he confesses to killing three Tutsi in a massacre at a Catholic church (Aegis Trust 2020). When asked about his motivations, he confirms what Straus (2016) and Fujii (2010) already stated: it was the “leaders” who motivated him and other perpetrators in the mass killings. “They really motivated us to get involved in the killings,” he said (Aegis Trust 2020). His feelings towards Tutsi seem to have been dualistic even during the genocide. On the one hand, he felt threatened by the Tutsi and believed they wanted to suppress Hutu; on the other hand, he said that he felt sad when he saw his former classmates being killed at the Catholic church. After the incident at the church, he claimed to have fled Rwanda, and he did not take part in any other killings. Even after the genocide, he stated he needed to confess to his crimes to relieve himself of the guilt and to ask for forgiveness.
Twahirwa’s motivations, following the orders of authorities, are mirrored by other testimonies. The Rwandan genocide “was sponsored and conceived from above by a small group of powerful extremists in President Habyarimana’s regime. These mighty few objected to the power-sharing terms of a recently signed peace agreement between Habyarimana and the RPF. Through genocide, they sought to maintain their monopoly on power” (Fujii 2010).
Were the “Joiners” then only used as instruments by the elite who planned the genocide? It is worth looking at some other testimonies as well. For example, the testimonies of members of a group of farmers in Kibungo who killed some 50,000 of their Tutsi neighbours, about 85 per cent of the Tutsi population in that region (Baum 2008). One of the perpetrators states: “Some offenders claim that we changed into wild animals, that we were blinded by ferocity, that is a trick to sidetrack the truth” (ibid.). Even while confessing, there is a total lack of remorse for the atrocities committed.
Learnings from the past
The various perpetrator groups involved in the genocide against the Tutsi should give us pause for thought, and we must learn different lessons from their involvement. It is worrying that there are people in our society who feel less empathy than the majority of society. At the same time, the involvement of people who themselves feel and express empathy and remorse shows that it is not only the people who are categorized as ‘perpetrators’ by academia who become perpetrators themselves but also people outside this group. This means that in certain situations, people can also become perpetrators who would never expect it of themselves.
The fact that ordinary people without a prior history of extraordinary violent behaviour can become perpetrators involved in genocide or other atrocities is troubling. These findings are in line with the findings of Holocaust research (Hale 2020) and the results of experiments like the Milgram experiment (Miller 2014). We have to acknowledge that individuals who are not inherently violent can still be driven to commit horrific acts under the influence of fear, social dynamics, and authoritative manipulation. This understanding compels us to recognize the potential for atrocity in any society and thus gives us an approach to global genocide and mass atrocity prevention. By acknowledging that genocides are not solely the product of deep-seated ethnic hatred but rather the culmination of strategic manipulation and social pressures, international efforts can focus on early intervention strategies.
SUMMARY *
The article’s central tension lies between two explanations it presents without collapsing them into one. If a fixed proportion of any population lacks ordinary empathy, then perpetrators are a distinct category and the question is how they come to be released. If, as the research on Rwanda largely finds, participation was driven by fear, authority and the dynamics of groups formed in the moment, then the category dissolves and the relevant question becomes what conditions convert neighbours into killers. The author declines to choose, and the testimonies assembled here support that reluctance: one man describes sorrow at the killing of his former classmates and a need to confess; others, decades later, insist that they were not blinded by anything and knew exactly what they were doing. The preventive conclusion drawn holds in either case, since it concerns conditions rather than persons.
CONCLUSION
Particularly in this day and age, when politics and social media fuel emotions and especially hatred, we need a vigilant civil society that closely monitors these developments, exposes abuses, and takes a stand against them. And precisely because all people can become potential perpetrators, we need institutions such as the rule of law to protect minorities from the arbitrariness of others.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s most important move is its refusal to settle on a single explanation, and the reason that refusal is correct deserves stating. Research on Rwanda has converged on the finding that participation was heterogeneous: the small group that planned the genocide, the local officials who organised it, the militia who led the killing, and the very large number who joined, hesitated, complied, fled or resisted were not one population and did not act for one reason. The most consistent finding across the field studies, which the article’s own sources support, is that participation was better predicted by local social ties, by the presence of an authority figure willing to give orders, and by whether one’s neighbours were participating, than by anything about the individual. That is what makes the conclusion generalisable, and it is also why the figure of a fixed percentage of latent perpetrators should be treated with caution: it locates the danger in a type of person, when the evidence locates it in a type of situation.
Two additions strengthen the preventive argument. The article names early warning signs, and the record shows that in this case they were seen. Dehumanising broadcasts, lists of names, the distribution of machetes and the organisation of militias were all reported before April 1994, including in a cable from the force commander of the United Nations mission in January. The independent inquiry commissioned afterwards concluded that the failure lay not in information but in the will to act on it. Prevention research has therefore shifted from improving detection toward the harder question of what makes decision makers respond, and the answers identified, standing capacity, pre agreed triggers, and political costs for inaction, are institutional rather than analytical.
The second concerns what actually stopped participation where it was stopped. Alongside the perpetrators, Rwanda produced a substantial number of people who hid neighbours at mortal risk to themselves, and the research on rescuers across atrocities finds that they were not distinguished by exceptional moral conviction but by circumstance: prior close relationships across the dividing line, membership of a group with its own authority structure that did not endorse the killing, and, above all, being asked. If ordinary people become perpetrators through social dynamics, they also become rescuers through them, and prevention that builds cross community ties in ordinary times is acting on the same mechanism from the other direction.
Finally, the article’s turn to the present deserves to be made specific, because the comparison is closer than a general warning about social media suggests. The role of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines is among the most studied features of this genocide, and its function was less to create hatred than to identify targets, signal that killing was sanctioned, and let each listener know that others were participating. That is precisely the function that platform amplification performs now, and the finding matters for how it is addressed: what proved dangerous was not the expression of prejudice but the coordination of action and the manufacture of the impression that everyone was already doing it. The conclusion is a demanding one and follows from the article’s own argument. If atrocity is a matter of situation rather than character, then no society can regard itself as exempt, and the institutions the author names, an independent judiciary, protected minorities, a press that is not an instrument, exist to hold at the point where individual conscience has repeatedly been shown to give way.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Aegis Trust (2020) Testimony of Jean de Dieu Twahirwa, Genocide Perpetrator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MslanLXzx6Y
Baum, S. (2008) The Psychology of Genocide: Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fujii, L. A. (2009) Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Goeschel, C. and Wachsmann, N. (2010) Before Auschwitz: The Formation of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933 to 1939. Journal of Contemporary History 45(3), 515 to 534.
Hale, R. (2020) ‘They Were Just Following Orders’: Relationships between Milgram’s Obedience Experiments and Conceptions of Holocaust Perpetration. In: Foster, S., Pearce, A. and Pettigrew, A. (eds.) Holocaust Education: Contemporary Challenges and Controversies. UCL Press.
Miller, A. G. (2014) The Explanatory Value of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: A Contemporary Appraisal. Journal of Social Issues 70(3), 558 to 573.
OHCHR (2023) UN Expert Demands Accountability for the Rohingya and an End to ‘Paralysis of Indifference’.
Straus, S. (2004) How Many Perpetrators Were There in the Rwandan Genocide? An Estimate. Journal of Genocide Research 6(1), 85 to 98.
Straus, S. (2016) Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
USHMM (w.D.a) What Have We Learned about the Risk Factors and Warning Signs of Genocide?
USHMM (w.D.b) The Rwanda Genocide.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, United Nations, 15 December 1999.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.
United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention (2014). Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, New York.
Straus, S. (2006). The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Des Forges, A. (1999). Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch, New York.
Yanagizawa Drott, D. (2014). Propaganda and Conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1947 to 1994.
McDoom, O. S. (2013). Antisocial Capital: A Profile of Rwandan Genocide Perpetrators’ Social Networks. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 58(5), 865 to 893.
Monroe, K. R. (2011). Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
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.
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.
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.
Diplomacy in a parental abduction case and the interests of the child
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
On 29 September 2016 a two-year-old girl, called Insiya, was kidnapped, and taken from her mother in the Netherlands. The kidnapping was violently carried out by three men who took Insiya from her grandmother’s house in Amsterdam after her mother had just left the house. She was taken to her father, who then smuggled her to India.
Because India is not a party of the Hague Abduction Convention, Insiya’s mother is dependent on Dutch political pressure on India for Insiya’s return to the Netherlands. There have been lawsuits in both the Netherlands and India. However, Insiya still is not back with her mother. The Dutch government has been using diplomacy for several years now, but so far without result.
KEYWORDS
Diplomacy, child abduction, international parental child abduction, kidnapping, the Hague Abduction Convention.
INTRODUCTION
Every year Worldwide several thousand children are internationally abducted. They were abducted by their own father or mother, rather than by strangers. Usually, the parents are in the process of getting a divorce or are already divorced and one of them wants to return to the country of origin. If they want to take their children abroad, permission must be given by the parent that stays behind. If this does not happen, or when children are not returned, it is classed as “international parental child abduction.”
MAIN CORPUS
The case of Insiya is very complicated. It is both a violent kidnapping and an international parental child abduction. India is not one of the 91 parties of the Hague Abduction Convention, which contains agreements on the approach to international child abduction. There were many court cases, both in the Netherlands and India. On 13 April 2018, the Bombay high court ruled that Insiya was to stay in India. On 28 August 2019, a Dutch court ruled that Insiya should be returned to the Netherlands. Her father was also sentenced to 9 years in prison and a fine of € 45.000. So far, India is not cooperating, as Dutch court verdicts are not automatically binding in India. Apparently, the father also does not want to participate in a contact recovery scheme ordered by the Indian court.
