1 00:00:00,540 --> 00:00:07,680 Good morning to everyone. Thank you for being here and I want to thank Liz Karmichael for organising a conference which a 2 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:15,090 director of International Peace Studies Institute is delighted to have happened here at Oxford. 3 00:00:15,090 --> 00:00:22,020 Because at the Kroc Institute, part of our mandate and mission is, in fact, to advance the study of peace. 4 00:00:22,020 --> 00:00:29,790 And my comments this morning are going to provide an overview of our approach at the Kroc Institute, 5 00:00:29,790 --> 00:00:34,080 which is evolving over the last decade, which we call strategic peace building, 6 00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:42,630 as a way to bring coherence to not only our own programmes and graduate and undergraduate teaching research and outreach, but in a way, 7 00:00:42,630 --> 00:00:47,010 hopefully advance this concept in the larger field with the concept, as you'll see, 8 00:00:47,010 --> 00:00:52,520 is based on a critique of the liberal peace and peace studies up to this decade. 9 00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:57,340 Really? I'm going to try to. 10 00:00:57,340 --> 00:01:01,480 Finish my remarks within 40 or 45 minutes, if I go a few minutes over. 11 00:01:01,480 --> 00:01:08,920 You can start coughing or shouting, but please don't do that until 40 or 45 minutes. 12 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:16,150 Let me begin strategic peace building. Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal in June 1975. 13 00:01:16,150 --> 00:01:19,990 Twice the size of California with a population of seven million. 14 00:01:19,990 --> 00:01:27,390 The new nation was plagued by poverty. A 90 percent illiteracy rate and periodic devastating droughts. 15 00:01:27,390 --> 00:01:36,490 The thirty thousand Portuguese settlers who fled in the mid 1970s left the country bereft of most skilled, professional and business people. 16 00:01:36,490 --> 00:01:40,930 They also took working capital and sabotaged equipment as they departed. 17 00:01:40,930 --> 00:01:48,190 The economy, therefore, at independence, was in a shambles. Some Mauro Michel, the military leader of the independence movement known as for limo, 18 00:01:48,190 --> 00:01:52,660 the front for the liberation of Mozambique, became the new nation's first president. 19 00:01:52,660 --> 00:02:00,040 For Lemos, Marxist Leninist ideology inspired opposition in the form of the Mozambique National Resistance, 20 00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:08,410 or Renamo, which was composed of former Portuguese soldiers disgruntled for limo deserters and common criminals. 21 00:02:08,410 --> 00:02:14,020 Renamo launched a guerrilla war in the early 1980s directed at destabilising for limo. 22 00:02:14,020 --> 00:02:15,040 By 1992, 23 00:02:15,040 --> 00:02:25,930 the insurgency had left over a million Mozambicans dead and had displaced six to eight million others in a population that totalled only 14 million. 24 00:02:25,930 --> 00:02:32,020 Throughout the civil war, the religious communities of Mozambique constituted the nation's civil society. 25 00:02:32,020 --> 00:02:37,600 The Catholic Church, which had maintained close ties with the colonial government well into the 1960s, 26 00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:47,050 grew more diversified politically during this time, with many priest supporting the Marxist for Lima leadership from the late 1970s until 80 1982. 27 00:02:47,050 --> 00:02:54,670 Four Lima attempted to suppress the churches, appropriating their considerable rural assets and hounding religious actors. 28 00:02:54,670 --> 00:02:58,180 State persecution served to galvanise the religious, however, 29 00:02:58,180 --> 00:03:06,220 and the churches came to represent the single most influential alternative voice, an institution in the country. 30 00:03:06,220 --> 00:03:09,250 The larger Mozambican religious community was divided. 31 00:03:09,250 --> 00:03:17,770 However, Muslims were generally hostile toward for llamo evangelical and Pentecostal organisations recognised and supported Renamo. 32 00:03:17,770 --> 00:03:25,090 The Catholic bishops issued pastoral letters condemning atrocities committed by both sides and calling for negotiations. 33 00:03:25,090 --> 00:03:31,390 Relations between the governments and the religious groups improved markedly between 1981 and 1988, 34 00:03:31,390 --> 00:03:38,830 the period when the United States provided 240 million dollars in primarily humanitarian aid to the Ferlito government. 35 00:03:38,830 --> 00:03:41,320 This policy had its intended effect. 36 00:03:41,320 --> 00:03:53,290 In 1983, Mozambique began to allow its NGOs, such as the private relief agency, care to operate and Mozambique move toward a less centralised economy. 37 00:03:53,290 --> 00:03:59,170 The government could no longer deny that the churches were providing essential social services, 38 00:03:59,170 --> 00:04:07,600 such as the distribution of food and clothing, education and health care, which the state itself was an eight was unable to supply. 39 00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:14,650 During the war with Renamo Renamo, the Mozambique churches were able to draw on an international religious network 40 00:04:14,650 --> 00:04:19,810 of social services and to channel desperately needed assets into Mozambique. 41 00:04:19,810 --> 00:04:26,620 In addition, the church has maintained its infrastructure in the rural areas, despite the ravages of the civil war. 42 00:04:26,620 --> 00:04:33,370 State officials often had to rely on religious groups for information about rebel controlled areas. 43 00:04:33,370 --> 00:04:40,630 In time, the horrendous condition of the economy and the depredations of the civil war itself forced for Lima 44 00:04:40,630 --> 00:04:47,740 to reconsider its policies and seek the cooperation of any group willing to help the conflict end. 45 00:04:47,740 --> 00:04:54,130 In this context, the Roman Catholic community of Sant'Egidio took on a major role in hosting and 46 00:04:54,130 --> 00:04:59,890 mediating the complex negotiations that eventually led to the end of the Civil War. 47 00:04:59,890 --> 00:05:09,220 What element of what I'll be calling strategic peace building did this transnational organisation of lay Catholic professionals bring to the setting? 48 00:05:09,220 --> 00:05:16,750 I'd like to remember that, Van. I'm going to present a few more short ones and then analyse them through this lens of strategic peace building. 49 00:05:16,750 --> 00:05:24,460 So Mozambique is the first with this community of Sant'Egidio and in the presence of the various churches and religious bodies. 50 00:05:24,460 --> 00:05:32,890 Secondly, second vignette in 2006, following the election of Alvaro Uribe as president of Colombia, 51 00:05:32,890 --> 00:05:39,970 representatives of the government opened a process to demobilise the paramilitary structure in the war torn nation. 52 00:05:39,970 --> 00:05:43,300 In the long history of government insurgent negotiations, 53 00:05:43,300 --> 00:05:48,700 different administrations had asked the Catholic bishops and their support staff to provide oversight, 54 00:05:48,700 --> 00:05:56,890 good offices and guarantees of safety and integrity and occasional facilitation of talks as the new initiative took shape. 