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Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to invite you to quickly stretch if you need to or take a few conscious

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breaths because I understand it gets really tiring when we're sitting for a long time.

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And just kind of notice. What you're feeling right now as you're sitting in this room and you've been talking about peace since 9:30 in the morning,

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if I were to ask you too quickly, maybe close your eyes if you want to, if you feel comfortable.

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Imagine what peace means to you today.

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How do you see it? How do you visualise it?

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What colours patterned shapes?

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From the idea of peace. As you understand it.

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Today. And if I can just again invite you to come back to where we're sitting right now.

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That'd be great. Before I begin, I also want to acknowledge that it's a huge privilege speaking here today,

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not just for the obvious reasons I come from Kashmir and being able to speak more freely or in some ways

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freely is the huge privilege that a lot of my friends and colleagues back home don't have right now.

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So I just wanted to acknowledge that before I became who bill space, I honestly don't know.

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It's a question that I've struggled with since I began this work a long time ago, and I'm not here to claim that I'm building peace back home.

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I'm just going to share here what I do in peace psychology and my very humble reflections, learnings and some other learnings as well.

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Most importantly, that I have understood and realised through this journey and mostly as a practitioner, because that's where my heart and soul is.

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If you had asked me what peace psychology is maybe 10 years ago and how we built peace, I think I would have given you a very flowery answer.

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But over the years, I think the understanding of history has evolved,

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and as I've tried to understand more of peace, I feel like I don't understand a lot of it.

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There's not a I don't have a PowerPoint presentation, I just have a.

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Client. Because I was busy getting visa work and travelling work.

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No kidding.

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This is just to kind of give you a context of where I come from and just so that we get the title right because I had somebody asked me once,

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what is BS psychology? Because they kind of interpreted peace, says BS.

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And I was like, Oh, that would be interesting to reflect on.

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So piece psychology kind of happened to me, it wasn't something that I aspired to do 17 years ago in my high school,

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I went to a high school called United World College. It was started by a German educationalists who thought maybe peace could be peace.

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Education could be a way to unite people. So it's a chain of high schools around the world right now.

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I went to the one in India and at the age of 16 17, I took psychology and started getting trained in conflict resolution,

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mediation, conflict management and other techniques. And it kind of brought in the world for me.

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And as I asked myself bigger questions of what it means to be a Kashmiri and how can I kind of contribute to the community I am a part of?

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So that's where the whole idea of psychology came in,

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and it was also inspired by the fact that I'm talking 17 years ago when we were hardly talking about psychology and mental health,

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at least in my context.

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And I thought there were people obviously working on these initiatives, and there were people separately working on peace building.

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And I felt like there was a gap and I wanted to somehow bridge that gap in my own humble race.

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I didn't exactly know how to go about that, but psychology felt like the most relevant thing I could do,

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especially because there was a lack of holistic, contextualised decolonised approach to healing, justice and peace building.

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So I wanted to basically create a support system that was relevant to people in conflict zones just like in Kashmir.

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My foundational understanding began with the understanding that humans are complex.

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And so he speaks and so is conflict.

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We could go to the Moon and probably to the Mars in the next few years, and I think we'll still end up with conflicts.

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So I started with the understanding that we need to probably give people skills so

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that they can at least cope with the ramifications of living in conflict zones,

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not putting too much onus on them only. But I think that's a kind of a beginning step.

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And on the ground, a lot of my work has been trying to understand.

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How to respond to the conflict when it changes every day when the dynamics of conflict changes every day.

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What do you do as a practitioner to support the people that support the community, which you are also a part of?

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And in Dipo realise something like neutrality doesn't really exist because there will be times when you will react human.

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As a peace builder, you will have your heart broken and your soul shaken, and that happens actually all the time.

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And for me, peace has always been a process and not a product,

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so I come from a very positive peace building kind of an approach where somebody actually asked me,

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How do you build peace in a place with an ongoing conflict?

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I think it was an important question, and most of the times when I'm not in existential crisis, I think the answer is quite simple.

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By doing what is needed on the ground and I'm just here to share some of the reflections of what I've been trying to do and what I've learnt from it,

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basically. So in places like Kashmir, I worked in Kashmir and Afghanistan, in Myanmar and other parts of South Asia.

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But my point of reference is obviously majorly Kashmir, because that's what I've done a lot of work in, and I'm currently also based there.

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We're talking about places with ongoing mental health crises. Different layers of trauma, helplessness.

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Socio economic crisis. Drug menace, unemployment, internet suspensions, communication blockades.

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And, you know, you name it. It's a lot of it is really painful to see on a daily basis.

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So for me, the psychology was this hopeful kind of thing where I felt like maybe holistically if we understood

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humans in their own context and tried to kind of support and take care of some of their needs,

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I think at least we can create some windows of calm.