According to the website bringinsiyaback.nl Insiya has only got Dutch nationality and many questions at a political level have been raised as to why Insiya still hasn’t been returned to the Netherlands. Dutch authorities have requested the return of Insiya via diplomatic channels, and they will continue the pressure until she is back. In an interview with crime reporter John van de Heuvel, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the matter is repeatedly being discussed with India. He has hope but cannot give any certainty. According to the mother’s lawyer, Peter Plasman, it is because of international and economic interests that Insiya has not yet been returned. He suspects that the Netherlands is not strong enough in comparison to India and they do not want to risk friendly connections that can be broken.
So how is Insiya, now an eight-year-old girl, who has been living in India for almost 6 years? Have there been attempts at a diplomatic level to enforce the terms of the divorce, and is it a matter of which party, or country, wins? What interests do both countries have, and what are her father’s and mother’s interests? What if Insiya has a good and safe life in India, is settled in a school, has nice friendships, and has a good relationship with her father? The violent kidnapping is obviously unacceptable and must be condemned, but is it not more the question of when and how that is done in the interest of Insiya? Is it acceptable that the Netherlands wants to have Insiya immediately returned to her mother, bearing in mind she barely knows her mother, and that her father has to spend nine years in jail? Could this be traumatic and cause even more harm to Insiya? In the Hague Abduction Convention, the immediate return of children who are illegally transferred or detained in a contracting state also has exceptions, for example, when the child is settled in its new environment.
Perhaps Insiya is happy in India and does not want to go back? What does Insiya herself want, and how can this be properly arranged for her? How can she get to know and build a relationship with her mother? Research shows that children want to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives. A possible return should only take place when Insiya decides she wants to return and when she is ready to return.
SUMMARY *
The author distinguishes two questions that public discussion of such cases tends to merge. The first is whether an abduction occurred and how the law should respond to it, and on that the author is unequivocal: the act was violent, unlawful and to be condemned. The second is what should now happen to the child, six years on, and here the author argues that the answer does not follow from the first. A return ordered as the enforcement of a judgment would move a child who has no memory of the country she would be returned to, no shared language with the parent awaiting her, and no part in the decision. From this the author proposes reversing the sequence: contact before return, mediation between the parents rather than negotiation between states, and the child’s own view obtained through an independent professional before anything is settled.
CONCLUSION
In this case, the passage of time means that Insiya is probably rooted in India now. In the Netherlands, the focus is on the kidnapping, not the interests of Insiya. Immediate return is not in the best interest of Insiya and is not a solution to the problems. The question is whether it is at all in Insiya’s interest to return after 6 years. She probably does not speak the Dutch language, barely knows her mother (can she communicate at all with her mother in a language?), and has no connection with the country. It is important that Insiya’s needs, wishes, and interests are included in decision-making. In addition, the most important thing is that Insiya gets in touch with her mother, as this is her right. It is certainly not a good solution that agreements about her return or contact recovery are made at a diplomatic level. The parents will have to make the agreements, they have to implement them, and they can indicate what is and is not feasible. Under the guidance of a good mediator, the fears, needs, and interests of the parents can be discussed, and the way can be cleared for long-term contact recovery for Insiya. However, diplomats can show, by staying involved in the case, how important it is that the parents enter into a dialogue and come to a solution in the interest of Insiya.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION
In order to get a good solution for everyone, the first step is awareness at both a diplomatic level and among the parents. They need to understand that it is not in Insiya’s best interest to get her to the Netherlands immediately unless Insiya is mistreated and unsafe in India. The responsibility lies with India to ensure that Insiya leads a safe life and to intervene when this changes. The first priority should be to restore contact with her mother, which has also been called for by the Indian court. Diplomats can support this by making a plan as to what is needed to get the parents to sit down together again and to organize and facilitate the discussions for this. Together they can then also choose a mediator who will lead the discussions. The mediator must be as independent as possible and has to be someone who has “no” ties with the Netherlands or India and can preferably communicate in both the father’s and mother’s languages (translation by an interpreter can if provided if necessary). Having the diplomats present during the conversations might give the parents confidence and encourage a positive result for all parties. It could also prevent disagreements at a diplomatic level about the outcome. It must be clear that the conversations which have to take place between the parents will not be about when Insiya returns to the Netherlands, but that the parents will initially talk to each other again about how contact between Insiya and her mother can be restored. This is not aimed at enforcing the sentence imposed by the Dutch Court, but Insiya’s rights and best interests.
To properly involve Insiya in the process, an independent professional should be appointed to talk to Insiya and guide her through the entire process. What image does Insiya have of her mother, and does that correspond with reality? In what way would she like to wish to restore contact without having to feel guilty towards her father? The outcome of the conversation with Insiya can be discussed in the mediation. They can discuss what is feasible, keeping Insiya’s best interest in mind. “If” contact is restored, it is important that Insiya is also monitored throughout and that this can be included in the mediation again in order to work on the most pleasant contact moments for Insiya, her mother, and her father.
The mediation process
This process requires a mediator (a conflict manager and peace messenger) who creates customized strategic steps, creates a clear overview, and highlights interests. In this case, mediation is probably not a voluntary process for the parents. However, mediation could be an opportunity for a change in the conflict and can lead to the creation of a common productive future for the parents and Insiya. So it is important that the mediator listens closely and speaks wisely.
The first goal is to establish a respectful conversation between the parents and at the very least that they can listen to each other. Only the safe boundaries of the rules of conduct allow a respectful conversation. At the start of the mediation, the rules of conduct must be discussed and the mediator has to make a good introduction in which the mediator mentions that they are there as parents of Inisya (they have an interdependence).
The mediator is the linking element and asks selected questions to create space for the mother’s and father’s interests and wishes and to identify the core problem and all minor conflicts that may influence the core problem. The parents should reveal and describe their needs hidden behind the individual viewpoints and in this way, understand and accept each other’s perspectives and needs. The mediator has the task of checking if both parties understand each other in this. If one of the parents cannot comprehend things or it is alien to their conscience, the mediator has the task of asking for more explanation and double-checking with the other party if it is clear. When unknown information is revealed, it can create more respect for the other person. They have to grant each other sufficient room, which means that they feel that their needs and interests are respected and accepted by each other. When they really understand each other, they get more opportunities to grant each other room. And when they accept each other’s needs, a new escalation can be avoided. The actual solution to this conflict can only be achieved by the satisfaction of their needs.
The mediator has to realize a conflict analysis or mapping and display the father’s and mother’s similarities. To create a good analysis, it is important the mediator asks open questions (what, who, where, when, how, why). Closed questions can be used to control the conversation. In this way, talking about common points of interest, there is a possibility that the destructive conflict will be turned into a constructive conflict and that the complete conflict may be seen through a positive mindset. If this happens, a cooperative environment will arise. Turning the competitive environment into a cooperative one is very important. A competitive environment minimizes communication and is subject to many misunderstandings. It may cause tension and tension cause stress. Stress might lead to irrational actions. Experience has shown that such a situation can only make the conflict worse. To turn a destructive conflict into a constructive one, the mediator needs to use different communication techniques. The first step is to create a rapport. This can be done through a respectful conversation, showing empathy, and mirroring body language or speech patterns. When the father or mother of Insiya is down, sad, negative or angry, it is possible to change his/ her attitude by showing with body language that you are open to dialogue and from this attitude mirror his/ her positive communicative patterns by changing to a more positive pattern. When the mediator notices there is a rapport, then (s)he can test if the conversation partner will follow her/his communication pattern (then the conversation partner is open to our/other arguments).
It is important that the mediator continuously monitors their rapport. When the father or mother abandons the adopted communication patterns and presents contrary behavior patterns, the rapport is ended consciously (mismatching). As a result of mismatching, the mediator has to stop the conversation about the topic and/ or end the session. It indicates the end of the capability to pay attention properly.
When the mediator wants to check whether information has been properly understood, (s)he can summarize the message to be confirmed. The father and/ or mother can also hear the original statement being rephrased by another person, find herself or himself confronted with the personal statement, and is able to reflect upon the proper attitude. When it is needed the mediator can use reframing of a problem or situation. By reframing, the message will have been formulated in a new way and will give possibilities to see positive aspects.
The mother and father have to understand how they themselves think and how this influences their perception and decision-making patterns. The mediator has to help them look at the conflict from a helicopter view so they can see the big picture. When this works, the next step is to discuss the interests and wishes of Insiya and, finally how they can initiate this and create a long-lasting settlement for Insiya and thereby for themselves and both countries. This international macro-conflict is at the diplomatic level a cold conflict and is a good example of a conflict whose origins lie in a micro-conflict. At a micro level, so for the parents, it is a hot conflict.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
www.bringInsiyaback.nl
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, Articles 3, 9, 11 and 12.
Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, 1980, Articles 12 and 13.
Hague Conference on Private International Law (2012). Guide to Good Practice under the 1980 Convention, Part V: Mediation, The Hague.
International Hague Network of Judges and the principles for direct judicial communications, Hague Conference on Private International Law.
Council Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 on jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement in matrimonial matters and matters of parental responsibility.
Freeman, M. (2014). Parental Child Abduction: The Long Term Effects. International Centre for Family Law, Policy and Practice, London.
Carter, R. B. (2011). Family Restructuring Therapy: Interventions with High Conflict Separations and Divorces. Unhooked Books, Scottsdale.
Kaspiew, R. et al., research on children’s participation in family dispute resolution, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne.