55 00:05:56,890 --> 00:06:02,200 Church leadership faced questions regarding what role it would play in the process, 56 00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:06,790 specifically the role of paramilitaries in the long history of human rights abuses 57 00:06:06,790 --> 00:06:13,060 in Colombia and their proximity to government actors generated widespread concern, 58 00:06:13,060 --> 00:06:20,710 as did the prospect of an endgame scenario, which, hidden under the umbrella of peace process and reconciliation, 59 00:06:20,710 --> 00:06:25,990 would fail to address the need for truth, justice and reparations. In this context, 60 00:06:25,990 --> 00:06:35,650 the ethics of building peace came into stark contrast with the pragmatics of negotiation and the dismantling of an armed organisation. 61 00:06:35,650 --> 00:06:40,780 Victim communities affected by paramilitary para militarism communities that the church had 62 00:06:40,780 --> 00:06:47,830 accompanied in some regions expressed anxiety about the process and the church's role in it. 63 00:06:47,830 --> 00:06:55,120 They feared renewed violence and worried and worried whether they had received the acknowledgement and reparations they deserved. 64 00:06:55,120 --> 00:07:00,460 Not least the victimised communities felt pressure to engage in reconciliation. 65 00:07:00,460 --> 00:07:07,060 But what, they asked, does reconciliation mean in such a context? 66 00:07:07,060 --> 00:07:11,470 The situation became even more complex in light of the fact that the church was also, 67 00:07:11,470 --> 00:07:17,410 at the time engaged and on again, off again negotiations with armed insurgencies on the left. 68 00:07:17,410 --> 00:07:25,160 In addition, local parishes were supporting communities of internally displaced displaced persons and helping to maintain fledgling. 69 00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:31,940 Songs that have been declared at grassroots level in at least three different regions of Colombia. 70 00:07:31,940 --> 00:07:39,950 So we ask, what would a street what did a strategic peace building perspective offer to the Catholic Church as it 71 00:07:39,950 --> 00:07:46,600 attempted to balance these competing claims and build peace in the context of a 50 year civil war? 72 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:49,600 Third vignette in August 2008, 73 00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:58,630 a historic peace accord in Mindanao between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government of the Philippines nearly reached fruition. 74 00:07:58,630 --> 00:08:04,360 The result of seven years of negotiation facilitated facilitated by the Malaysian government. 75 00:08:04,360 --> 00:08:10,540 A document called the Memorandum of Agreement on Enns on Ancestral Domain had survived 76 00:08:10,540 --> 00:08:16,870 numerous iterations and stages of mutual consensus building in the last push. 77 00:08:16,870 --> 00:08:25,180 Following the initialling of this yet to be signed negotiating document, a divided Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. 78 00:08:25,180 --> 00:08:32,890 Immediately, a variety of international civil society and local actors lodged protests and encouraged the 79 00:08:32,890 --> 00:08:39,700 negotiators to salvage the historic opportunity to end conflict that traces its roots across centuries. 80 00:08:39,700 --> 00:08:49,450 In the largest southern most island of the archipelago, the negotiators ask how might the resources and methods provided by a strategic 81 00:08:49,450 --> 00:08:55,960 peacebuilding approach sustain the negotiation process at a time of crisis? 82 00:08:55,960 --> 00:09:02,620 Finally, several groups working in Nogales were half the city is located on the Arizona side of the border. 83 00:09:02,620 --> 00:09:10,870 And the other half in Mexico have identified their need for help from some party who can view the situation comprehensively. 84 00:09:10,870 --> 00:09:18,820 See the big picture? Identify a path forward and facilitate a common approach to local issues. 85 00:09:18,820 --> 00:09:23,320 They've recruited peacebuilders to the scene. Such groups are not alone. 86 00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:29,110 Borders in many countries create interdependent communities living in close proximity. 87 00:09:29,110 --> 00:09:36,160 While the policies that regulate migration are formulated thousands of miles away in national capitals, 88 00:09:36,160 --> 00:09:46,660 the economic globalisation that creates flows of capital and workforces underscores the artificiality of maps and mocks pretensions to sovereignty. 89 00:09:46,660 --> 00:09:51,640 Workers and their families are buffeted about by the economic and social hurricane. 90 00:09:51,640 --> 00:09:55,180 We are not an open war, but we have got a mess on our hands. 91 00:09:55,180 --> 00:10:00,250 They say. Does what? I'll be defining as strategic peace building. 92 00:10:00,250 --> 00:10:02,290 Offer a rebel relevant analysis, 93 00:10:02,290 --> 00:10:12,900 diagnosis and paths to constructive change to provide to people caught in the crossfire of immigration and the globalisation of economies. 94 00:10:12,900 --> 00:10:21,540 Those are my four vignettes. The most recent generation in global politics might well be called The Age of Peace Building. 95 00:10:21,540 --> 00:10:28,530 Given the intense, diverse and global wave of efforts to end the violence and colossal injustices of civil war, 96 00:10:28,530 --> 00:10:36,630 genocide, dictatorship and large scale poverty, and to foster justice and prosperity in their stead since 1988, 97 00:10:36,630 --> 00:10:43,890 the United Nations has undertaken peace building operations in revolutionary number and frequency each year since then, 98 00:10:43,890 --> 00:10:48,270 increasing the number of interventions since the end of the Cold War, 99 00:10:48,270 --> 00:10:53,220 an unprecedented number of civil wars have entered through negotiated settlements. 100 00:10:53,220 --> 00:11:02,740 A third wave of democracy, beginning in 1974 has seen some 80 societies move toward human rights, democracy and the rule of law. 101 00:11:02,740 --> 00:11:09,840 Everyone, it seems, from the U.N. to the World Bank to the World Social Forum to relief and development agencies, 102 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:15,260 has pursued ambitious quest to end poverty and resolve conflict. 103 00:11:15,260 --> 00:11:25,010 In this mill, you transitional justice has become a global pursuit involving national trials, vetting practises, international criminal tribunals, 104 00:11:25,010 --> 00:11:29,720 a permanent international criminal court, over 30 truth commissions, 105 00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:37,180 an outbreak of reparations and public apologies and sometimes even forgiveness in the political realm. 106 00:11:37,180 --> 00:11:42,550 Western states have struggled to establish security and the rule of law and sites of violence and anarchy. 107 00:11:42,550 --> 00:11:50,650 The United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, in Iraq, Germany and Afghanistan and the European Union and Kosovo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 108 00:11:50,650 --> 00:11:55,270 Just to mention a few human rights organisations, religious institutions, 109 00:11:55,270 --> 00:12:04,270 tribal elders and citizens of domestic societies have sought to resolve and transform conflict in innovative ways as well. 110 00:12:04,270 --> 00:12:11,510 But if this montage of energy is describes a trend, so too it evokes urgent questions. 111 00:12:11,510 --> 00:12:18,100 Are are all of these efforts truly ones of building peace which have been successful? 112 00:12:18,100 --> 00:12:28,330 Under what conditions have they been successful, which are just by what criteria do some of these efforts affect others positively or negatively? 