Our field research for Peacebuilding through Community-based NGOs:
Paradoxes and Possibilities took us to three sites of long-lived conflict:
Northern Ireland, Serbia and Haiti. Each left lasting impressions on us in
different ways.
In Belfast, we undertook a series
of interviews with representatives of the Community Foundation for Northern
Ireland as well as delegates of Foundations for Peace, a global network of
philanthropies actively engaged in peacebuilding work in multiple nations. We
learned much during our visit and interestingly, one central lesson of our
interviews was strongly underpinned by our forays around the city. Our visit
coincided with the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Accord that
formally ended the decades of the “Troubles” whose violence had literally torn the
province apart. We imagined that the city would evidence some healing due to
persistent peacebuilding efforts at all scales in the decade that had elapsed
since a formal peace had been negotiated. And this was so in some ways, but to
our surprise, no one among our interviewees believed the city’s population was
yet ready to see the so-called “peace walls” separating neighborhoods and parts
of the city and originally aimed at controlling violence and protecting
innocents, removed. And now nearly 15 years after the Accord, the city is more
segregated than ever and its many walls remain a continuing and ubiquitous
hulking presence whose borders and boundaries define the warp and woof of
resident’s daily life and activities. If we needed an object lesson in how long
it may take societies once rent asunder to begin to build trust across their previous
divisions, despite the good efforts of many, we witnessed it first-hand in
Belfast. Peacebuilding requires steadfastness, a vision that must be ready to encompass
decades and courage to have any hope of success. We explored the work of an NGO
in the province that has demonstrated the pluck to continue questioning discourses
of conflict deeply ingrained in Northern Ireland society, while challenging
standardized and “short cut” approaches to peacebuilding by fostering ongoing intra-communal
engagement opportunities concerning peace and its distributive effects.
Our fieldwork
in Serbia took us not only to Belgrade, but also to Srebrenica. We visited the
latter site on the day of commemoration of the tragic genocide that made that isolated
beautiful valley with its now abandoned and dilapidated United Nations compound
and row upon row of neatly tended gravesites, infamous. As we write, the international
community continues to fund forensic efforts to identify the victims of the
massacre near the site. One central feature on the commemoration day of our
visit was the honoring and interment of the remains of several hundred newly
identified individuals. It was at once an unforgettable and deeply moving
spectacle underpinned by the knowledge that all sides in that conflict continue
to construct warring narratives that implicate the “other” in genocidal
actions. This tit-for-tat mentality and its accompanying partisan social constructions
of the past conflict have marred efforts to secure progress to address still
fresh enmities. We also could not fail to note that one avowed aim of this mass
killing was to “ethnically cleanse” what was for decades a mixed religious and
ethnic community. Srebrenica is today a single ethnic enclave. This situation teaches that violent human fear
and hatred of “the other” are likely to have enduring and deeply lamentable consequences,
and those may not be safely predicted in advance. Most international
organizations and NGOs, by focusing on the memorialization of war victims, end
up reinforcing political dynamics rooted into war identities, rather than
opening the way for new possibilities for intra-communal relations.
Our work in
Haiti found us visiting not only that nation’s capital city, but also traveling
to its mountainous and still relatively inaccessible plateau region. The
long-lived conflict and associated regime changes that have beset the nation in
recent decades, some born of native political conditions and movements and
others imposed by the international community, have essentially eviscerated
government capacity and left a population to fend largely for itself. This, it
continues to do and with amazingly good grace and sheer determination, but the
immiseration of the island’s people has left a nation in tatters and an
international community, deeply complicit in that condition, seeking ways and
means to address the population’s multivalent suffering. International
strategies of peace building in Haiti have focused on “building institutions”
while de facto diverting funds from that nation’s government to NGOs, thereby further
eroding local economic capacity and social capital. We were heartened therefore to study a
nongovernmental organization that has taken as its aims not only the provision
of necessary services, but also the development of accompanying government
capacities in its areas of interest and a commitment to try to foster virtuous
circles in the local economy.
Taken
together, our work for this book left us humbled by the complexities that
social conflict occasions as well as by the need for sustained engagement among
all relevant parties and for rethinking current international approaches to
peacemaking, if an alternate social vision (or visions) that result in
peaceable coexistence is to be constructed and broadly accepted in communities previously
riven by conflict. Peace is not born of “an intervention,” but instead of the
sustained efforts and commitment to learning of all involved (especially those in
position to control resources and devise intervention strategies) to create
fresh conditions for trust, economic sustainability and possibility amidst
enduring fear and, often, acculturated hatred. These are not challenges either
for the cocksure or the faint of heart. We came away with enormous respect for
those engaged in peacebuilding efforts, even when we disagreed with their
adopted strategies.
Peacebuilding Through Community-Based NGOs is available for purchase through Kumarian Press. To request review and/or exam copies, please contact Marketing Associate Jennifer Kern at: Jennifer@styluspub.com.