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 is a work of fiction and is published as such. It retells the legend of the dragon of Wawel Hill, a story known to every child in Poland, and gives it a different ending. In the traditional versions the dragon is killed, usually by deception. Here it is negotiated with. Because the piece depends on its form as a story, it is presented in full and without the structure applied to the analytical articles in this journal. A short reflection follows the text for readers who wish to consider its use in training.
THE STORY
Once upon another time… in ancient Poland, right on Wawel Hill near the Vistula River, there was a huge dragon of green and yellow scales frightening the population and eating their sheep.
Alarmed at the situation, King Krakus convened the bravest warriors of his kingdom to exterminate the dragon and restore peace to his people. His daughter Wanda was the first to state her willingness to fight, but the king told her that it was not a task for young ladies. Instead, he promised her hand in marriage to whoever defeated the horrible beast.
Every day new warriors presented themselves in court before the king who vowed to kill the dragon in hope that they will marry the beautiful maiden, but none ever returned to the castle. And the decimation of the flocks continued.
The king himself and his escort showed up at the entrance to the cave where the dragon lived, but it was not there. However, he was surprised to see many of the weapons that the warriors had carried to battle, including axes, swords, spears, and crossbows. He took them all back to the castle and showed them to his daughter as he told her:
“We are lost. The dragon devoured all of them.”
“Not everything is lost,” Wanda replied thoughtfully. In the meantime, the soldiers asked the king to find more powerful weapons.
Krakus gave his men designs of enormous weapons and sent them to find the best blacksmiths in town, who started to make the strongest irons. He told his daughter to wear her finest dress and walk around to conquer someone’s heart. Wanda disagreed but chose not to refuse her father’s wish in a moment of such great tension.
A small-sized shoemaker named Shoem Ender who saw Wanda and fell hopelessly in love with her at once started to think about how he could defeat the dragon, and quickly, before any other suitor. That very evening he put on his sheepskin coat and went to Wawel Hill and, without making a sound, he hid in the undergrowth at about one hundred meters from the cave and waited.
Around midnight, a group of men came from around the hill carrying a tied adult sheep that they dropped by the entrance to the lair and left in a hurry. As soon as the terrified sheep started to bleat, the dragon appeared and, snorting fire out of its nose and mouth, took the animal and went back into the bowels of the earth.
A very scared Shoem Ender crept quietly out of his hiding place and left, racking his brains to come up with a good plan as he wondered about the men who were feeding the dragon. He spent the rest of the night torn between his fear of the dragon and his love for Princess Wanda. By the crack of dawn, he had already made a decision.
He went to see the king first thing in the morning and told him:
“My name is Shoem Ender, and I am a cobbler. I have always lived in this town. And I can tell you how to defeat the dragon but on one condition.”
Hearing this, the king’s soldiers burst out laughing. That dragon doesn’t wear shoes, they told him, and which weapon are you planning to use, they asked, as they loaded very heavy axes and shields onto the small Shoem.
King Krakus himself had to smile. “Who are you to impose conditions?”
“I have a plan to take down the beast, and I don’t need any of these weapons,” Shoem replied.
At this point the king became furious and yelled at him:
“How can you think, cobbler, that you can go unarmed against a dragon that gobbled up the best warriors of these lands? I suggest you leave before I order my men to behead you.”
Wanda heard all the noise and rushed into the room to try and calm her father’s anger.
“As I said, I have a plan and one condition,” Shoem insisted fearlessly.
“Speak, you fool!” shouted the king.
“I don’t want a woman as payment. First I want to meet the princess and know whether she would accept to marry me regardless of any dragon,” Shoem explained.
It was all the soldiers could do not to laugh while the king stared at the cobbler defiantly.
Wanda, who suffered for being treated as an object and at first glance found Shoem rather pleasant, thought it was a good opportunity to hear what he had in mind. So she addressed King Krakus:
“Calm down, father, the new weapons are not ready yet. Let’s give the little man a chance.”
“I give you three days,” he told Shoem menacingly.
For three days the princess and the cobbler started to know each other. She showed him around the castle and he took her home to see his workshop and meet his family. They talked and laughed, feeling free from their daily activities. Every now and then Shoem felt worried since he didn’t actually have any plan to end with the dragon. Wanda started to fear for the cobbler’s fate.
On the third day, he took her to a silversmith with the intention of giving her a ring as a sign of their wonderful friendship and, perhaps, as a farewell keepsake. If he failed to kill the dragon, he would end up either devoured by it or executed by the king’s men.
The old craftsman measured the princess’s finger and worked with great mastery for a few moments to make a simple but beautiful shining piece.
Wanda was delighted, but she feared her father’s reaction to her new ring. “What can we do?” asked Shoem.
The silversmith prepared a mixture of sulfur and sheep tallow, applied it to the ring, and held it close to the fire. “This patina will make the jewel look old and last longer,” he said.
Shoem approached the old man and whispered in his ear: “Engrave something on it.”
Wanda enjoyed very much the silversmith’s company and felt really happy with his present. As a result of their visit, Shoem finally thought of a solution to succeed in his plans: he would offer the dragon a sheep-filled with sulfur which he would then make explode inside its lair.
When the time came to say goodbye, he explained his plan to the princess, who found it brilliant and, as soon as she entered the castle, described it to her father. The king thought it was clever but quite risky.
That evening Wanda summoned the cobbler to the castle and asked him to postpone his plan, since the new weapons were finished and there were many warriors eager to fight. Unwilling to lose his love, Shoem refused to wait.
However, the princess insisted:
“Go back home to your family, and get them some food supplies in case you fall into the dragon’s clutches.”
Finally, once he yielded to her arguments, they strode toward the kitchen area. Shoem took off his coat and used a needle and thread to sew it into a bag of sorts, which Wanda stuffed with beets, carrots, and dried meat. Then he took it on his shoulders and bid farewell to the princess.
On the following day, as the cobbler was looking for volcanic ash to make the amount of sulfur that he needed, Wanda dropped in by surprise and told him:
“I have a new plan: no enemy has dared to attack us ever since the dragon showed up in our lands. If we succeed in holding it on a leash, we would become a very powerful kingdom! So I thought that we should fill a lot of sheepskin-lined bags with beets and other foods, find those men who are feeding the dragon, and give them the bags as if they were real sheep. Since the dragon breathes fire out of its mouth and nose, it can neither smell nor taste anything. We just need to control its appetite.”
“All right. We’ll do that until I have enough sulfur,” Shoem replied.
“It’s a deal then!” she said.
That night, Shoem Ender loaded a cart with the first sheep-looking bag filled with vegetables. He reached the cave before the unknown men, placed the sack next to the entrance, and mimicked the bleat-like sound of a scared sheep. Then he rushed into hiding.
The dragon came out, visibly hungry but also distrustful. Mistaking the bag for a real sheep, as Shoem expected, he aimed its fire at it and, right away, devoured the whole sack of veggies.
The cobbler kept waiting for the men to appear. As it turned out, they were former warriors whom the dragon had vanquished in the past and who were so ashamed of their defeat that they would steal sheep from any flock to keep the beast well-fed and, therefore, inside the cave, hoping that they would be able to kill it one day.
Shoem explained to them that there shouldn’t be chagrined at defeat and that the whole town would surely be happy that they had survived. He also told them that he had a more effective plan to kill the dragon with just a bit of help from some fur coats and vegetables.
Under the cobbler’s direction, the group of men spent several nights making bags out of coats and filling them with beets for the hungry beast. Shoem kept Wanda up to date with their progress, and every day she helped with food and clothes for the warriors, to the point that King Krakus began to feel more and more confident that it would all turn out well.
When they were totally convinced that the dragon liked vegetables very much and decided to confront it, they notified Wanda. Not without a certain misgiving, she told them:
“OK, tonight we fill as many bags as we can and bring them to the cave. Once there, I will talk to the dragon.”
And so they did. They managed to take four bags of vegetables with them, hoping that they would suffice for the dragon to have its fill. They unloaded the first one and Shoem let out a loud ‘baaaaa, baaaaa, baaaaa!’ Then they all hid away.
The dragon came out and turned the first bag into a charred husk before it wolfed it down. The same thing happened with the second bag and, more slowly, with the third one. Then he went back, but not far, into the cave.
“There’s only one full bag left,” said the cobbler. “Hopefully it will be enough to sate its appetite, otherwise we will have to fight.”
The warriors agreed, but since they didn’t have any weapons—Wanda was the only one with a sword and a shield—they searched around for trees with strong sharp branches and tied small knives to the tips of some of them. With the last piece of ‘bait’ still lying by the entrance to the cave, Shoem started to bleat nonstop until a heavily walking and not-so-voracious-looking dragon came back out.
Poorly armed as they were, the warriors waited for the cobbler to say the word. However, instead of ordering an attack, Shoem and Wanda started to walk hand in hand toward the dragon, who was looking at them rather disconcerted.
“Hi, dragon! My name is Shoem Ender and this is Princess Wanda! We would like to speak with you!” the cobbler said loudly and with some hesitation.
And the dragon thundered, “What do you want? To be eaten just like those sheep?”
Shoem and Wanda dropped their weapons. The princess said, “You have not eaten any sheep for many days. We fed you vegetables!”
Roaring with laughter, the beast shouted back: “Ha, ha, ha! And how come I heard them shrieking with fear and felt them bleeding?”
“That was not blood, but beet juice,”
“And the one bleating was me,” Shoem added, as he started to baaing again.
His imitation was so good that the dragon began to writhe and salivate. All the men came out of their hiding places as one, ready to help their friends.
The dragon flew into a rage and shouted: “Is it a trap!!!??? I will finish you!!!”
But although Shoem ordered the men to fall back, Wanda stood her ground.
The princess explained to the dragon that they should stop quarreling and come together, promising in King Krakus’s name that the country would show respect and provide food if its dragon protected them from their enemy’s attack in return.
