CCTS
Newsletter 7

Grappling with the issues

Participants entered groups whose themes were derived from the morning's initial exploration of issues affecting returnees, refugees, and survivors of war. Kathleen Shepherd provides the highlights of one group discussion.

The need to heal the psychological trauma of war was seen to be at the heart of recovery and readjustment of refugees. Without such help, people who have suffered, lost homes and familiar social structures, and been humiliated, remain permanently vulnerable to manipulation by propaganda and exploitation by dictators.

Individuals are the focus of healing work, which involves listening and witness to restore their human dignity, and being present alongside in order to provide them with release from their own hurt. Emotional health of the individual needs to be rebuilt before reconciliation can occur. The psychological need for the "enemy" outside must be confronted before people are able to work with the guilt and bigotry that fuels both sides of the conflict. Single-community work which restores confidence and positive forms of solidarity must precede cross-community work. Such work may include engaging survivors in work to help their own people (requires some outside support for salaries and materials), which empowers them to be effective in using their own abilities.

Cross-community work which enables former enemies to co-operate for common benefit is the eventual goal. Cultural exchange may become possible. In a project based on these principles, a women's election observation project proposed for Sierra Leone will provide training for each community separately in the first phase and for both communities together in the second. A multicultural "road show" in local languages will go from county to county.

Reconciliation happens at the level of the individual. For reconciliation to occur, each side needs to take responsibility for their part in contributing to the conflict. Staying in the "blame game" only produces stalemate. Cross-community work can permit people to develop a joint account or common memory of what happened in the conflict, as a platform for reconciliation. Individual acts of public apology can also be very influential on willingness for reconciliation.

Media are often state-controlled and used to foment and perpetuate fears and hatred in order to inhibit return. Independent media in post-war settings is vulnerable to government shut-down or at least criticism as outside interference. The socialisation of people by their governments to accept media messages uncritically continues as a problem in Africa, former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Possibly some resistance to propaganda is restored by the work of healing. Radio talk formats which air alternative views may also help. Radio can be used to good effect in post-war settings to inform and empower specific groups such as rural women. One of our group said, "Propaganda succeeds when the people are broken." How can they become "healthy inside"? There is a great need for a restoration of self-respect.

Do no harm! Outside intervention must be cautiously applied. On the level of material aid, attention to the needs and culture of the recipients is demanded in order to give them the food or material they need, not what the donors want to get rid of. Ill-informed intervention is worse than none, creating cynical attitudes toward the donors.

The time scale required for beneficial assistance depends on the goal of the intervention. Short-term workshops were seen as severely limited for any purpose; to change attitudes may take a lifetime of witness and healing work. Germany and the UK were observed to have gone from war to co-operation in a generation -- what made that possible and are there lessons for former Yugoslavia? Time-limited refugee resettlement may force people back into situations they fear or which are actually unsafe.

Some money is needed even for small interventions, but larger sums distributed to NGOs for example cause problems of competition. If used insensitively to the local economy, payments can make return to the home region unattractive to refugees. Large international donations were judged unlikely to go to rebuilding much-needed social services or other interventions for individuals. But one case of Swedish support for local Chechnya health- and child-care workers is working well by paying modfest salaries which create jobs without producing envy.

The work of reconciliation can be motivated by the workers' spiritual concerns and commitments to heal individuals one by one. Large scale refugee return projects are directed to physical relocation and material aid. How can this gulf be bridged? A search should be made for persons of vision within large organisations, who may be approached as individuals. Dialogue should be developed between organisations serving in one region in order to co-ordinate their efforts. Workshops should be conducted with funders, "who are human, too." People in small organisations should take time to understand the constraints and structures of the large ones, as this workshop has helped us to do.

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