113 00:12:28,330 --> 00:12:37,010 Most of all are their concepts, doctrines or paradigms that tell us how peacebuilding ought to be pursued. 114 00:12:37,010 --> 00:12:43,880 The dominant paradigm to date has been the liberal peace paradigm dominant and that it pervades the 115 00:12:43,880 --> 00:12:50,580 most powerful and prestigious institutions and governments who take on the work of peace building. 116 00:12:50,580 --> 00:12:58,870 The aims of the liberal peace are simple to end armed violence, to establish human rights, democracy and market economies, 117 00:12:58,870 --> 00:13:04,410 its intellectual provenance is the liberal tradition that arose from the Western Enlightenment. 118 00:13:04,410 --> 00:13:10,110 It envisions the United States at the United Nations outside intervening states, 119 00:13:10,110 --> 00:13:15,810 state governments and oppositional factions undertaking mediation, military intervention, 120 00:13:15,810 --> 00:13:21,300 war settlement disarmament, election monitoring, refugee risk resettlement, 121 00:13:21,300 --> 00:13:26,940 and the creation of free government institutions, free markets and a free media. 122 00:13:26,940 --> 00:13:31,890 A cardinal virtue of the liberal of prete peace approach is finitude. 123 00:13:31,890 --> 00:13:39,820 When will this operation end? Yet at the Kroc Institute and elsewhere in the world of scholarship on peace, 124 00:13:39,820 --> 00:13:47,380 peace building practitioners have testified consistently and in an increasingly insistent voice. 125 00:13:47,380 --> 00:13:52,000 The liberal peace paradigm is far too narrow. 126 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:57,310 No one, of course, rejects human rights, democracy, economic growth or even the United Nations. 127 00:13:57,310 --> 00:14:06,100 But the building of peace, they argue, is far wider, deeper and more encompassing and involves a greater array of actors, activities, 128 00:14:06,100 --> 00:14:18,050 levels of society, links between societies and time horizons than the dominant paradigm recognises or accounts for or integrates. 129 00:14:18,050 --> 00:14:22,280 It involves the U.N. That is what's actually happening. 130 00:14:22,280 --> 00:14:28,820 The building of peace involves the U.N. carrying out sanctions against terrorist groups in a way that promotes good governance, 131 00:14:28,820 --> 00:14:34,160 human rights and economic development in the countries where sanctions are targeted. 132 00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:39,650 It involves also coordinating the international prosecution of war criminals with the need to 133 00:14:39,650 --> 00:14:45,620 settle the civil war and the efforts of local cultures and leaders to bring peace as well. 134 00:14:45,620 --> 00:14:54,500 It involves educating the children of the societies next generation so as to transform their hatred into tolerance and even friendship. 135 00:14:54,500 --> 00:15:04,820 It involves NGOs and civil society, as well as ethnic and religious actors who are all but ignored in the liberal peace paradigm. 136 00:15:04,820 --> 00:15:11,090 It involves combating inequalities that are embedded in global structures of power and wealth. 137 00:15:11,090 --> 00:15:20,360 It involves trials, truth, commissions and reparations, but also apology, forgiveness and tribal rituals of reconciliation. 138 00:15:20,360 --> 00:15:27,860 Not only is the broad range of these players practises and periods crucial for achieving sustainable peace. 139 00:15:27,860 --> 00:15:32,780 But each is linked to others through cause and effect. For better and worse, 140 00:15:32,780 --> 00:15:37,880 I have statistics I'll be happy to share with you on the limited success of peace building 141 00:15:37,880 --> 00:15:43,460 operations and into civil wars and the short time period before violence recurs, 142 00:15:43,460 --> 00:15:51,260 especially when the peace building operation is of limited duration. That is, there's a direct correlation between the time spent on site, 143 00:15:51,260 --> 00:15:57,350 in the conflict set, in conflict setting and the sustainability of the peace process. 144 00:15:57,350 --> 00:16:03,760 Many fail eventually, in part because it's a parachute in parachute operation. 145 00:16:03,760 --> 00:16:09,790 Effective peace building, therefore, aims to strengthen these ligatures of interdependence, accenting, 146 00:16:09,790 --> 00:16:15,460 deepening and synchronising them and linking them further with the efforts of governments and 147 00:16:15,460 --> 00:16:22,840 international institutions and with the broad project of building a just peace and in between societies. 148 00:16:22,840 --> 00:16:30,970 Any particular effort at strengthening this longer term process we might call a strategy of peace at its core, 149 00:16:30,970 --> 00:16:35,800 such peace building nurtures constructive human relationships to be relevant. 150 00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:46,970 It must do this strategically. That is at every level of society and across the potentially polarising lines of ethnicity, class, religion and race. 151 00:16:46,970 --> 00:16:56,120 This presentation that this current presentation is just an attempt to give a brief introduction to an emerging approach to deadly conflict. 152 00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:58,580 This approach known as strategic peacebuilding, 153 00:16:58,580 --> 00:17:07,920 which is the capacity to recognise and develop strategies to maximise the impact of initiatives for constructive change within a globalised M. 154 00:17:07,920 --> 00:17:14,060 You. I'm delighted that Oxford University Press has established a series on strategic peacebuilding. 155 00:17:14,060 --> 00:17:19,910 The first volume of which will appear this fall that Dan Philpott is editing. 156 00:17:19,910 --> 00:17:25,550 And John Paul Lederach and I are the editors of a series. That volume is called Strategies of Peace. 157 00:17:25,550 --> 00:17:31,710 And it provides a much fuller explication of what I'm presenting here, as well as several case studies. 158 00:17:31,710 --> 00:17:35,610 Strategic peace building, therefore, denotes an approach to reducing violence, 159 00:17:35,610 --> 00:17:40,280 resolving conflict and building peace that is marked by a heightened awareness of 160 00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:46,350 and skilled adaptation to the complex and shifting material Jela geopolitical, 161 00:17:46,350 --> 00:17:52,650 economic and cultural realities of our increasingly globalised and interdependent world. 162 00:17:52,650 --> 00:18:02,550 Accordingly, peace building that is strategic draws intentionally and shrewdly on the overlapping and imperfectly coordinated presidents presences, 163 00:18:02,550 --> 00:18:11,100 activities and resources of various international, transnational, national, regional and local, regional and local institutions, 164 00:18:11,100 --> 00:18:18,000 agencies and movements that influence the causes, expressions and outcomes of conflict. 165 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:25,290 Strategic peacebuilders take advantage of emerging and already established patterns of collaboration and interdependence. 166 00:18:25,290 --> 00:18:30,180 For the purpose of strategically thinking about ways to coordinate these agencies. 167 00:18:30,180 --> 00:18:35,640 For the purpose of reducing violence and alleviating root causes of deadly conflict. 