The beast accepted the offer and admitted that he loved to eat vegetables and especially beets, but begged everyone to tell no one lest its reputation be stained. After all, whoever heard of a vegetarian dragon?
And the princess assured, “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with us, courageous dragon!”
They all marched up to the castle, where everyone had already heard various messengers report that Wanda had made a pact with the dragon, much to the king’s, the soldier’s, and the people’s surprise and peace of mind.
Amid the celebrations, King Krakus convened the whole town to make an announcement:
“In order to benefit from the dragon’s help, we will build a great city on the hill near its cave and call it Cracow. I had given my word that the warrior who defeated the dragon would have Princess Wanda’s hand and love. Now I don’t know what to do, because there are many victors. I think that my daughter has proved to be sufficiently brave and smart to make right decisions, so I yield my authority to her so that she decides who her husband will be.”
Even if Krakus was in a dilemma, the warriors had witnessed the affection and rapport between the princess and the cobbler.
Using the powers that her father vested in her, Princess Wanda declared:
“I love the cobbler Shoem Ender and choose to stay by his side. And so I swear, on the words engraved on this ring: ‘To the dragon that unites us!”
And they all lived happily ever after in beautiful Cracow, together with the vegetarian dragon. Until one day…
A NOTE FOR READERS AND TRAINERS *
Every version of this legend ends with a dead dragon. The oldest tell of a sheep filled with sulfur, and the cobbler who tricks the beast into swallowing it. What this retelling does is stop just before that moment and ask a different question, and the answer it gives is recognisable to anyone who works with conflict.
Consider what the cobbler does that the warriors do not. He goes to the hill and watches. He notices that someone is feeding the dragon and wonders who they are and why. Every warrior before him arrived knowing what the problem was; he arrived not knowing, and that is the whole of his advantage. When he finds the men, he does not denounce them but asks, and discovers that they are not traitors but people acting out of shame. Their behaviour, incomprehensible from outside, makes sense from where they stand.
The dragon turns out to have an interest that nobody had thought to ask about, and a second one that matters more: it will accept the arrangement provided its reputation survives. Face saving is not a detail here but the condition of agreement, and the promise of discretion is what closes the deal. The settlement itself is reciprocal, protection in exchange for provision, which means both sides have a reason to keep it, and it is announced publicly, which makes it durable.
Wanda’s part carries the sharper point. She is introduced as a prize to be awarded and ends as the person who negotiates and then decides. What changes her position is not permission but demonstrated judgment, and the cobbler’s opening condition, that he does not want a woman as payment, is the moment the story separates itself from its source.
Two questions are worth putting to a group working with this text. First: the plan with the sulfur was never abandoned, only overtaken, and the knives were tied to the branches before the parties walked forward unarmed. What does it mean that the alternative remained available, and would the conversation have happened without it? Second: the story ends with a secret kept, and the agreement rests on it. What happens to such an arrangement when the secret comes out?
The closing words leave that open deliberately. Until one day.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
Is Migration Beneficial For The Migrant, The Country They Go To And The Country Of Origin?
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 examines the consequences of Syrian displacement for the sending country, the receiving country and the refugees themselves. For Syria the author identifies the loss of educated professionals and the resulting depletion of human capital, alongside the significance of remittances and the risk that entrenched patronage will prevent any recovery. For Lebanon the argument is that the economic potential of the newcomers has gone unrealised, since restrictions on labour market access, combined with political reluctance, have produced isolation rather than integration, and that the wider economic damage stems more from the war and from domestic policy than from the presence of refugees. The third section addresses conditions in informal settlements, the absence of work permits and its consequences, the particular vulnerability of women, and the exposure of camp populations to the coronavirus pandemic. The characterisations reflect the author’s own perspective; this journal’s editorial position is neutral.
KEYWORDS *
Syria, Lebanon, refugees, forced migration, brain drain, remittances, informal settlements, labour market access, host communities, vulnerability, COVID 19, human capital
INTRODUCTION
Lebanon and Syria have been hit by an unprecedented wave of a sudden, overwhelming and traumatic migration. While this means a loss for Syria and a gain for Lebanon in human capital, both countries have faced a variety of unforeseen challenges in historically troubled countries within an unruly and seemingly unmanageable region. This essay will briefly detail some of the many challenges that have been imposed on Syria as a sending country, Lebanon as a receiving country, and the refugees themselves in the midst of political turmoil. Respecting the fact that the migrants’ reasoning for leaving in such large numbers is accountable to the fact that war has been plaguing the Syrian nation, leaving many families no other option than leaving, the essay will use the terms migrant and refugee interchangeably. Due to the fact that Syria is indulged in a complex, sectarian and ongoing war, exact figures and results are proving themselves difficult to obtain. Nonetheless, the case of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has been reported on widely for reasons including the fact that Lebanon itself is closely tied to Syria and has many political aspects in common, i.e. nepotism, which has hindered both countries in dealing with sudden problems such as the refugee wave.
MAIN CORPUS
Syria’s civil war starting in 2011 has caused immense amounts of damage both to the country and the people. Syria’s neighbour, Lebanon, has been at the forefront of the refugee influx, currently hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees (Rabil, 2016). Numbers this high undoubtedly have profound and lasting effects on Syria as a sending country with vast amounts of people leaving in a short period of time. Due to the massive outflux of people during the war with little plan on rebuilding the country and society, one of the consequences is the brain drain which threatens to depopulate Syria, depriving the country of its valuable human capital (Goldin et. al, 2011). Syria’s educated were some of the first to flee when the civil war started at the beginning of the decade, presumably because they would have been unproductive in the country of the Assad regime in the wake of civil unrest (Christophersen, 2018). Syria now lacks a sufficient skill base in the private and public sectors, a phenomenon that hinders both Syria’s and Lebanon’s intentions for retrieval of brain gain in Syria brought by a returning populace once acquiring a sufficient amount of financial stability and advanced skillset (Goldin et. al, 2011). Moreover, Syria, alongside Jordan and Lebanon, is among the highest recipients of remittances in the world in proportion to their GDP. An advantageous contribution to a household in Syria, receiving households will generally invest more in human capital and the education of their children than their non-receiving counterparts (Chaaban et. al, 2012). Goldin argues that every dollar in remittance spending creates two to three dollars of income in the country of the migrant’s origin (Goldin et. al, 2011). Should this work in accordance with Syria’s financial system, the money generated will be recycled back into its economy, gradually and exponentially growing its potential. In contrast, if Syria’s dire system of nepotism takes over, the concept of a stabilising economy could be imminently discarded and the old, albeit unpopular system, would prevail (Göransson, 2018). This would potentially keep Syria in a cycle of outward migration and a subsequent brain drain, deteriorating chances of integration into the global market, and an inevitable economic crash resulting in an ongoing conflict.
Lebanon is considered a primary receiving country and is at the forefront of the refugee wave, as it is closely related to Syria in terms of economics, politics as well as geographically. This has led to a variety of consequences, in which the negatives seemingly outweigh the positives. The costs of a large number of migrants in relation to the relatively small native population can be highly visible and localised, especially if we consider the Syrian migrants as refugees, often arriving in Lebanon en masse and with little intention for a long-term settlement (Parkes, 2015). This lack of intention, arguably triggered by xenophobia and regulations serving to diminish Syrian refugees’ access to the Lebanese labour market, has meant that Lebanon remains unable to unlock the huge economic potential Syrian migrants might have been able to contribute (Holmes, 2013). According to Lebanon’s interior minister, Marwan Charbel, refugees threaten the security of Lebanon and pose a threat to the already scarce resources of a heavily polluted country (Christophersen, 2018). One argument brought forward was that the presence of refugees in the informal settlements had a vastly negative impact on the natural resources. Accountable to the fact that the settlements are informal and located near water sources, the waste generated by the people in the camps integrate into the environment around them, negatively impacting the water, air and land quality (Rabil, 2016). While the interior minister upholds the notion that refugees are a burden and not a potential blessing, the International Monetary Fund has proclaimed the weak policymaking by the Lebanese government more of a burden than the influx itself. Traditionally a trade-based economy, Lebanon has been more severely hit by the economic impositions placed upon it as a repercussion attributable to the Syrian war than the refugees themselves. Export routes have been blocked catalysing a sharp decline in consumer confidence in addition to the decaying investor sentiment (Holmes, 2013). Lebanon’s historically famous tourism, banking, and trading industries have been hit badly, especially as the refugee wave escalated simultaneously to the economic stagnation which hit Lebanon’s government finances (Rabil, 2016). Lebanon’s politicians and population have turned to increase attempts to isolate their refugee population in the hopes they can drive the refugees away. The policymaking of the government itself appears to be largely ignored in the debate around the refugee problem.
