Interactive Peacemaking

A People-Centered Approach

Susan H. Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032037905
• eBook ISBN: 9781000551921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the theory and practice of interactive peacemaking, centering the role of people in making peace.

The book presents the theory and practice of peacemaking as found in contemporary processes globally. By putting people at the center of the analysis, it outlines the possibilities of peacemaking by and for the people whose lives are touched by ongoing conflicts. While considering examples from around the world, this book specifically focuses on peacemaking in the Georgian-South Ossetian context. It tells the stories of individuals on both sides of the conflict, and explores why people choose to make peace, and how they work within their societies to encourage this. This book emphasizes theory built from practice and offers methodological guidance on learning from practice in the conflict resolution field.

This book will be of much interest to students and practitioners of peacemaking, conflict resolution, South Caucasus politics and International Relations.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1 What Exists Is Possible

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189008-1

“There is no possibility to do any peacemaking with the Georgians and South Ossetians,” a senior international diplomat once told me when we were introduced at a Washington, D.C. reception. At the time, in 2014, I had been peacemaking with Georgians and South Ossetians since the August 2008 war that escalated the conflict over South Ossetia's status. The political status issues remained divisive; Georgia claimed South Ossetia as part of Georgia, while South Ossetia claimed independence. Still, Georgians and South Ossetians had sought and reached agreement on many issues short of the overall political status question. These agreements were making life better for many people. I explained to the visiting diplomat that I knew Georgians and South Ossetians who were devoting their lives to doing peacemaking between their communities, and that I had worked with them to convene peacemaking dialogues that engaged senior people on each side and contributed to significant humanitarian initiatives and confidence-building measures. He dismissed my direct experience and repeated, “It's just not possible.” He did not appear to have any interest in learning about what was happening out of the limelight, behind the scenes, and in confidential conversations. I imagine the diplomat I spoke with may have been referring to official peacemaking that would lead to officially signed agreements and envisioning men in ties who meet in Geneva. I was describing a people-centered approach to interactive peacemaking.

This book is for those who want to learn about people-centered peacemaking from the perspective of those who do peacemaking. Johan Galtung (Galtung 1976) distinguishes peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding approaches, and emphasizes “peacemaking” as the approach to resolve violent conflict, in contrast to peacekeeping's focus on separating the parties and peacebuilding's long-term focus on the development of structures and infrastructures for peace. In “An Agenda for Peace” (Gali 1992, 5) Boutros Boutros Gali, writing as Secretary-General of the United Nations, defines peacemaking as “action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through such peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the Charter of the United Nations.” Chapter VI of the UN Charter foresees, “negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice” (“Chapter VI: Pacific Settlement of Disputes” 1945). Boutros Boutros Gali highlights that peacemaking aims to resolve “the issues that have led to conflict” (Gali 1992, 4).

Men's and women's peacemaking has sometimes quietly and without fanfare shaped recent years of conflicts. This peacemaking is possible. What exists is possible.

Practitioners have long known that people-centered approaches are effective. International Alert included the people-centered approach as the first of ten principles in its Code of Conduct: “Primacy of People in Transforming Conflicts” (“Code of Conduct: Conflict Transformation Work” 1998). International Alert explained,

effective conflict transformation is only possible with the consent and participation of those most affected by the conflict and we are committed to strengthening the capacities of local actors and organisations to contribute to peacemaking and peace-building within their societies. (“Code of Conduct: Conflict Transformation Work” 1998, 5)

Of course, the practitioner perspectives offered in the following pages tell – and can only tell – part of the story. We peacemakers want our efforts to be successful, and we may underscore and assess progress in small changes. We tend not to focus on geopolitical, economic, social, psychological, or cultural shifts except as they directly impact peacemaking. Likewise, this book focuses specifically on peacemaking rather than conflict analysis, official diplomacy, or military relations.¹ Emphasizing the role of people in peacemaking, this book builds on the movement of people-centered approaches to development, security, and education (Korten 1984; Andersen 2012; Toh and Floresca-Cawagas 1997).

There has already been substantial work in building from practice to theory of interactive conflict resolution. Ronald Fisher has led the way with much of this work. Fisher (Fisher 1997) focused the conflict resolution field on interactive conflict resolution, considering the practices of unofficial discussions between people from groups involved in violent conflict. He defined interactive conflict resolution as,

facilitated face-to-face activities in communication, training, education, or consultation that promote collaborative conflict analysis and problem solving among parties engaged in protracted conflict in a manner that addresses basic human needs and promotes the building of peace, justice, and equality. (Fisher 1997, p. 8)

Fisher highlighted multiple approaches to interactive conflict resolution, including the work of John Burton and Problem Solving Workshops; Vamik Volkan and the psychodynamic approach; Herbert Kelman and action research; Christopher Mitchell's Analytical Problem Solving Workshops; Harold Saunders’ Sustained Dialogue; and Ronald Fisher's own Third Party Consultation model of interactive conflict resolution. Fisher (Fisher 2005) collected case studies of interactive conflict resolution as a form of peacemaking, documenting the contributions interactive conflict resolution made to multiple peace processes in contexts of ongoing protracted violent conflict.

The insights presented here add to our understanding of interactive conflict resolution by emphasizing the people-centered aspects of the interactive conflict resolution approach. People-centered interactive peacemaking can be seen as part of the development of what Richmond refers to as the fourth generation of peace work, hybrid peace. The hybrid peace approach acknowledges both local contextual forces and global international forces in shaping peace. Richmond describes a post-liberal peace, “one where international norms and institutions interact with different, contextual, and localized polities” (Richmond 2014, 108). The people-centered approach resonates with the fourth generation approach that highlights “the notion that societies build peace and states, not only donors and state elites” (Richmond 2014, 119).