168 00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:43,950 The Strategic Peace Builder encourages the deeper and more frequent convergent convergence of mission, resources, expertise, 169 00:18:43,950 --> 00:18:52,260 insight and benevolent self-interest that characterises the most fruitful multilateral collaboration in the cause of peace. 170 00:18:52,260 --> 00:18:57,420 Hoping that it's not a quixotic task, we at the Kroc Institute are educating our undergraduates, 171 00:18:57,420 --> 00:19:04,980 master's students and P.H. D students and the ability to analyse a conflict situation holistically and to understand 172 00:19:04,980 --> 00:19:11,040 different levels of society that might be resources in addressing long term peace building in that society. 173 00:19:11,040 --> 00:19:16,230 That is, we're attempting to teach them to think like strategic peacebuilders. 174 00:19:16,230 --> 00:19:21,120 How have elements of this approach emerged in the post-Cold War world? 175 00:19:21,120 --> 00:19:29,080 Who are the relevant partners in this enterprise? What types of skill and training are central to strategic peace building? 176 00:19:29,080 --> 00:19:37,450 There are certain hallmarks of the constructive relationships that strategic peace builders seek to foster amongst conflicted peoples. 177 00:19:37,450 --> 00:19:45,220 These include the cultivation of interdependence as a social and political context for the effective pursuit of human rights, 178 00:19:45,220 --> 00:19:49,180 good government, good governance and economic prosperity, 179 00:19:49,180 --> 00:19:59,740 the promotion of transparent communication across sectors and levels of society in the service of including as many voices and actors as possible, 180 00:19:59,740 --> 00:20:04,120 and the reform of institutions and the repair or creation of partnerships 181 00:20:04,120 --> 00:20:10,570 conducive to the common good and the increasing coordination and where possible, 182 00:20:10,570 --> 00:20:16,060 the integration of resources, programmes, practises and processes. 183 00:20:16,060 --> 00:20:23,870 These hallmarks characterise the reflective practise of peace builders themselves who think and act strategically. 184 00:20:23,870 --> 00:20:35,950 You might ask fairly of what uses it to even engage in the exercise of conceptualising peace building in this its most capacious meaning. 185 00:20:35,950 --> 00:20:43,500 Lederach, Philipot and I take this ideal type approach for three reasons why conceptualise it this broadly? 186 00:20:43,500 --> 00:20:49,410 First, many, if not all elements of this definition and description of peacebuilding do, 187 00:20:49,410 --> 00:20:55,980 in fact appear already in the actual peace building activities and operations around the world. 188 00:20:55,980 --> 00:21:02,400 All of them appear in all of them together, appear in these activities collectively considered, 189 00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:06,150 and all of them are successful to the central building of peace. 190 00:21:06,150 --> 00:21:15,480 In short, this term, this concept adds nothing to the array of activities and aspirations already associated here and there with the making, 191 00:21:15,480 --> 00:21:24,540 keeping and building of peace. Second, this kind of comprehensive approach to peace building is necessary if peace being built is to be sustained, 192 00:21:24,540 --> 00:21:28,500 sustained over time, a sustainable peace. 193 00:21:28,500 --> 00:21:39,930 The historical record clearly shows requires long term ongoing activities and operations that may be initiated and supported for a time by outsiders, 194 00:21:39,930 --> 00:21:46,740 but must eventually become the ordinary practises of the citizens and institutions of the society in question. 195 00:21:46,740 --> 00:21:55,530 How better to help the transition between various levels of external actors and local actors to sustain the peace? 196 00:21:55,530 --> 00:22:02,250 We believe further that peace building occurs in it's fully realised mode when it addresses every stage 197 00:22:02,250 --> 00:22:09,360 of the conflict cycle and involves all members of society in the non-violent transformation of conflict. 198 00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:14,790 The pursuit of social justice. And the creation of cultures of sustainable peace. 199 00:22:14,790 --> 00:22:23,730 Properly understood. The building and sustaining of a culture of peace and its supporting institutions requires a range of 200 00:22:23,730 --> 00:22:30,750 relationship building activities encompassing the entire conflict cycle rather than merely the post accord. 201 00:22:30,750 --> 00:22:33,060 Coming out of violence, period. 202 00:22:33,060 --> 00:22:41,190 Accordingly, activities that constitute peace building run the gamut of conflict transformation, including violence prevention and early warning. 203 00:22:41,190 --> 00:22:46,140 Conflict management, mediation and resolution. Social reconstruction. 204 00:22:46,140 --> 00:22:55,600 And working with trauma in the aftermath of armed conflict, as well as the long, complex work of reconciliation throughout the process. 205 00:22:55,600 --> 00:23:04,720 In addition, peace building theory articulates the end goal of these disparate but interrelation interrelated phases of conflict transformation, 206 00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:08,860 which might be best expressed by the idea of a just peace, 207 00:23:08,860 --> 00:23:13,000 a dynamic state of affairs in which the reduction and management of violence 208 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:17,680 and the achievement of social and economic justice are undertaken as mutual, 209 00:23:17,680 --> 00:23:26,800 reinforcing dimensions of constructive change. The sustainable transformation of conflict requires more than the necessary problem-solving associated 210 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:33,760 with mediation or with negotiated settlements and other elements of conflict resolution persay. 211 00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:39,940 It requires the redress of legitimate grievances and the establishment of new relations characterised 212 00:23:39,940 --> 00:23:45,910 by equality and fairness according to the dictates of human dignity and the common good. 213 00:23:45,910 --> 00:23:51,250 To say that a just peace is the end goal of strategic peace building is not to suggest that 214 00:23:51,250 --> 00:23:56,680 peace building ends when the fundamental requirements of a just situation are established. 215 00:23:56,680 --> 00:24:04,420 Rather, the practises of peacebuilding that helped to bring about this desired state of affairs must then become routinised in the society. 216 00:24:04,420 --> 00:24:13,150 For example, effective institutions for participatory government, once established, require continual oversight, nurturing and renewal. 217 00:24:13,150 --> 00:24:18,280 Part of the rationale for conceptual peacebuilding in this comprehensive sense is a recognition 218 00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:23,500 that conflict does occur in a cycle that each phase of the cycle is related to the others, 219 00:24:23,500 --> 00:24:28,960 and that efforts toward a sustainable peace much must address each phase of the cycle. 220 00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:37,810 In the context of the overall conflict. Accordingly, efforts toward prevention, for example, should not be confined to one temporal period. 221 00:24:37,810 --> 00:24:40,450 That is, before the violence occurs. 222 00:24:40,450 --> 00:24:47,050 In most societies, some level of violence has already occurred amongst the belligerents and is in a cyclical process. 