While there is a lot of discussion around the impacts migrants have on their country of origin and country of destination, the impact migration itself has on a person can be detrimental to both the person and their surroundings. A country rich in ethnic, religious, and financial diversity, Syrian refugees, in particular, are reported to be struggling in Lebanon. While Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have designated refugee camps, Syrian refugees are predominantly being hosted in informal settlements or host communities in some of Lebanon’s economically deprived areas (Christophersen, 2018). These deprived areas are often situated in the Northern and Southern districts of Lebanon, districts lacking sufficient infrastructure and plagued by criminal activity. The already deprived areas of Lebanon have expressed the most dissatisfaction in taking on Syrian refugees (Rabil, 2016). The social marginalisation of the Syrian refugees resulting in a refusal from the government to provide job permits, and thus endorsed a socioeconomic disadvantage, has led to Syrians opting for desperate measures to financially support themselves. One such measure witnessed increasingly and repeatedly is the Syrian refugee women turning to sex work. Prostitution being illegal in Lebanon, these women often receive criminal records upon arrest, which in turn worsen already bleak chances of employment (BBC, 2017). According to the UN, women are already the primary victims of displacement and war (Zheng, 2015). Their worsening situation after displacement more often than not contributes to their downward assimilation, often lasting until the next generation and beyond (Goldin et. al, 2011). In addition, the living situation for refugees in an already densely populated country such a Lebanon is often crowded, unsanitary, and lacks infrastructure connecting them to the urbanised parts of the country. Given the situation, Syrians in Lebanon are vulnerable to stress, depression and in more recent times, susceptible to infectious outbreaks (Goldin et. al, 2011). For this reason, refugees in north-eastern Lebanon are reporting the daily struggle attempting to contain the infectious disease Cov-Sars-19. Living on less than 40 litres of water a day per tent as well as the tents being less than one metre apart from each other, refugees are among the most vulnerable in the world in the wake of a pandemic as widespread as Covid-19 (el-Azar, 2020). The already lacking medical facilities in Lebanon paired with the undocumented status of many of the refugees has resulted in fewer applications for medical assistance which has resulted in refugees currently living in a constant state of stress, which almost certainly contributes to the abovementioned challenges of a hazardous journey on a personal level.
SUMMARY *
The article’s structure follows the displacement itself, from the country departed, to the country entered, to the people who made the journey, and its recurring argument is that in each case the damage attributed to the movement of people is better explained by the decisions taken around them. Syria’s difficulty is not that its professionals left but that nothing has been built to which they might return. Lebanon’s economic distress is traced by the sources cited here to the war, to blocked trade routes and to domestic policy rather than to the presence of refugees. And the conditions in the informal settlements follow from the refusal of legal status and work permits rather than from any characteristic of the population living in them.
CONCLUSION
All things considered, both Lebanon and Syria are still suffering economically. This means Lebanon has failed to unlock the economic potential refugees could carry because the country has failed to organise accordingly within its own political system. By falsely identifying the problems, Lebanon has hindered itself in development within the country as well as its position in the region. Syria still operating its politics through nepotism has meant that Syria’s system has remained what it was unpopular for, once again meaning it has failed to adequately meet the needs of the potentially returning populace in addition to its investors. This has prevented Syria from unlocking the potential that could catalyse Syria into a new position of economic strength in the Levant. This in turn could eventually rebuild the country, regaining its cultural glory. Migrants suffering the consequences of the decisions made by both countries have meant many are still living in inhumane conditions numerous years later from the first arrival. As if these conditions hadn’t posed enough sanitary problems, the novel Coronavirus pandemic has left a large community in a constant state of stress as the burden of the unknown future haunts it.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article identifies the decisive mechanism and it is worth naming plainly: almost every hardship described here follows from the absence of legal status. Without residency, a person cannot work lawfully, cannot register a birth, cannot approach the police when wronged, and hesitates to seek medical care. The consequences the article records, from exploitative labour to the situations facing women without income to the reluctance to present at a clinic during a pandemic, are not separate problems requiring separate programmes. They are symptoms of one condition, and regularisation addresses them together.
The obstacle is political rather than technical, and it should be stated honestly. Lebanon’s confessional balance makes any measure resembling permanent settlement of a large, predominantly Sunni population intensely contested, and the memory of how the Palestinian presence became entangled in the civil war shapes the debate. That fear is not irrational and cannot be argued away. It can, however, be addressed by design: temporary protection with renewable, clearly limited status, explicitly separated from any question of naturalisation, and sector specific work authorisation in agriculture, construction and services where labour demand exists and competition with Lebanese workers is least acute. Such arrangements have been negotiated elsewhere, and they give the host state what it needs, which is control and reversibility, while giving the displaced what they need, which is the ability to live lawfully.
Support directed to host communities rather than to refugees alone is the second element, and it is the one that most affects whether hospitality holds. The deprived districts the article names carry the burden while the benefits accrue elsewhere, and resentment in such conditions is a predictable response rather than a moral failing. Investment in shared services, schools, clinics, water systems and roads, serving both populations in the areas of highest concentration, converts a zero sum perception into a visible common gain. This principle is now standard in international response frameworks precisely because programmes that assist only the displaced have repeatedly generated the hostility they were meant to avoid.
On return, which the article treats as the eventual resolution, the conditions matter more than the timing. Return is durable only where it is voluntary, informed and safe, and where property, documentation and conscription questions have been settled in advance. Return organised as a political achievement, without those guarantees, produces secondary displacement rather than reconstruction. The author’s observation about what awaits returning professionals is the more important point: people return to opportunity and to security, not to an appeal, and rebuilding the institutions they would work within is the precondition for the human capital recovery the article hopes for.
Two final observations. The framing of displaced people primarily as economic potential is a well intentioned argument that carries a risk, since it grounds their claim to protection in their usefulness, and usefulness can always be disputed. The stronger ground is that people fleeing war are entitled to protection irrespective of what they contribute; the economic case is a welcome addition and a poor foundation. And the situations facing women without lawful income deserve a response rather than only a description: legal aid, protection from prosecution for those coerced, safe reporting channels and targeted livelihood support are what change those circumstances, and each is achievable without resolving the wider political question.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Bibliography
BBC (2017) ‘The Syrian refugees turning to Sex to survive – BBC News’, BBC, March 23. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZqHUBkLv4E (Accessed: 3rd May 2020)
Chaaban, J. and Mansour, W. (2012) The Impact of Remittances on Education in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Available at: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/684.pdf (Accessed: 3rd May 2020)
Christophersen, M. (2018) Report Part Title: Mitigating the Impact of the War in Syria and the Influx of Syrian Refugees. Available at: https://0-www-jstor-org.emu.londonmet.ac.uk/stable/pdf/resrep17506.7.pdf (Accessed: 5th May 2020)
El-Azar, S. (2020) ‘Inside the Lebanon refugee camps bracing for coronavirus’, The Independent, Beirut, April 3. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/coronavirus-lebanon-refugee-camps-syria-palestine-video-a9446851.html (Accessed: 6th May)
Goldin, I. and Cameron, G. and Balarajan, M. (2011) Exceptional People. US: Princeton University Press, pp. 162-210
Göransson, M. (2018) Apping and resilience: How smartphones help Syrian refugees in Lebanon negotiate the precarity of displacement. Available at: https://0-www-jstor-org.emu.londonmet.ac.uk/stable/pdf/resrep21314.pdf (Accessed: 5th May 2020)
Holmes, O. (2013) ‘Syrian Refugees Burden and Benefit for Lebanese Economy’, REUTERS, Beirut, April 17. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crisis-lebanon-refugees/syrian-refugees-burden-and-benefit-for-lebanese-economy-idUSBRE93G0MW20130417 (Accessed: 5th May 2020)
Parkes, R. (2015) Migration: New ‘push’ and ‘Pull dynamics. Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, pp. 1-4
Rabil, R. (2016) The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon: The Double Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities. London: Lexington Books, pp. 1, 11, 109
Zheng, S. (2015) Refugees and internally displaced persons. United Nations. Available at: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/genderstatmanual/Print.aspx?Page=Refugees-and-internally-displaced-persons (Accessed: 5th May 2020)
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon (VASyR), annual editions, Beirut.
Government of Lebanon and United Nations, Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, successive editions.
Global Compact on Refugees, United Nations General Assembly, 2018, on responsibility sharing and support to host communities.
International Labour Organization, assessments of Syrian refugee access to the labour market in Lebanon and Jordan, Beirut and Geneva.
Jordan Compact, London Conference, 2016, on work permits in exchange for trade concessions.
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951, Article 33 on non refoulement, and UNHCR guidance on voluntary repatriation.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, reports on the situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Democratic Involvement – what are the factors ?
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 essay asks whether the principal obstacle in politics is not ideas or law but unsound behaviour, deficient communication and personality disorder, and whether existing structures reward precisely these traits. Written as a sequence of open questions, it traces the influence of adversarial assumptions from mercantilism to modern theories of competition, considers the promise and the limits of the information revolution, and invokes Ortega y Gasset’s warning against specialisation that leaves individuals discounting their own experience and specialists indifferent to the whole. Drawing on Lawrence LeShan, the author argues that the widespread inability to face psychological pain leads people to ignore the pain of others and thus the issues society most needs to address, and warns that environments of risk and power favour those least capable of self reflection and empathy, particularly where the public prefers strong leaders to the responsibility of participation. The essay closes by asking what techniques of communication and conflict resolution might respond to this.
KEYWORDS *
Political culture, behaviour, empathy, personality disorder, communication, Ortega y Gasset, specialisation, information revolution, leadership, self reflection, psychological pain, participation
INTRODUCTION
Can it be that unsound behavior, communication deficiencies, and personality disorders, not concepts or even the law are the main problem in politics?
Do we reward unsound behavior?
Do we install processes that protect the diversity of voices and look out for the emotional, physical, and social health of participants? Governing has been marked by social hierarchies and power struggles including violence and death. Economic theory has often been based on concepts arrived from the war as many of the “facts/concepts” we use when applying ourselves for success, motivation, and legitimized behavior.
MAIN CORPUS
Has it always been this way?
Similar behavioral thinking and motivation are shown in economic theory from the time of mercantilism promoting gain as having to be at others’ expense to modern ideas on competition and comparative advantage. “Social capital” and “brute force” alongside other persuasive powers with coercion often lead the way. The nation-state seems only to cover feudal lords and merchant networks rather than building from the principle for the whole. Can we prove these ideas wrong? Are they counterproductive? Do some win in the competition at the cost of their own isolation, decreased empathetic capabilities, and diminished connections, or worse?