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And I don't want to call it peace because I feel like that's a lot to say,

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but I feel like some windows of calm so that they can kind of understand what's happening to them.

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And in that intersectionality has been very important to me, and that's how I have been working at the intersection of mental health,

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psychology, arts, conflict transformation and peace building, especially with a localised, culturally relevant kind of an understanding.

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I'm just going to briefly talk about some of the themes I've been working with because in the next ten minutes, that's all I can do.

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Mental is political. Many times when I speak about it, people are like, Why don't you just only talk about psychology?

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Don't talk about politics.

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I think the times we live in, it's increasingly going to be even more important to acknowledge that mental is political and vice versa,

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especially in conflict zones where individuals like me try to do something on the ground.

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But then you have an overarching political framework which impacts all aspects of your life, whether you like it or not.

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There's also a very heavy emphasis on this word, which I'm sure you heard a lot resilience in the past couple of years.

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I've come to hate the word. I don't like it any more.

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Because I feel like there's just too much onus on the surviving communities to be resilient, to go on despite the chaos.

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Despite the conflict. And that does not help.

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I'm still struggling with the word healing, I don't know if it really happens in conflict zones.

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I think most of the times we just try to put Band-Aids on the wounds because that trauma is really intrinsic.

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It's intergenerational. And sometimes imagine I'm talking to somebody on the phone today providing psychological

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first aid and the internet and the phone lines get cut because of the political turmoil.

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The next time I speak with this person could be three months after I get up to 15 days later, you know,

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and the next time I speak with this person, I have to go back and start from point zero, which gets exhausting for both of us in the process.

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The next time that I'll briefly touch upon is decolonisation and contextualisation.

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I know these are very heavy words that people have so many theories about.

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I'm not here to give you any theories in my very simple, humble understanding.

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I feel like a lot of peacebuilding field is still very colonised, and so is psychological support.

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And to begin with, we need to kind of colonised a lot of these words.

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For instance, I studied in the West as well, so when I came back, I thought I was going to teach some fancy things to, you know, people back home.

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So let's start with self-care. And as you would know, the the current notions of self-care, you know, Netflix and chill.

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That's actually not self-care, especially for a community like ours where community is a huge factor.

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And individualism doesn't really exist. I mean, talk to women about self and they're like, What is that?

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And I'm not here to discredit the whole concept of self-care. I think it has its own importance.

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But in places like Kashmir, the notions of care and nurture and support comes from communities,

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so you cannot actually see it in in a silo, you have to see it within the context of the broader community.

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And in that the contextualisation is so important, the work I was doing in the U.S. before I came in, I had to kind of put it away,

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get rid of my accent that I had picked out because I had been studying internationally

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for a while and create new modules that I thought could help people on the ground.

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And I've been trying to do that through a lot of experiential workshops, modules, seminars that take into consideration the local richness of art,

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culture, spirituality, you know, creativity and a lot of other things religion as well.

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I think that's an important factor. And we there's often a debate between psychology and religion,

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when religion actually can be a huge psychological support, which is the case in Kashmir is what.

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The third theme and something very close to my heart is creating community safe spaces for expression, dialogue and interconnectedness.

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So in so the picture that you're seeing is actually from an initiative that I do, it's called a zone dope.

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So Deb is basically from the Kashmiri architecture,

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it used to be like a balcony kind of a room from where you could basically stargaze moon gaze zone means moon in Kashmiri and Dobies basically a room.

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So this is kind of a modern idea of a zone,

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but the initiative is called zoo in Durban in that people come together and they share their narratives of what is happening to them psychologically,

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what is a conflict doing to them? What are their mental health needs and other needs?

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And they do it through a different creative ways through storytelling, through, you know, artistic expression.

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Art is an integral part of everything I do because I think that really helps at all levels.

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So because of COVID, Zoom is something that you could basically do anywhere.

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I've done it on the streets and schools and community places. But because of COVID last year, we were really restricted.

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So I had to do it in the basement of a local cafe who were very helpful and kind of hosted us for free.

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All my work in Kashmir is also free, so to also look for other community support from people.

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So this is from, I think, the Women's Day or the Mental Health Day that we try to do this.

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But this is sometimes the first space or the only space for women,

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especially who come together and express what is happening to them or their stories of abuse or domestic

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violence or psychological needs and their aspirations and hope for a peaceful future as well as.

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As you would have seen, mental health, for instance, is an integral part of the work I do.

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It's not the only thing, but I think it's an important one and there's still so much stigma attached to mental health.

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I once told my mom that I think I'm going through anxiety and she was like, Don't tell this to anyone.

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Nobody will take you seriously. So the stigma is huge and.

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A lot of my energy and time on a daily basis back home goes into doing a lot

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of awareness campaigns on the stigmatisation of mental health conversations,

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bringing people together, creating mandated working groups, sharing resources.

