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Newsletter 8

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Judith's introduction provoked many thoughtful responses among participants and a sharing of their own hard-earned learning.

One offered an ideal approach to contextualising a training intervention: 1) analyse the conflict; 2) decide what is possible; 3) continue to seek knowledge of oneself; and 4) continue to seek knowledge and evidence about the situations being addressed.

Another participant added her version: look for ways to be both effective and responsive to what is relevant to participants.

A third intervener described a vision of training which is not a "delivery model" but an invitation to share potential to widen discourse, and to participate with others. In a similar vein another recalled Brendan McAllister's three categories of visitors to Northern Ireland - the tourists, the missionaries and the pilgrims - and suggested that the pilgrim's work of asking informed questions and listening fully is also the trainer's work.

According to another participant, the quality of workshops can be judged more accurately by the trainees engagement, rather than by the professionalism of their skills; another welcomed the increased use of elicitive models, which can help trainers continue their own pilgrimage toward understanding the problems of people in a region. Yet another participant emphasised the transformation in the relationships of people on both sides of a conflict even more than the solution of specific problems.

There was a reminder that violent conditions rob people of their in-built competence to resolve their own conflicts. Approaches by trainers who "parachute" into troubled regions for a brief time cannot rebuild peoples confidence to cope with their problems. Positive evidence that capability is returning can be seen in the formation of groups out of joint training, some of which have become s hmall NGOs carrying on their reparative work.

An exploration of what training for conflict transformation means to these practitioners was taken up next. The list below of more than two dozen features, themes, goals, and activities of conflict transformation captures many of its characteristics:

• contextual awareness
• identifying resources
• positive mobilisation
• perception
• institution-building
• post-war reconstruction
• hope
• demystifying the other
• confidence building
• facilitation of dialogue
• protecting rights
• group movement building
• creating new structures
• availability
• encouragement
• crisis anticipation
• conflict prevention

The group took on the questions: "What difference does conflict resolution training make? What is the evidence that it works? How do we know people have gained something?"

They saw success where people continue to work toward their goals without adding to the violence around them, and where someone starts an initiative, which may well be the yeast for still others. When an initiative becomes institutionalised, system change can begin. Personal change can have larger impacts, as when people divided by conflict can agree on a shared definition of the problem, or the needs which generated the conflict, and when they reject war as an option. On the other side, the military claims of "effectiveness" must be called to account for the true costs of the devastation of war.

From her work as a trainer in her home city in northern Kenya one participant asserted that in her setting it is possible to compare the costs of training elders against the costs of sending the police to settle hostilities. Positive changes in a society reflect progress in peace. Improved quality of life can be measured by indicators drawn directly from the context, such as neighbours sharing in Kenya, or police removing their bullet-proof vests in Northern Ireland.

A participant's summary captured a number of the day's themes: to change relationships is essential, but it is also necessary to address people's issues and to correct the problem they are having. And, with regard to training a name so many seem to find uncomfortable for their work - she asked, "How about naming our work peace and development workshops?"

Judith Large's summary gave some of the ways to reclaim this work, urging attention to power relations and empowerment, to justice and ethical explicitness, and to politics as a way of valuing difference and managing it peacefully, democratically and non-violently, regarding communication skills as a servant to these other goals.

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