The information revolution
The Internet revolutionizes public scrutiny, conversation, and decision-making. Especially where media may be controlled by few people and online publishing/participation is a reality.
What about the quality of the thinkers and the information?
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega Y Gassett warned us against the hegemony of specialization. Everything becomes somebodies else’s domain leaving individuals discounting their lives – discounting their own experiences and sense of navigating the world. The specialist then in such a case being a product of modern education and in danger of myopia, lacking concern for the whole: If men confuse symbols (expert knowledge) with the realities of being human.
When the politician and the scientist are ignorant of the decencies of integrity or if they give in to threat and danger – can the public help?
Information gives the ability to engage but not necessarily the ability to know by having walked out of an experience or the ability to deal constructively with threats.
Do crowds have the real ability needed to bring solutions for a nation and humanity?
Based on interest various individuals can come to depths of knowledge that at times rivals the knowledge of experts. Magnifying diversity of discourse, diversifying the risk of participation. Specialists in psychological influence can however reach people through a wider spectrum and there is a danger of information cascade.
The ability to act and know the quality of information comes up for question
People often are overwhelmed. Business & other power may threaten the quality of information. Levels of maturity and intellect differ in the power to see correlations, classify significance, events, and potentiality.
Often society rewards the ability to subdue feelings
It is hard to know if the things needing attention are addressed. It is easy to lead the discourse astray. The power of feelings, unspoken communication, and social ties is routinely underestimated. For many it is really hard to be consistent – even to have integrity towards oneself. People can be kind, but also impossibly ruthless. It is hard for people to face their own psychological pain. When they can not they may ignore the pain of others as it reminds them of their own. In so doing they routinely ignore the issues needed to be addressed by society! Lawrence Leshan an American PH.D. in psychology maintains that aspects of psychologically not being able to face pain and issues while simultaneously being able to remain “normal” or “functional”threaten life on the entire planet and for sure any reasonable functioning of any political process! People may have various levels of dysfunctional upbringing in terms of “healthy” communication, empathy, and sense of the whole. Some lack empathetic skills. When there is a high level of needing praise and not being able to constructively deal with criticism the narcissist with power even if preaching democracy utilizes coercive means, weaknesses of people, and codependent group behavior.
SUMMARY *
The essay’s governing thought is that political dysfunction is better explained by the emotional and communicative capacities of those who take part in it than by the merits of their arguments. Inherited adversarial assumptions, the fragmentation of understanding through specialisation, an information environment that grants access without judgment, and a culture that mistakes the suppression of feeling for competence combine to produce a selection effect: the traits that succeed in politics are not those that make governing wise.
CONCLUSION
Who is in control?
Sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies can thrive where there is risk, challenge, and power. The general public looks for “strong leaders” preferring not to have to take the responsibility, risk, and time needed for sensibly participating in political discourse or governance. There is danger in the confusing lacking ability of self-reflection and empathetic skills with strength and decisiveness! We tend to lift up individuals rather than the context that gives them support or needed safeguards. What techniques of communication and conflict solutions do we have that we can apply? Can we deal better with personality disorders or psychological pain? The wolves do not want anything that hinders their raiding of society. Can we help them?
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The essay’s closing observation contains its own answer: we lift up individuals rather than the context that gives them support or needed safeguards. That is precisely where mediation practice has something to offer, because mediation is fundamentally an argument about context. It holds that behaviour is shaped by the structure people find themselves in, that the same person who becomes rigid and combative under adversarial conditions can become creative under different ones, and that changing the structure is more reliable than changing the character.
Applied to political life, this suggests attending less to the diagnosis of leaders than to the design of the processes that select and sustain them. Debate formats that reward the sharpest attack produce politicians skilled in attack. Deliberative formats, in which participants must first restate the opposing position to its holder’s satisfaction, in which time is allowed for reflection rather than reaction, and in which facilitation protects the quieter voices, reward a different set of capacities. Citizens’ assemblies and similar structures, now tested in several countries on questions that had defeated parliaments, show that ordinary people asked to deliberate under good conditions produce careful and often courageous conclusions, which speaks directly to the essay’s question about the capabilities of crowds.
Two of the essay’s concerns deserve a more precise response. On specialisation, the corrective is not to distrust expertise but to change the relationship between experts and citizens: experts who present evidence and uncertainty to a deliberating public, and who are questioned by that public rather than deferred to, restore what Ortega feared was lost without discarding what specialists actually know. On the psychological dimension, the practical instruments already exist in the conflict resolution field, and they are ordinary rather than clinical: supervision and reflective practice for those who hold authority, structures that require decisions to be explained to those affected by them, and institutional accountability that does not depend on the self restraint of the powerful.
A caution belongs here as well. Diagnosing political opponents at a distance is itself a familiar move in polarised societies, and the language of disorder is easily used to disqualify people rather than to understand them. The safer formulation is structural: certain environments reward certain behaviours, and where power is unaccountable, where information is unverifiable and where the public prefers strength to participation, the behaviours rewarded will be the ones the essay describes. Build accountability, protect the quality of information, and make deliberation something citizens actually practise, and the same environment begins to reward something else.
The essay’s final question, whether the wolves can be helped, is more hopeful than it first appears. Mediators encounter people daily who arrive rigid, defended and combative, and who become something else when the room changes. Not everyone does. But the practice rests on the observation that most people are less fixed than they seem, and that what looks like character is often the shape a person takes under the conditions they are given.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES *
Ortega y Gasset, J. (1930). The Revolt of the Masses. Revista de Occidente, Madrid (chapter on the barbarism of specialisation).
LeShan, L. (2002). The Psychology of War: Comprehending Its Mystique and Its Madness. Helios Press, New York.
Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (3rd edition). Penguin Books, New York.
Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (3rd edition). PuddleDancer Press, Encinitas.
Fisher, R., & Shapiro, D. (2005). Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. Viking, New York.
Bush, R. A. B., & Folger, J. P. (2005). The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
Fishkin, J. S. (2018). Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics Through Public Deliberation. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (2020). Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave. OECD Publishing, Paris.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds. Doubleday, New York.
Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. Oxford University Press, New York (on information cascades and group polarisation).
Goleman, D. (2006). Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. Bantam Books, New York.
Lederach, J. P. (2005). The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. Oxford University Press, New York.
Use of indigenous language for conflict resolution
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 examines the role of language and communication in the emergence, management and resolution of conflict, with particular attention to indigenous languages. The author argues that miscommunication and non communication contribute directly to conflict, that conflicts must be understood within their social context of values, fears, interests, attitudes and relationships, and that language carries both positive and negative powers, since proverbs, songs, stories and myths in one community’s language may portray another community negatively. Because culture and language are inseparable, the paper contends that any effective conflict resolution instrument must take cultural and linguistic factors into account, and that century old indigenous mechanisms grounded in empathy, sharing and cooperation retain their value for promoting peace and social order. The article then situates communication within peacebuilding, tracing its roots in Communication for Development, distinguishing four channels of communication flow in conflict settings, and setting out the concept of positive peace as social justice, political equality and non violent means of managing grievance. The author reviews United Nations definitions of peacebuilding from the 1992 Agenda for Peace onward, notes the difficulties of evaluating long term and intangible peacebuilding outcomes, emphasises that reconciliation must be rooted in local social and cultural contexts, and closes with the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019 and the theme of International Mother Language Day, a day established at the request of Bangladesh in memory of the language movement.
KEYWORDS *
Language and conflict, indigenous languages, communication, peacebuilding, reconciliation, positive peace, culture, Communication for Development, International Mother Language Day, conflict resolution, intercultural dialogue
INTRODUCTION
Human communication is inseparable from human language. People communicate with each other with language. Miscommunication and non-communication can contribute to conflict. It happens when communication is not enough with information or a misinterpretation of the words intended but a different meaning by which it is the beginning of miscommunication.
Conflict is a situation whereby individuals, groups, or countries are involved in a disagreement over an issue. Usually, the conflict between different ethnic groups often results from different language contact. There are instances when an indigenous language has a proverb, a song, a story, or a myth that paints another community or other communities in a negative light. An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people. An effective conflict resolution tool should take cultural and linguistic factors into consideration. Conflicts may be categorized with respect to whether they occur at the micro-micro, micro-mezzo, mezzo-macro, or micro-macro levels i. e. among individuals, individuals and groups, groups, and communities, and between community groups and government or within private or civil society organizations. Usually, conflicts are the result of problems created by people.
MAIN CORPUS
‘Conflicts must be understood in their social context, involving values and beliefs, fears and suspicions, interests and needs, attitudes and actions, relationships and networks’. The conflict created from misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is usually aggravated by the fact that one person/party underestimates or is ignorant of the range of value systems or misinterpret the norms that exist in different languages, cultures, and social environments.
Again, language also plays a crucial role in causing and resolving conflict. Language is one of the communication means. The best language is the indigenous language. Conflicts are inevitably present in many interpersonal relationships, and their destructive/constructive character depends on the way they are handled.
Language can cause or mitigate conflict because of its ‘positive and negative powers’. When people are sensitive about their language, language tends to be a positive tool in life. People tend to tolerate, listen, understand, and co-operative with those who have similar values and belief systems. Since no society functions without culture, and culture is symbiotic with language. This is the inherent power of language plays a significant role in conflict management and peacebuilding. Because language is part and parcel of culture, and culture in itself is a means by which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge and attitudes towards life. Language must have a place in the management of conflicts and peace-building elsewhere.
The century-old indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms focus on the principles of empathy, sharing, and cooperation in dealing with common problems which underline the essence of humanity. Cultural approaches to resolving and managing disputes play a vital role in promoting peace and social order in communities. Language, cultural values, and attitudes provide the basis for interaction and the norms by which individuals and communities on the planet.