This book draws on my own experience in the South Caucasus and beyond and on peacemaking experiences of others in different contexts, to create a richer understanding of the possibilities and challenges of making peace today. It keeps the focus on people who engage in interactive conflict resolution and how peacemaking impacts people's lives. It returns throughout to the specific context of the Georgian-South Ossetian peacemaking experience, to allow for a more detailed and in-depth reflection.

Sharing a Peacemaking Story

This book tells the story of our work over 12 years, since Fall 2008, and presents what we have learned and gathered from our experience. Where relevant, insights from other processes are introduced, to provide a glimpse of how peacemaking unfolds in other contexts. While I am the author of this book, its insights and story have developed through years of reflective conversations, evaluation, action research, and engaged scholarship with Georgian and South Ossetian partners. After years of my steadfastly protecting the confidentiality of our peacemaking practice, these partners have urged me to share our insights and tell our story, so that other peacemakers may learn from our experience. To complete this book I have consulted my partners in numerous internet-based team meetings, engaging them in ongoing reflection on our practice, which primarily helps to strengthen that peacemaking practice but also helps us more fully reflect on it.

Six of the individuals involved from the conflict region are introduced in chapter four, “People Make Peace.” Each of the peacemakers profiled here has agreed to share their stories publicly, allowing me to reflect on their peacemaking in this book. Each of these peacemakers is an independent thinker who works to shape their own society's approach to the conflict. Some have led NGOs, others have taught at a university. Some have moved in and out of government. Funding for this work has sometimes come through projects, some of which supported “project coordinators” who received stipends to support their time as they nurtured and shaped the peacemaking process. The role of coordinator changed over time, depending on who was not in government, who had time to devote to the project, and the project's specific focus as it moved through different stages.

International facilitators have also shifted over time, as different individuals had paid positions working on the process and others volunteered time when they were available. Dr. Lara Olson (teaching at the University of Calgary) served as a facilitator in an early stage of the project and then later as an evaluator for two years of the project. Dr. Ekaterina Romanova (now at the World Bank) was a facilitator in the early years, but then the time demands of her other professional work prevented her regular engagement. Dr. Philip Gamaghelyan (now at University of San Diego) was influential in mid-years of the process, bringing helpful innovations as the process expanded. Dr. Margarita Tadevosyan (now at George Mason University) has worked on the project for the last six years, sometimes paid and sometimes as a volunteer, and has led discrete, funded portions of projects in recent years. My mentor Dr. Paula Garb has worked in the South Caucasus for many decades and has been deeply involved in the peacemaking process during some years, when her other activities have allowed, and led an initiative to connect Georgian and South Ossetian students through online classes as part of the larger peacemaking process.

Having learned from all of these people while working together, I write in this book about my experience. I was first introduced to the South Caucasus when a graduate student at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in 1993. The Institute hosted visiting scholars from Yerevan and Baku and a graduate student from Tbilisi. Two years later, we hosted a visiting scholar from Tbilisi, who brought a letter asking the Institute to consider addressing the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. I traveled in 1996 with the then Director of the Institute, Dr. Kevin Clements, to Tbilisi and Sukhum(i). Early in 1997, we brought Georgians and Abkhaz together in the U.S. for an exploratory dialogue. I learned from the challenges we faced, and plunged into conflict resolution processes for Abkhazia and Transdniestria, and studied those focused on South Ossetia. This work introduced me to many talented peacemakers in these parts of the world, and I share here insights drawn from my experience with them, and from the experiences of other peacemakers throughout the world.

Organization of the Book

This first chapter introduces the book. It overviews the book's core themes and situates these within current conversations about conflict resolution in general, interactive conflict resolution specifically, and broader conversations in sociology, anthropology, political science, international relations, and social science methodology.

The next chapter introduces Georgian-South Ossetian conflict context and the peacemaking efforts focused on that context. The chapter reviews the official and unofficial peace process since the 1990s, as well as the intensive unofficial peacemaking process that I have convened with Georgian and South Ossetian partners over the last 12 years.

The third chapter presents the methodological basis for the book, explaining how scholar-practitioners of conflict resolution move from practice to theory. The chapter begins with an explanation of the theory-practice gap in the conflict resolution field and efforts to bridge that gap, and then explores how to identify theories in practice. It details four ways of learning through practice: engaged scholarship, reflective practice, evaluation, and action research, and offers examples of such work with Georgian and South Ossetian peacemakers.

The fourth chapter argues that, while institutions and governance structures surely influence war and peace, individuals are essential drivers of peacemaking. People make peace. Many individual people make choices that add up to war or peace. While not discounting the role of the most senior political or military leaders as people who shape violence and peace, this chapter devotes significant attention to less high-profile people who have made Georgian-South Ossetian peacemaking a personal focus, and who have shaped the relationship through their peacemaking efforts in unofficial dialogues and quiet conversations with their leadership. The chapter profiles six such individuals – t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 What Exists Is Possible
• 2 Georgians and South Ossetians Wage War and Peace
• 3 Practice Builds Theory
• 4 People Make Peace
• 5 Process Shapes People-Centered Peacemaking
• 6 Locals Lead with Global Awareness
• 7 Peacemakers Adapt
• 8 Both Individuals and Groups of People Make Peace
• 9 Peacemaking Is Personal
• Index