223 00:24:47,050 --> 00:24:53,770 Rather, systemic efforts toward the prevention of further violence should be prominent at every stage of the conflict, 224 00:24:53,770 --> 00:24:57,940 including the peace process and the post settlement implementation period. 225 00:24:57,940 --> 00:25:03,190 And these efforts must be present in a self considered way, a self-conscious way. 226 00:25:03,190 --> 00:25:09,640 They often do happen almost serendipitously. That is ad hoc in relationship to the outbreak of violence. 227 00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:14,440 But there has not been yet a thought through sustained notion of prevention that spread 228 00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:19,990 throughout the entire peace process and how that prevention might be continually implemented. 229 00:25:19,990 --> 00:25:26,260 Each of the tools available to a peace builder must be applied in the context of the situation. 230 00:25:26,260 --> 00:25:30,220 For example, efforts to prevent the recurrence of violence after a period of state oppression or 231 00:25:30,220 --> 00:25:34,630 civil war which often occurred while a negotiated settlement is being implemented, 232 00:25:34,630 --> 00:25:38,830 will require a particular and somewhat different set of skills than the efforts undertaken 233 00:25:38,830 --> 00:25:44,080 to prevent an unprecedented outbreak of deadly violence in a society simmering with ethnic, 234 00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:48,130 religious or political tensions but not yet plunged into war. 235 00:25:48,130 --> 00:25:56,740 Nonetheless, prevention must unfold at every stage. The building of a constructive personal group and political set of relationships is perpetual, 236 00:25:56,740 --> 00:26:03,830 occurring as a constitutive part of prevention, negotiation, transitional justice and problem resolution. 237 00:26:03,830 --> 00:26:11,240 Third, an ideal type definition of peace building offers the advantage of identifying the distance between the current scope, 238 00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:17,840 scale and transformative impact of efforts to end violence and peace and build peace on the one hand. 239 00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:24,750 This is between that and the fullest possible realisation of peace building potential on the other. 240 00:26:24,750 --> 00:26:28,440 When our definition, therefore includes a prescriptive dimension, 241 00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:36,750 we believe that the greater potential can be realised by envisioning peace building, conceptualising it as this holistic enterprise, 242 00:26:36,750 --> 00:26:45,270 a comprehensive and coherent set of actions and operations that can be improved, made more effective by greater levels of collaboration, 243 00:26:45,270 --> 00:26:52,050 complementary coordination and where possible, integration across levels of a society. 244 00:26:52,050 --> 00:26:58,020 In short, a comprehensive definition of sustainable peace building, if widely adopted, 245 00:26:58,020 --> 00:27:04,080 would stimulate the further realisation of the comprehensive reality of sustainable peace. 246 00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:11,070 Time has been the stumbling block of several otherwise savvy or at least well intended interventions. 247 00:27:11,070 --> 00:27:16,470 This robust definition of peace building incorporates the often bitter lessons 248 00:27:16,470 --> 00:27:21,870 of various cases learnt from interventions or non interventions such as Rwanda, 249 00:27:21,870 --> 00:27:31,680 Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Rigaud, regarding the critical importance of getting both the timing and the duration of interventions right. 250 00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:38,850 A lack of clarity about the end goal of such interventions. Clouds Planners Thinking about timing and duration. 251 00:27:38,850 --> 00:27:45,000 Professional peacebuilding builders well aware that a comprehensive and sustainable approach 252 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:50,310 takes significantly more time and commitment than governments and intergovernmental agencies. 253 00:27:50,310 --> 00:27:56,610 Typically, a lot might subscribe to a modified form of Colin Powell's dictum. 254 00:27:56,610 --> 00:28:00,390 If it's broke, they might say, who cares who broke it? 255 00:28:00,390 --> 00:28:09,060 We're going to try to fix it. And fixing it, they realise, requires strategic thinking about how to forge the proper collaborative, local, 256 00:28:09,060 --> 00:28:15,480 national and transnational alliances and movement to movement person to person relationships 257 00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:23,110 that will be needed over a sustained period to build something even approaching a just peace. 258 00:28:23,110 --> 00:28:28,330 We come to this conclusion after listening to testimony of peace builders who have observed and 259 00:28:28,330 --> 00:28:34,690 consulted in setting of sustained violence across millions and millions of miles and dozens of years, 260 00:28:34,690 --> 00:28:42,160 my collaborator in this presentation, John Paul Lederach, has spent 30 years on the ground in Somalia, 261 00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:50,350 Nepal, the Basque country, Northern Ireland, Colombia, around the world as a mediator and a reconciler. 262 00:28:50,350 --> 00:28:52,870 And he points out that the period at times, 263 00:28:52,870 --> 00:28:59,770 the period of time it takes to effectively accompany a society out of a protracted period of deadly violence, 264 00:28:59,770 --> 00:29:09,730 achieves stability and move toward a stable peace, will take at least as long as it took the conflict to gestate, turn violent and run its course. 265 00:29:09,730 --> 00:29:16,540 Such sobering considerations might give pause to politicians and policymakers, potential donors, 266 00:29:16,540 --> 00:29:22,090 intergovernmental organisations and other other critical contributors to any peace building 267 00:29:22,090 --> 00:29:28,090 operation that would be planned according to the requirements of this comprehensive definition. 268 00:29:28,090 --> 00:29:33,220 Presumably, no one, no one wants to sink into what looks like a quagmire, 269 00:29:33,220 --> 00:29:38,920 which is how long term interventions within bloody borders far from home have been depicted. 270 00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:46,090 So how does one go about building the political will necessary to compel governments and other players to expand 271 00:29:46,090 --> 00:29:54,070 the time horizon of their commitment to partial responses will begin a larger discussion of this crucial question. 272 00:29:54,070 --> 00:30:00,280 First, one can't objective course the fact that states and intergovernmental agencies act in their own interest. 273 00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:09,310 Yet we are encouraged by the growing realisation by powerful actors ranging from major foundations to the European Union that smart investment 274 00:30:09,310 --> 00:30:16,660 in carefully plan and coordinating peacebuilding operations is in fact in their own long term interest because it's more effective. 275 00:30:16,660 --> 00:30:21,670 Given the increasingly interdependent environment and the reluctance to reinvest. 276 00:30:21,670 --> 00:30:24,820 Over and over again in the same conflict setting, 277 00:30:24,820 --> 00:30:32,560 this interdependence can be seen most vividly in current debates in places like Nogales, Colombia and Mozambique about immigration. 