Communication is instrumental in peace-building. Peacebuilding is defined as the process intended to address the root causes of conflict, reconcile differences, normalize relations, and build institutions that can manage conflicts without resorting to violence. Peacebuilding involves putting structures in place for removing the roots of conflict.
The Communication for Peacebuilding work has its roots in the philosophy and practice of Communication for Development. In the arena of conflict transformation and peacebuilding, communications have historically played a role in shaping the views of policy-makers and influencing popular opinion on conflicts. Communication is an irreducible element of peacebuilding. Communication is central to many aspects of work in conflict and post-conflict settings.
There are four ways to conceptualize how communication has been applied to peace-building in case of conflict in a society, group, or community. First, one might look at the channels of communication flows between the following entities- (a) between individuals in conflict; (b) within a group where conflict exists; (c) within groups or communities in conflict; (d) between communities and organizations such as multilateral, government, and NGO’s where cooperation and coordination are issues.
Peace has a certain quality. It has to go beyond the absence of violence and include also the development of social justice and political equality. This includes harmonious relationships between the different individuals and groups in society and the availability of mechanisms through which grievances and discord can be managed in non-violent ways. This kind of peace is often called ‘positive’ peace having certain conditions of complete peace linked with the notion of justice assessed by the moral quality of the outcome of justice. Peacebuilding can be pre-conflict or post-conflict. The former tries to prevent a conflict from breaking out and the latter one is the resolution of conflict.
In the era of globalization, a new concept of development emerged emphasizing cultural identity and multidimensionality. Generally, conflict resolution is a community process involving the identification of the root cause of the problem and bringing all parties involved to address the underlying issues. The growing interdependency of nations and global issues such as economic and financial crises, ecological and security crises gave rise to a new perspective on development and social change. The theory and practice of communication for development is an evolving field, with different approaches and perspectives unique to the varied development contexts. This participatory model also stressed the importance of the cultural identity of local communities and of democratization and participation at all levels.
Development, peace-building, reconciliation, and conflict resolution are complex terms that have no common definition and are often centered on developing more intangible outcomes such as changes in relationships and attitudes that do not lend themselves readily to quantification. In addition, evaluation is further complicated by the following factors that the outcomes from Peace-Building are essentially long-term, which makes short-term monitoring and evaluation difficult. It is difficult to isolate the impact of specific Peace-Building interventions from the complex political, economic, and social contexts in which they are located.
The UN 1992 report ‘An Agenda for Peace, defined peacebuilding as action to solidify peace and avoid a relapse into conflict. The UN Secretary-General’s Policy Committee has described peacebuilding as follows: “Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore a relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.” In 2000, another report defined it as “activities undertaken on the far side of the conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war”.
SUMMARY
Conflict use to leave a deep-rooted sense of distrust and fear that must be addressed if there is to be a just and lasting peace. Reconciliation is broadly considered as a process centrally needed in societies emerging from violent conflicts. Reconciliation processes in post-conflict societies are often highly complex. It is believed that no intractable conflict can really end without some kind of reconciliation process if the parties to the conflict are going to interact again in the future. Therefore, a meaningful process of reconciliation must therefore be rooted in local social and cultural contexts.
CONCLUSION
UN is observing ‘The International Year of Indigenous Languages’ in 2019 that aims to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world. UN has declared 21st February as International Mother Language Day as per the request of Bangladesh to show respect to the historic language movement of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The theme of International Mother Language Day 2019 is “Indigenous languages matter for development, peacebuilding, and reconciliation”. It has been taken with an aim to establish a link between language, development, peace, and reconciliation. It aims to improve quality of life, wider international cooperation, and visibility and strengthened intercultural dialogue to reaffirm the continuity of indigenous languages and cultures.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s central insight has a practical edge that is easily missed: if language carries culture, then a peace process conducted in a language that is not the parties’ own is already conducting itself on unequal terms. The party that must argue in a second language argues at a disadvantage, expresses grief and grievance imprecisely, and may experience the process itself as a continuation of the marginalisation that caused the conflict. Making language a design question rather than a logistical afterthought is therefore a concrete contribution to fairness.
First, treat language choice as part of process design. At the outset, parties should be asked in which language they wish to speak, and that choice should be honoured even where it complicates the arrangements. Where interpretation is needed, interpreters should be trained in mediation confidentiality and in the difference between literal and meaning based rendering, since a mediator who does not understand what is being translated is dependent on the interpreter’s judgment at precisely the most delicate moments. Wherever possible, mediators fluent in the community’s own language should be trained and deployed, which is more sustainable than importing outsiders.
Second, build on existing local mechanisms rather than replacing them. The empathy, sharing and cooperation that the author locates in century old indigenous practices are not folklore but functioning technology. Documenting these mechanisms with the communities that hold them, and connecting them to formal justice systems through recognition and referral arrangements, preserves what works while providing a route to state protection where rights are at stake.
Third, work directly on the negative side of language. Where proverbs, songs and stories carry hostile images of a neighbouring community, joint cultural projects can address them without censorship: shared story collections, bilingual school materials, mixed community festivals and cooperative media production. Naming an inherited insult openly, together, drains far more of its power than prohibiting it.
Fourth, protect endangered languages as a peacebuilding measure. Language loss is experienced as a loss of identity, and identity threats fuel conflict. Mother tongue education in the early school years, official recognition of minority languages in local administration and courts, and support for community media in those languages address a grievance before it becomes a dispute.
Fifth, evaluate with the parties. Since peacebuilding outcomes resist quantification, communities themselves should define what improvement means, in their own words, at the start, and assess it periodically. This is both better measurement and, in itself, an exercise of the participation the article commends.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES *
United Nations (1992). An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace keeping. Report of the Secretary General, A/47/277, New York.
United Nations (2000). Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi Report), A/55/305, New York.
United Nations Secretary General’s Policy Committee (2007). Conceptual basis for peacebuilding for the UN system, New York.
UNESCO (2019). International Year of Indigenous Languages, Paris, and International Mother Language Day 2019, theme: Indigenous languages matter for development, peacebuilding and reconciliation.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), General Assembly Resolution 61/295, 13 September 2007, Articles 13 and 14 on languages and education.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167 to 191 (concept of positive peace).
Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.
Lederach, J. P. (1997). Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C.
Avruch, K. (1998). Culture and Conflict Resolution. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C.
Servaes, J. (Ed.) (2008). Communication for Development and Social Change. SAGE Publications, New Delhi (Communication for Development framework).
Hoffman, J., & Shalom, S. (2011). Communication for Peacebuilding: Practices, Trends and Challenges. United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.
Bloomfield, D., Barnes, T., & Huyse, L. (Eds.) (2003). Reconciliation After Violent Conflict: A Handbook. International IDEA, Stockholm.
History of ethnic minority in law and rule
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 traces the legal and political history of land dispossession affecting the ethnic minorities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh, linking their loss of land to broader questions of identity and political recognition. The author follows the trajectory from the British military campaigns of the late eighteenth century and the annexation of the CHT as a district in 1860, through the administrative division into the Chakma, Bohmong and Mong circles in 1884, to the Hill Tracts Manual of 1900 with its restrictions on entry by outsiders and its concentration of authority in the Deputy Commissioner. The paper identifies the coexistence of three overlapping and partly inconsistent legal orders, national law, CHT specific law and indigenous customary law, as a central source of conflict, and documents successive interventions that eroded minority land rights: the Forest Act of 1927, the Kaptai Dam of 1960 with the displacement of about one hundred thousand people and the loss of some 54,000 acres of arable land, the withdrawal of special status in 1964, the Development Board Act of 1976, and the settlement of Bengali farmers. The author then describes the institutional architecture created after the 1997 Peace Accord, the Hill District Councils, the Regional Council, the Land Commission and the Ministry of CHT Affairs, and argues that implementation remains incomplete, the Land Commission largely ineffective, the powers of the Deputy Commissioner unresolved, and dispossession, eviction and land related violence ongoing, with plain land minorities even more exposed and largely invisible.
KEYWORDS *
Chittagong Hill Tracts, ethnic minorities, land dispossession, CHT Regulation 1900, customary law, Forest Act 1927, Kaptai Dam, Peace Accord 1997, Land Commission, Hill District Councils, legal pluralism, indigenous rights
INTRODUCTION
Ethnic Minorities are suffering from land dispossession, land-related violence, reduced livelihood options, and narrow access to key social services. At the same time, it anchors the challenges faced by extremely poor minorities in broader political economy questions around identity and political recognition.
In 1776 British military attacked CHT and the hill people fought strongly. This fighting between the Chakma king and the British army continued for a decade (Levene, 1999; Serajuddin, 1984). In 1887 the conflict ended when Lord Cornwallis and Chakma King agreed to sign a mutual agreement by giving the right to the British to do trade in CHT. The process of colonization had started during the period of East India Company in 1770 after the defeat of the Mughal emperor and Bengal ruler at the Battle. But CHT was a self-governed and independent territory until 1860 and then annexed to the province of British Bengal in 1860 as a “district”. Then the CHT administration changed in 1884 into three administrative circles namely the Chakma, the Bohmong, and the Mong were formed and divided into three territorial boundaries. A superintendent of hill tribes was appointed by the British to observe the administration of the chiefs and traditional clan chief and Headman (Roy, 2000; Roy, 2004).