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We're talking about basic unawareness.

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People still don't know the difference between a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a counsellor, a therapist, for instance.

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So in these 10, 12 years on the ground, I've also been trying to compile resources,

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especially who would offer their services pro bono to young people or students who especially, you know, afford these things.

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Mental health conversation in itself is a privilege in places like Kashmir because.

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There's so much trauma that a lot of people sometimes don't even know that they're going through mental health issues,

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so the stigmatisation of it becomes even more important.

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The last thing that I just want to touch upon very briefly is counteracting the enforced normalisation that comes with conflict,

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which leads to dehumanisation. So, for instance, the abnormal is the norm back home, you know, seeing people getting killed on a daily basis,

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shuttling between funerals and weddings, maybe sometimes in the same hour.

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It's all very normal. Back home,

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we sometimes joke about it like kids used to open the newspapers in the morning to see if somebody has gotten killed so that they can have a day off.

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So the normalisation of conflict is one of the most, scariest things.

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And personally, it breaks my heart to see people going numb with the conflict.

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And it also creates a lot of dehumanisation.

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And in that a lot of foundation of purpose of the work I do is to create a bridge where people can stand, pause and ask them, says, is this normal?

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Because most often they don't even have that privilege or that safe space to ask themselves these questions.

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But if they do ask those questions to themselves,

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it creates a bit more of self-awareness and gives them space for emotional expression and meaning making.

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Cooper's space. In Kashmir, peace pieces, sometimes also one of the most controversial words, so for a long time,

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people thought I was a counsellor and I let them think that way because I was like, OK, I can do my work on the ground.

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And it's also futuristic. You will hear people say peace will happen one day.

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And it's also localised because it, for instance, in the Kashmiri context, if you also ask, like little kids,

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I did some peace education modules with little kids in schools, and even for them,

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peace is the political freedom, and the local word for that is azadi.

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I don't know who builds peace, but what I've been trying to do on the ground in terms of trying to create windows of peace and calm comes at a cost.

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It's exhausting, to say the least, with all the nice fancy things we've been looking at and learning about since morning.

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Well, I've been working on the ground for a good 11 years now and I feel exhausted.

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And this is not to say that I hate the work I do.

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I love the work I do, but it's absolutely heartbreaking on a daily basis because this lack of support, this lack of resources.

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I know Jonathan and other people talked about those things, but it's not just financial resources.

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There's a lack of psychological support. And that's why, for instance, they've been coming here and seeing all of you.

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I feel more energetic than I would have at home. There's increasing scrutiny back home.

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There's almost zero freedom of expression and no self-care practises, and I have been affected by a lot of this personally.

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I started having anxiety in 2019 when there was like a huge shift in the political scenario in Kashmir.

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And since then, my head has been going down the drain.

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I would have loved a few more issues, but that also made me realise the need of well-being and psychological approach towards peacebuilding.

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I think so much of peacebuilding is still socio economic, physical protection kind of based, and it needs to be holistic, not just psychological.

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We need to look at digital rights of people, legal rights of people.

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I do a lot of advocacy on ripest WP as forums, especially for holistic protection of young people who don't just need social economic protection.

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They need, you know, a psychological protection, they need legal protection and all of that.

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Before coming here, I had to read it. Think about what to speak here because I didn't also want to get into trouble back home.

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Yeah, a lot of people didn't know why I was coming here because I wasn't sure if I'd be

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allowed to come here at the airport because that's how things are back home right now.

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And in that mental health and psychological, holistic approach to peace building is not a nice thing.

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I think this is this should be a fundamental thing to peace building.

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If not now then when I think pandemic has been a great reminder of a lot of these things and moving forward.

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I think this is the only way to go if you're going to invest in peace building and in people on the ground,

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you also need to take care of their basic needs, which include psychological needs end to end.

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I think there's always a movement happening. It's not like we need to create a new movement, but.

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Is there are there enough people listening?

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I've had enough people listening with empathy, Kashmir still is absent from a lot of international forums, papers, agendas that even I am a part of.

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And it's often called a disturbed area and it's actually a conflict zone with an ongoing settler ward.

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So as a as an international community, when we talk about these things, the movement is there.

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But why aren't people speaking because they don't have the privileges to always speak and if they are speaking, are we listening enough?

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Are we listening with empathy, especially in the age of clicks and links when we put up a link online and we feel like our job is tied?

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If you want to be in peace building apart from empathy and, you know, humility and other things.

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I think one thing has to be constant.

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You have to let your heart break and you have to let it break enough for yourself to feel what these humans are feeling in their context,

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which is not happening very often today. I think that's the only way to go about building peace.

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Piece by piece, I'll stop there. Thank you for listening.