278 00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:41,740 Displaced populations and the strain put on both the international and local communities as people seek survival from hotbeds of conflict. 279 00:30:41,740 --> 00:30:48,700 This is only predicted to increase when we consider the coming impact of environmentally driven conflicts, 280 00:30:48,700 --> 00:30:52,960 particularly over issues like access to and use of water and land. 281 00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:59,830 As the case of Mendenhall's indigenous peoples suggests that one of those early vignettes that awareness of the 282 00:30:59,830 --> 00:31:06,160 utility of carefully plan and coordinating peacebuilding operation brings us to a second beginning response, 283 00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:12,370 initial response to the scepticism. How do we best attempt to ensure that peacebuilding operations fulfil their 284 00:31:12,370 --> 00:31:18,160 potential by leading societies to the threshold of a just and stable peace? 285 00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:26,200 Our answer, in a word, is that we do our best to ensure that strategic planning and performance informs these operations. 286 00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:33,020 What we mean by strategic, I'll lay out very briefly and we can hopefully talk later. 287 00:31:33,020 --> 00:31:33,650 Today, 288 00:31:33,650 --> 00:31:43,460 it is necessary to think strategically and to challenge the conventional understanding of peacebuilding by calling practitioners to be more strategic. 289 00:31:43,460 --> 00:31:49,070 What has changed? Why is it necessary that now we must think strategically? 290 00:31:49,070 --> 00:31:55,820 What has changed? The end of the Cold War opened the field not only for the explosion of various kinds of regional and local wars, 291 00:31:55,820 --> 00:32:03,200 but also for the intervention already of a dizzying array of international and transnational government and non-governmental actors. 292 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:08,900 The problems facing 21st century societies are and are no longer, if ever they were, 293 00:32:08,900 --> 00:32:16,370 contained within national boundaries or susceptible to solutions based on one way of knowing and assessing the world. 294 00:32:16,370 --> 00:32:23,690 One of my hobby horses is the exclusion in so many of these processes of ethnic and religious local actors. 295 00:32:23,690 --> 00:32:28,310 We just hire an anthropologist at Kroc who works on reintegration of militias 296 00:32:28,310 --> 00:32:33,590 into Sierra Leone and analyses that reintegration from an anthropological lens. 297 00:32:33,590 --> 00:32:41,090 How did how does the kinship network work? How to elders accept young guerrillas back into society? 298 00:32:41,090 --> 00:32:45,590 If we don't understand the local knowledge, the epistemology of the local. 299 00:32:45,590 --> 00:32:49,310 We won't get the U.N. operation right. 300 00:32:49,310 --> 00:32:56,990 Indeed, we can identify for insights about contemporary conflicts that help us rethink peace building and fashioning as a strategic enterprise. 301 00:32:56,990 --> 00:33:04,640 First, the players have multiplied. In the post-Cold War era, a wider range of actors and institutions have mattered. 302 00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:10,160 Recalling my opening vignettes, for example, consider the variety of religious, civil, non-governmental, 303 00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:16,790 academic, legal and other actors that were necessary to end the Mozambique's civil war, 304 00:33:16,790 --> 00:33:26,720 to advance the peace process in Mindanao and to mediate between the military, the paramilitaries, the victimised groups and the rebels in Colombia. 305 00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:31,820 While most of these players had already been on the scene in various capacities for many years, 306 00:33:31,820 --> 00:33:40,310 the changing nature of the conflicts themselves and the geopolitical power struggles suddenly required new kinds of participation by them. 307 00:33:40,310 --> 00:33:49,520 That is by a wide range of non official and non-governmental actors. No longer was peacemaking the exclusive purview of governments and states. 308 00:33:49,520 --> 00:33:55,670 In short, a traditional liberal peace approach to conflict resolution in contemplating root causes 309 00:33:55,670 --> 00:34:01,520 and structural change tended to take the nation state as the primary unit of analysis. 310 00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:06,080 In the aftermath of the Cold War, the framing question became how do we adjust the scope, 311 00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:15,950 scale and priorities of peace building in order to incorporate this much wider range of actors more formally and conscientiously in auditioners? 312 00:34:15,950 --> 00:34:24,320 In addition, practitioners of On the ground peacebuilding began to realise that deadly conflicts, if they are to be transformed, 313 00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:34,880 require multiple points of analysis and multiple perspectives and multiple agents of intervention in order to create sustainable change. 314 00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:44,300 Accordingly, peace builders began to seek strategic alliances and coordination over the longer term, rather than merely a negotiated resolution. 315 00:34:44,300 --> 00:34:50,120 In this regard, a second framing question for the inchoate practise of strategic peacebuilding has emerged. 316 00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:57,890 How do we design processes that envision conflict as the opportunity for wider, constructive social change? 317 00:34:57,890 --> 00:35:06,920 So how do do peace processes become reconceptualize as the basis for constructive social change that will end in preventing violence? 318 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:11,480 Because they introduce a greater level of equality and justice and so on. 319 00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:19,730 Third, the field of play was enlarge to encompass and linked to previously unlink spheres of action, the local and the global. 320 00:35:19,730 --> 00:35:30,080 At the local level, the capacity and need for communities to activate and mobilise resources to face the realities of internal conflicts rose sharply. 321 00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:39,310 It was impossible to think about peace over the last 20 years without engaging, including and respecting the local community. 322 00:35:39,310 --> 00:35:47,630 Practitioners specialise in the dynamics of peacebuilding within the boundaries and on the terms set by the local communities. 323 00:35:47,630 --> 00:35:55,310 But they also recognised that the local communities themselves already exist within that exist within national and global context. 324 00:35:55,310 --> 00:35:59,570 Accordingly, peacebuilders, especially during the course of the last two decades, 325 00:35:59,570 --> 00:36:08,600 have become more experienced in cultivating and applying human and material resources both within and beyond the local community. 326 00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:18,800 Peacebuilding practises, thus becoming is thus becoming an interdisciplinary, local, global expertise driven approach to building sustainable peace. 