MAIN CORPUS
One of the challenges about CHT land status is that there are three major co-existing laws: (i) formal law which applies to the entire country (ii) formal laws that are specific to the CHT and its indigenous people (iii) customary laws of the indigenous people. These laws overlap in some places but are also inconsistent in others. Traditionally, land use was determined not by legal documents but by traditional customary oral laws. During the British colonial period, however, land use systems were introduced, formalizing land use through laws and policies.
In 1900 the CHT manual act was adopted by the British ruler (Hill Tracts Manual) for the protection of ethnic minorities’ culture and traditional livelihoods. This regulation provided a special identity for CHT indigenous people as well as a homeland and declared the CHT area as an ‘excluded’ one. Rule 52 of the Hill tracts Manual stated that: “no person other than a Chakma, Mogh or a member of any hill tribe indigenous to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the Lushai Hills, the Arakan Hill Tracts, or the State of Tripura shall enter or reside within the Chittagong Hill Tracts unless he is in possession of a permit granted by the Deputy Commissioner (administrative head of district) at his discretion.” DC got authority for the purpose of criminal and civil jurisdiction and for revenue and general purposes. This manual recognized the rights of ethnic people over the CHT but at the same time authorized the DC, usually, a non-tribal to decide about (section 7) “any orders passed by the Local Government under Section 6, the general administration of the said Tracts, in criminal, civil, revenue and all other matters”.
Unfortunately, successive governments of British India and Pakistan have amended the CHT regulation 1900 act several times and the traditional leadership (Raja, Headman, Karbari) gradually lost control over land. The 1900 Regulation still remains an active law for a legal and administrative system in the CHT (Roy, 2004; Barkat et al. 2009).
After the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947, CHT fell under Pakistan (East Pakistan). The first and major blow to the minority was the construction of the Kaptai Hydro-electric dam in 1960. About 100,000 ethnic minority people had to be displaced from their ancestral land and resulted in the loss of about 54,000 acres of productive arable land.
In 1964, the government withdrew the special status of the CHT people by amending the CHT act. This amendment allowed the entry of ‘external’ people into the CHT (Roy, 2000; Roy, 2004). After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the rights of the CHT people were largely ignored in the constitution of 1972. In 1976 the CHT development Board act (repealed in 2014) was created. However, the main intention of the act was to settle Bengali farmers within the CHT by redistributing indigenous people’s land (Faiz and Mohaiemen, 1997). In 1989, three Hill District Councils of Rangamati, Khagrachari, and Bandarban were created with a view to improving the socio-economic conditions of the CHT people. This move was enacted in the Local Government Councils Bills Acts in 1989. In 1997, a peace accord was signed between the Government and PCJSS (Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti), which ended 25 years of protracted armed conflict between the government and PCJSS. The CHT was officially again recognized as a “tribal–inhabited area” through the peace accord.
In accordance with the peace accord, the Hill District council acts were amended in 1998, and in 1998 the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council was formed, followed by the CHT land commission in 2001. Apart from these, one specific ministry called the “Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs” was created based on the peace accord. The aim of the Ministry was to regulate the above-mentioned institutions. As a result, the CHT has three different governance systems namely: the traditional government (three Circle Chiefs), the government system (deputy commissioner office), and the self-rule government system (hill district council and CHT regional council). The Ministry of CHT Affairs (MoCHTA) is responsible for the supervision of all activities in CHT. 17 years after it was signed, the CHT peace accord is still to be fully implemented, and the land commission remains largely inefficient (Faruque, 2014).
Historically CHT ethnic groups rely on agriculture, practicing subsistence Jhum (swidden) cultivation. A central policy was the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation Act of 1900 gave ethnic minorities unique access to the hilly land since none can take possession without permission of DC. Later in 1927, the Forest Act was introduced, however, and reduced ethnic minorities’ access to land as well as forest. The Act states that “The Government may constitute any forest-land or waste-land [or any land suitable for afforestation] which is the property of Government”. The law prohibited the entry of anybody into the forest area without permission of the forest department.
The mainland grabbing processes in the CHT were (i) state acquisition of private and common lands of the indigenous people, converting these into state-owned lands; (ii) forcible occupation of private and common lands of Jumma by Bengali interest groups and agencies, resulting in the conversion of these into the private property of the latter; (iii) privatization of Hilly common lands by individual members of indigenous communities, converting these into their private property; and (iv) acquisition of the titled lands given to Bengali settlers during the counter-insurgency by influential Bengali interest groups based both inside and outside the CHT.
The CHT land commission was formed in 2011 according to the CHT peace accord to solely look after different land-related issues such as land-related settlement or leasing, sales or transfer, etc. The council has the power to override the Deputy Commissioner as per the CHT regulation of 1900. However, in reality, the District Commissioner’s offices have violated the law and continue to exercise their power over CHT land issues (Adnan and Dastidar, 2011).
There are some inconsistent laws. For example, The Land acquisition law empowers the DC to exercise force to acquire designated lands without consultation with landowners but the CHT land commission has been given the responsibility of lands in CHT without curtailing the authority of DC. Land dispossession and eviction are still common in the CHT. For this reason, peace in the CHT is largely dependent upon the resolution of the land issue” (Barman and Neo, 2014) report that in 2013 the forest department, elites, and even the security forces grabbed 3,992 acres of land. In 2011, there were 111 cases of houses being burnt down due to land-related conflicts, followed by another 36 in 2013. In the CHT, 13 families were evicted from their ancestral land in 2012 and 26 families in 2013 (Barman and Neo, 2014). These occurred despite the peace accord (Adnan and Dastidar, 2011).
SUMMARY
The plain land ethnic minorities lost their land because outsider Bengalis took possession of those, in the CHT land dispossession was by and large undertaken by the government and supervised by military forces and elites (Adnan and Dastidar, 2011). It might be that plain land ethnic minorities have a weak political background or lack mobility because the population is more scattered than in the CHT. There is little doubt that the plain land ethnic minorities are more insecure in terms of land-grabbing, threats, evictions, and killings. In most cases, these go unreported and are actually ‘invisible’ to different governmental and non-governmental agencies led usually by representatives of the majority Bengali population (Barkat et al, 2009a; Dhamai, 2014).
CONCLUSION
The important political factors related to land in Chattogram Hill Tract are enormous to identify the cause of conflicts between Banglali (people from plain land) and ethnic minorities in CHT. These changes in law and political actions resulted in ethnic minorities being excluded from development intervention, facing ethnic violence, and suffer land dispossession. This is the historic reality for the ethnic minority in Bangladesh.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article identifies with unusual precision where this conflict actually lives: not in any single injustice but in the coexistence of three legal orders that contradict one another, so that every actor can point to a valid law supporting an incompatible claim. As long as the Deputy Commissioner and the Land Commission both hold authority over the same land, and as long as customary rights exist in practice but not in enforceable form, dispossession will continue regardless of political intent. A resolution therefore has to be legal before it can be social.
First, remove the contradiction rather than manage it. A legislative harmonisation review, conducted jointly by the Ministry of CHT Affairs, the Regional Council and the traditional circle authorities, should map every point where national land acquisition law, the 1900 Regulation, the Forest Act and the Land Commission Act conflict, and settle each one explicitly. The decisive question, whether the Land Commission’s jurisdiction genuinely displaces the Deputy Commissioner’s acquisition powers within the CHT, must be answered unambiguously in statute, because a commission that can be overridden is not a remedy but a delay.
Second, make customary tenure justiciable. Oral customary rights are real to those who hold them and invisible to those who adjudicate them. Recognising community land held under mouza and karbari administration as a registered category, and admitting oral and community testimony as evidence before the Land Commission, would let the third legal order defend itself rather than merely exist.
Third, protect possession while claims are pending. A moratorium on evictions, new leases and forest reclassification in disputed areas until the Commission has ruled would end the pattern in which the facts on the ground change faster than the process meant to judge them, and would remove the incentive to create irreversible situations.
Fourth, resolve at the lowest possible level. Most disputes between neighbouring hill and settler families concern boundaries, water and access rather than history. Trained mediation panels at mouza level, composed of hill and Bengali members in balance and supported by the traditional leadership, could settle these locally, with only unresolved or systemic cases escalating to the Commission. This preserves relationships that no ruling can restore.
Fifth, make invisibility impossible. Independent, published monitoring of evictions, land transfers and land related violence, covering plain land minorities as well as the CHT, creates the record without which no policy can be evaluated and no community can be defended. What is counted can be corrected; what remains unreported remains permanent.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES *
The Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation, 1900 (Regulation I of 1900), including Rule 52 of the Hill Tracts Manual, and subsequent amendments.
The Forest Act, 1927 (Act No. XVI of 1927), British India, as applicable in Bangladesh.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board Ordinance, 1976, Bangladesh (repealed 2014).
The Hill District Local Government Council Acts, 1989, as amended 1998, Bangladesh.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, Dhaka, 2 December 1997.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council Act, 1998, Bangladesh.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts Land Dispute Resolution Commission Act, 2001, as amended 2016, Bangladesh.
The Acquisition and Requisition of Immovable Property Act, 2017, Bangladesh (land acquisition powers).
Roy, R. D. (2000). Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. IWGIA, Copenhagen.
Roy, R. D. (2004). Challenges for Juridical Pluralism and Customary Laws of Indigenous Peoples: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 21(1), 113 to 182.
Barkat, A. et al. (2009). Socio Economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts. Human Development Research Centre, Dhaka.
Adnan, S., & Dastidar, R. (2011). Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and IWGIA, Dhaka and Copenhagen.
Levene, M. (1999). The Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Case Study in the Political Economy of Creeping Genocide. Third World Quarterly, 20(2), 339 to 369.
Serajuddin, A. M. (1984). The Origin of the Rajas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and their Relations with the Mughals and the East India Company. Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), General Assembly Resolution 61/295, 13 September 2007.