From Pacification to Peacebuilding , livre ebook

From Pacification to Peacebuilding
‘[This] timely and important book … explains the need for global transformation [in conflict resolution] and identifies many ways to advance it.’
Louis Kriesberg, Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies, Syracuse University, USA
‘Diana Francis reminds us of the values and energy that prompt the best in us, which get lost in settling for expectations like pacification rather than peace.’
Sue Williams, Director, Summer Peacebuilding Institute, Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia
‘Diana Francis has done it again – another practical book mapping the road from peaceful aspirations to peaceful reality.’
Bruce Kent, Founding Chair and Vice President of the Movement for the Abolition of War
‘Diana Francis’s profound reflections on the conflict transformation field will be an inspiration to aspiring peace workers everywhere.’
Hugh Miall, Professor of International Relations, University of Kent
‘This book is a must both for scholars studying international relations and practitioners who engage in the fields of peace work, human rights and development.’
Dr. Martina Fischer, Deputy Director of the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin, and Deputy Chair of the German Foundation for Peace Research, Osnabrück
‘Diana Francis ensures that questions of values (and morality) are never allowed to sink beneath the weight of policy and programme imperatives.’
Professor Andrew Rigby, Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, University of Coventry
‘Diana Francis is a giant in this field. … Each of the chapters in this book touches on key dilemmas and current debates. … The book offers practitioners and academics alike a guide to exploring where we could go next.’
Catherine Sexton, Chief Executive, Responding To Conflict (RTC)
‘The so-called “peace operations” that are proliferating around the world look increasingly like wars. Diana Francis challenges collusion with this military imposition of “order” and makes a radical re-statement of grass-roots peacebuilding and conflict transformation as an emancipatory praxis.’
Howard Clark, Chairperson, War Resisters’ International
‘A much-needed overview of recent work in the field of conflict transformation.’
Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies Professor of Peace Studies at six universities and founder of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo
‘Diana Francis asks tough questions about conflict transformation, peacebuilding and the use of force. She gives answers that provoke and inspire.’
Dan Smith, Director of International Alert
‘Diana Francis has a voice of integrity and wisdom based on decades of experience as an academic and conflict transformation practitioner. Her writing helps to remind us that [peacebuilding] has its roots in the liberation struggles of both pacifism and feminism. But in moving from popular protests to professionalisation, we risk compromising the roots of our own radicalisation. ... Diana challenges us to rediscover our principles, values, and ideals.’
Andy Carl, Executive Director of Conciliation Resources, London
‘We live in the most dangerous times since the collapse of Communism. New wars are being fought in new ways. We are all under threat. Diana Francis makes the case not just against war fighting but against war thinking.’
Martin Bell, OBE, former BBC war reporter and MP
FROM PACIFICATION TO PEACEBUILDING
A Call to Global Transformation
Diana Francis
First published 2010 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Diana Francis 2010
The right of Diana Francis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3027 3 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3026 6 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1631 9 ePub
ISBN 978 1 7837 1632 6 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, 33 Livonia Road, Sidmouth, EX10 9JB, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1.
Vision and Engagement
 
A Time of Ferment
 
Training Requests
 
Key Ideas and Terms
 
From Solidarity to Partnership
 
Fundamental Values
2.
Ongoing Development
 
Capacity Building
 
Popular Education
 
Media Work and Arts Projects
 
Bridge Building
 
Advocacy
 
Peace Processes in Large-Scale Conflicts
 
Recovery from Violence
 
Ongoing Learning
 
Influencing Policy
3.
Dilemmas and Limitations
 
Practical Matters
 
Power in Mid-Conflict and Post-Conflict Transformation
 
Making a Strategic Difference
 
Conflict, States and Global Systems
 
Facing the Global Challenge
4.
Peacebuilding and Pacification
 
Peace and Militarism
 
Two Worldviews
 
Addressing Violence: Dilemmas and Ethics
 
Peacebuilding and International Relations
 
States and the Limitations to their Sovereignty
 
Fear, Control and Future Security
 
Shifting the Culture and Bridging the Divide
5.
Caught between Two Systems: Co-option or Transformation?
 
Conflict Transformation and Realpolitik
 
Violence and Nonviolence
 
Nonviolent People-Power
 
Resistance to Nonviolence
 
Ethics and Culture
 
Signs that the System Can Change
 
Dialogue with Donors
6.
Building the Praxis of Nonviolence
 
People-Power in Conflict Transformation
 
Forms of Violence
 
Nonviolence
 
Transformative Power: Building Capacities for Nonviolence
7.
Challenging the System
 
An Oppressive System that Has Had its Day
 
Global Transformation: An Agenda for our Field
 
Mobilisation: Building Alliances for Global Transformation
8.
Agenda for Humanity
 
Peace
 
Economic Justice and Well-being
 
Democracy
 
Grounds for Hope
 
Global Solidarity and the Power of Humanity
Appendix: Stages and Processes in Conflict Transformation
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
In writing this book I have been greatly helped by the following people, whom I wish to thank: all my CCTS colleagues for the chance to learn with them over the years; Andy Carl and Dan Smith for sharing their perceptions with me in extended conversations; Martina Fischer, for initial encouragement in thinking that I had something to say; Veronique Dudouet, for reading early chapters and reassuring me that this was so, and for specific feedback; Bill Stern, for the gift of his time in copy-editing; Anne Rogers, for much-needed, skilled and time-consuming technical assistance; my husband Nick, for unfailing moral support; and Celia McKeon, for reading the whole draft and giving me the most uplifting, constructive, insightful and informed commentary that anyone could hope for.
Preface
I have been a peace campaigner all my life. When I wrote my first book, People, Peace and Power, 1 I did so as a professional consultant in the field of conflict transformation. But my activist background and my knowledge of ‘nonviolence’ and ‘people power’ around the world have informed all my thinking and writing.
My professional work began in the wake of the crumbling of the Soviet empire and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union itself. New and violent conflicts were erupting and it was these that prompted the formation, in1992, of the lengthily-named Co-ordinating Committee for Conflict Resolution Training in Europe (CCCRTE), which later became the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support (CCTS). 2 As Howard Clark recounts in his history of the committee, 3 its creation was a ‘response to a growing demand for conflict resolution training in the “post-Communist” countries of Eastern and Central Europe’, particularly those of the former Yugoslavia. Gradually the committee evolved into a forum for organisations (and individuals) that were mostly UK-based but were working in every continent, in support of local people confronted by violent conflict and seeking to address it. It has been, as Howard says, ‘one of the few places where … practitioners have taken the space to share their dilemmas, in some cases their excitement and in some cases their disappointment, as they reflect on their work and on developments in the field’.
I have been part of CCTS for its whole life, 4 and served as its Chair from 1995 until the end of 2009, participating in almost all its meetings and seminars. At the same time, I have worked as a consultant to CCTS member organisations, along with many others, learning with and from them.
CCTS discussions, whether in regular meetings, seminars, or the CCTS Review, have been a testing place and a stimulus for my own thinking. Through them we all have access to the concerns and ideas of partners and networks across the globe – North, South, East and West – so that our perspectives are constantly being shifted and challenged. While I would not claim to have a reliable overview of all that is happening in our field, I consider myself lucky to have had, through these connections, exposure to a wide and varied sample of practice and to rich sources of insight. It is largely on these, and on my own direct experience in ‘the field’, that I have drawn in my writing. (