327 00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:24,410 Striking the right balance is a delicate and difficult business between the local and the global. 328 00:36:24,410 --> 00:36:31,940 The relationship between three distinctive transformative processes at the heart of peace building that is striving for social justice, 329 00:36:31,940 --> 00:36:38,270 ending violent conflict and building healthy, co-operative relationships in conflict ridden societies. 330 00:36:38,270 --> 00:36:45,860 That relationship is complex. These processes of transformation are interrelated most fundamentally at the local level. 331 00:36:45,860 --> 00:36:53,300 Even when violence originates and occurs at the national or regional level, its impact is felt most keenly and directly in neighbourhoods, 332 00:36:53,300 --> 00:37:00,110 towns, villages, cities and local communities to violate the principle of subsidiarity. 333 00:37:00,110 --> 00:37:07,790 By moving too quickly beyond the most immediate community of concern and agency to national or regional actors as 334 00:37:07,790 --> 00:37:15,740 agents of conflict management is to undermine any hope of genuine resolution and the transformation of most conflicts. 335 00:37:15,740 --> 00:37:20,600 One cannot ignore the local bringing representatives of these warring sides to peace. 336 00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:26,690 Talk typically requires concerted effort by those wielding high levels of political and social authority. 337 00:37:26,690 --> 00:37:29,390 But they cannot replace cultural agents, 338 00:37:29,390 --> 00:37:35,750 including religious and ethnic actors who operate on the local level and who will be interpreting the agreements 339 00:37:35,750 --> 00:37:43,080 and preparing the societies for their implementation and for the transition called for by the agreements. 340 00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:43,710 On the other hand, 341 00:37:43,710 --> 00:37:52,320 the proliferation of transnational social movements for global local justice influenced peace studies scholar practitioners to think beyond borders, 342 00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:59,760 to locate both the causes of conflict and the potential change agents both within and beyond the nation states. 343 00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:06,000 The nation state, meanwhile, as you know, has come under considerable pressure from above the international community and from 344 00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:13,150 below the local communities and from across demand for autonomy at the regional level. 345 00:38:13,150 --> 00:38:19,300 This principle of indigenous empowerment suggests that conflict transformation must actively invision include, 346 00:38:19,300 --> 00:38:24,610 respect and promote the human and cultural resources from within a given setting. 347 00:38:24,610 --> 00:38:29,890 The setting and the people cannot be seen as the problem and the outsider as the answer. 348 00:38:29,890 --> 00:38:38,920 Rather, the long old, total, long term goal of transformation demands that external agents of change take as the primary task of accompaniment, 349 00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:43,990 the validation of the people and the expansion of the resources within that setting. 350 00:38:43,990 --> 00:38:44,770 In this regard, 351 00:38:44,770 --> 00:38:54,010 the framing question posed by and for strategic peace builders has become how do we build the global movement for justice on a global level, 352 00:38:54,010 --> 00:38:59,680 while at the same time in empowering the voice and capacity of local communities? 353 00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:07,180 Finally, a paradigm shift came with the understanding that peacebuilding requires more than the management of the conflict, 354 00:39:07,180 --> 00:39:12,590 the reduction of violence or simple agreement on some political issues. 355 00:39:12,590 --> 00:39:19,450 Peacebuilding must also in some way address the healing of peoples scarred and alienated 356 00:39:19,450 --> 00:39:25,690 by the lived experience of sustained violence in their communities and nations. 357 00:39:25,690 --> 00:39:30,850 Healing increasingly is understood not as a post-conflict form of therapy, 358 00:39:30,850 --> 00:39:40,000 but rather a precondition for the prevention of renewed conflict and the transformation of destructive social and structural patterns. 359 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:46,930 Promoting reconciliation and healing as the Senate qua non of peacebuilding is predicated upon a hard won 360 00:39:46,930 --> 00:39:54,700 awareness that violent conflict creates deep disruptions in relationships that then need radical healing. 361 00:39:54,700 --> 00:39:59,860 The kind of healing that restores the soul, the psyche and the moral imagination. 362 00:39:59,860 --> 00:40:08,780 Such healing, it is now recognised, draws on profound, rational psychological and spiritual resources. 363 00:40:08,780 --> 00:40:13,550 It's preferred modalities are therefore symbolic, cultural and religious. 364 00:40:13,550 --> 00:40:20,960 The deepest personal and social spheres which directly and indirectly shape the national and political spheres. 365 00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:27,020 The framing question here has thus become how do we heal broken humanity? 366 00:40:27,020 --> 00:40:33,920 The builders of a comprehensive and sustainable peace engage each of these four questions. 367 00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:42,900 Consider our opening vignettes. How do we adjust the scope, scale and priorities of peace building in order to incorporate a wider range of actors? 368 00:40:42,900 --> 00:40:53,040 The community of Sant'Egidio in the resolution of Moa's Mozambique's Civil War is by now a classic example of track two diplomacy blooming into track, 369 00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,760 one of an outsider who is also a partial insider, 370 00:40:56,760 --> 00:41:04,200 centage judo, providing good offices and international resources and can and connexions conducive to moving 371 00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:10,530 the negotiations from phase to phase and of coordinating and empowering different actors. 372 00:41:10,530 --> 00:41:17,440 That is, Sant'Egidio was thinking strategically. I have more on this, but I'll save it for later. 373 00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:24,030 Moving on to the second vignette. The link between the concern for expanding the range of actors and the next to question relating 374 00:41:24,030 --> 00:41:29,640 to ways of affecting larger social change and pursuing justice is embedded in the vignette 375 00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:35,550 describing the decisions of civic leaders and officials in the city of Nogales to invite extra 376 00:41:35,550 --> 00:41:41,820 local peacebuilders to assist in the conceptualisation of the region's challenges and solutions. 377 00:41:41,820 --> 00:41:46,140 The leaders of Nogales recognise that the local issues confronting them, 378 00:41:46,140 --> 00:41:50,940 including the patterns of migration as they affect the composition of the workforce, 379 00:41:50,940 --> 00:41:59,760 the health of the local economy and the respective rights and obligations of immigrants and citizens are also inevitably regional, 380 00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,340 national and indeed global issues. 381 00:42:02,340 --> 00:42:10,510 A complicated pattern that is being replicated in thousands of borderland communities around the world, not unlike Nogales. 382 00:42:10,510 --> 00:42:16,610 The strategic peace builder in such cases is not only a co-ordinator, a network builder, but a comparative list. 383 00:42:16,610 --> 00:42:21,440 She draws on knowledge of national and international law on contacts in a variety of 384 00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:26,480 professional fields and on the experience of other communities in similar contexts. 385 00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:31,670 Yet she also depends heavily, of course, on the local wisdom and experience of the people of Nogales. 386 00:42:31,670 --> 00:42:39,040 A project research project we're conducting at KROK with Uppsala in Sweden is of this type. 387 00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:45,350 And and as was mentioned last night, every conflict is unique unto itself. 388 00:42:45,350 --> 00:42:53,540 But we still can gain a lot from comparative processes. So we've established a living database called the Peace Accord Matrix that analyses the 389 00:42:53,540 --> 00:42:58,940 different dimensions of 40 comprehensive peace accords signed since the end of the Cold War. 390 00:42:58,940 --> 00:43:02,990 On questions like decommissioning of arms or reintegration of soldiers and so forth, 391 00:43:02,990 --> 00:43:07,010 sustained analysis of what happened in each of these conflicts that's alive. 392 00:43:07,010 --> 00:43:10,970 Database for conflict negotiators on the ground. 393 00:43:10,970 --> 00:43:15,110 So how did Northern Ireland handle decommissioning? What were the twists and turns? 394 00:43:15,110 --> 00:43:21,950 It won't apply to SRI. Apply to Sri Lanka specifically. But some of the patterns and insights might be useful. 395 00:43:21,950 --> 00:43:27,710 The skills needed for strategic peacebuilding and increasingly honed and named as such by a range of 396 00:43:27,710 --> 00:43:33,770 professional professionals trained in one or more variety of disciplines and areas of expertise. 397 00:43:33,770 --> 00:43:41,810 For example, we have peace studies, colleagues around the world who are who are specialising in particular aspects of peacebuilding. 398 00:43:41,810 --> 00:43:47,070 I have two more quick questions and I'll be finished. How do we design processes that envision conflict? 399 00:43:47,070 --> 00:43:53,360 Is the opportunity for wider, constructive social change? My third question and another vignette. 400 00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:59,090 How do we build a colonial movement for justice while also empowering local communities? 401 00:43:59,090 --> 00:44:02,600 Consider the example of Mindanao in that case. 402 00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:09,800 As in most, the most prominently visible aspect of peacebuilding has been the high level negotiations that took place. 403 00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:16,970 Equally crucial, although less understood and covered by the media, was the wider context of activities, 404 00:44:16,970 --> 00:44:22,700 roles and initiatives that provide an infrastructure for constructive change in Mindanao. 405 00:44:22,700 --> 00:44:30,600 A short list of these external actors I'm are actors that are not the elite level would include a decade of grass 406 00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:36,080 roots initiatives that built relationships in local communities across the important divisions amongst Muslim, 407 00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:40,730 Christian and indigenous groups. Education and training programmes in conflict, 408 00:44:40,730 --> 00:44:48,770 transformation and peacebuilding that were undertaken during this seven year period that reached a wide range of civil society actors 409 00:44:48,770 --> 00:44:57,110 and created important linkage between local peace builders and the representatives of both Philippines National Army and the M ILF. 410 00:44:57,110 --> 00:45:03,330 The careful, nurturing and development of ever widening civil society networks dedicated to human rights such as 411 00:45:03,330 --> 00:45:09,810 the Peace Wevers Coalition in Mindanao with an active constituency of more than 20 organisations. 412 00:45:09,810 --> 00:45:13,170 The commitment on the part of the government to create a national office to 413 00:45:13,170 --> 00:45:17,850 sustain and coordinate the peace efforts beyond a particular administration. 414 00:45:17,850 --> 00:45:21,880 The initiation and commitment on the part of religious leaders to develop the Bishop 415 00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:28,070 Bullimore conference that has met on a regular basis in Mindanao for more than a decade. 416 00:45:28,070 --> 00:45:32,280 A sustained and long term funding by a range of international donors to build 417 00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:37,860 local capacity and institutional platforms for local and regional organisations. 418 00:45:37,860 --> 00:45:46,080 And finally, the commitment on the part of Malaysia to slowly but surely negotiate the basis of the document over the course of seven years. 419 00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:53,520 At the point of the collapse of negotiations, violence rose sharply and trust decreased amongst the players in the formal process. 420 00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:59,550 At the same time, however, the web of relationships mobilised within and around Mindanao, 421 00:45:59,550 --> 00:46:04,740 sets of relationships between a variety of different actors that had not existed a decade ago. 422 00:46:04,740 --> 00:46:10,140 For example, those between civil society actors and militaries on both sides. 423 00:46:10,140 --> 00:46:12,660 Negotiators and the concern international community. 424 00:46:12,660 --> 00:46:20,460 These webs of relationships began to coordinate a response to the emergency of the communities affected by the renewed violence. 425 00:46:20,460 --> 00:46:27,840 These unofficial but critical actors mobilised conferences within and outside Mindanao that put forward numerous 426 00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:36,320 proposals for reinitiating negotiations and the beginnings of wider consultations that moved from local to higher levels. 427 00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:39,860 So far, the outcome regarding this final agreement is unknown, 428 00:46:39,860 --> 00:46:49,100 but the infrastructure of a multiplicity of actors engaged in a common concern has function in ways unthinkable a decade earlier. 429 00:46:49,100 --> 00:46:54,560 What is clear is that that the final, most visible aspects of the process, the formal negotiations, 430 00:46:54,560 --> 00:47:01,070 rest on the courage and creativity not only of the negotiators, but also of the wider set of relationships, 431 00:47:01,070 --> 00:47:06,470 activities and initiatives that are needed to sustain the peaceful transformation of a social, 432 00:47:06,470 --> 00:47:13,320 religious, economic and political conflict that traces its roots across centuries. 433 00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:20,400 I can say more about my other examples of Columbia and the multiplicity of actors and the role of the church in Columbia. 434 00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:28,470 But I fear I've already looked on over a little bit of my time. And I'll be happy to discuss more of this in time for discussion later. 435 00:47:28,470 --> 00:47:35,157 Thanks for your attention.