Violence Prevention Articles & Essays

This article argues that the practice of preventing violent conflicts is not new and that there are some widely-accepted tenets that taken together constitute a basic approach to effective prevention. What is lacking are operational models which effectively incorporate most elements of this approach.

This article presents and critically analyzes a model for preventing violent conflict which takes a whole-of-problem approach and a corresponding pilot project based on the model which has been operating in Guinea- Bissau since 2004. The model is found to be well designed as it incorporates the basic approach for effective prevention and a number of principles for good international engagement in fragile states. The model is also found to be a useful framework for undertaking dynamic conflict prevention, which can be understood as the ongoing proactive identification and targeting of those factors which will likely cause violent conflict no matter in which sector or level they occur. Moreover, the flexible structure of this model situates it well for wide application in other states and regions where violence is to be prevented. Weaknesses identified with the model include limitations to the range of preventive actions which it can utilize, limitations in generating political will, and dependency upon highly-experienced and knowledgeable project staff in order for it to be successfully applied in other contexts.

 

http://www.ciian.org/assets/forms/wholeofproblemmodel.pdf

The problem of fragile, failing and failed states is a critical issue on today’s international scene, and the question of preventing violence is especially acute for many countries. New ways need to be found to tackle this violence, if such countries are to have true hopes of stability and then also of coherence and well-being. 

 

This was the primary concern of the multi-year, practical, learning effort entitled the International Peace and Prosperity Project (IPPP) in Guinea-Bissau.

 

The IPPP features the mobilization of local leaders and the provision of professional assistance and modest financial support to carry out early, holistic, horizontally and vertically integrated violence prevention actions.

 

More specifically, the IPPP in Guinea-Bissau aims to prevent political violence by:

 

·      working towards peace and prosperity using rigorous ongoing conflict and violence analyses;

 

·      playing a value-added, catalytic role in assisting Guinea-Bissau citizens, the government, and international actors to implement concrete, synergistic actions through dialogue and focused projects;

 

·      providing a small grants program to stimulate security and development initiatives;

 

·      undertaking global advocacy to mobilize international resources for violence prevention and peacebuilding in Guinea-Bissau.

 

 

The IPPP continues to operate under the direction of the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation, with funding and support provided through the Alliance for Peacebuilding, Washington, D.C.

 

This report details the experience of the International and Prosperity Project in Guinea-Bissau and forms the basis of a new draft model for violence prevention in fragile and failed states.

PREVENTING POLITICAL VIOLENCE:  Towards a Model  for  Catalytic  Action (PDF)

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

New Unit Created to Prevent and End Violence

For Immediate Release

 

August 10, 2006 – Ottawa, Ontario – Recognizing the need for a fast-acting mechanism that can respond in cases of potential or actual violence, a new Early Response (ER) Unit has been formed by the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation, in Ottawa.  The new ER Unit provides critical services both domestically within Canada and internationally in unstable situations and fragile states.

 

CIIAN’s President and the Director of the ER Unit, Dr. Ben Hoffman, states “I believe the new ER Unit is greatly needed in our world of increasingly volatile environments. Ethnic and religious strife, land occupations, labor strikes, dysfunctional workplaces, and troubled schools can become violent unless timely action is taken. We have the expertise to recognize early warning signs that these environments may become violent and the experience to deliver an appropriate response aimed at prevention and stabilization.”

 

A Multi-Disciplinary Team of Worldwide Experts

“Our ER Unit is staffed with a team of consultants who work in the most protracted conflicts and hostile environments. They are professionals in conflict resolution, law enforcement, the armed forces, international mediation, and peacebuilding”, states Hoffman.

 

Saves Money and Other Resources

“It is now recognized that prevention is less costly than ending violence. Waging and ending a war costs more than peacekeeping, and peacekeeping costs more than prevention. The same applies at home. Unresolved conflict and violence in the workplace costs millions of dollars.  In addition to the financial costs there are human and social costs, lost opportunities and debilitating long-term wounds.”

 
How it Works

Hoffman explains how it works. “The ER Unit follows a model for intervention which includes an early and holistic assessment of the situation, immediate crisis management to stabilize an environment, and then assisting with the transition to full recovery and renewal.”

 
A Delicate Matter: Concerns and Cautions

Hoffman recognizes that there often concerns and cautions involved with matters of violence prevention and that anybody involved in an intervention must be aware of them and act accordingly.

He elaborates, “confronting conflict and recognizing that the potential for violence exists isn’t an easy thing to do. While we know that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, it takes a lot of courage for managers and leaders to admit that there might be a problem and then to solicit outside help. Our ER Unit places special emphasis on conducting assessments and interventions in a respectful and situationally-appropriate manner.”

 

For more information, contact:

Ben Hoffman, PhD

President

Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation

613.237.9050

ciian@ciian.org

www.ciian.org

Suite1105-1 Nicholas Street

Ottawa, Ontario

 

Canada is unable to answer the question “quo vadis” as regards its role in international peace. Rather than being faced with the controversy about whether Canadian troops are or are not fighting a war in Afghanistan, and the PM having to mull troop deployment to Darfur, Canada is well-positioned and capable of preventing violence in the first place.

After every Canadian shared the embarrassment and guilt when members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment tortured a Somali citizen to death during our peacekeeping mission in Somalia in 1993, the Airborne Regiment was disbanded and we kept our heads down, humbled on the international stage. Our untarnished reputation as peacekeepers, the proud legacy of Lester B. Pearson was at risk.

Then Canada pushed hard, however, under the leadership of Lloyd Axeworthy, to replace our image of soldiers in blue helmets with the image of Canada as pragmatic, bold diplomats. Supporting a successful international effort to ban anti-personnel land mines and promoting the notion of “human security” was promptly followed by yet another ground-breaking initiative. Canada promoted and helped secure the notion of “responsibility to protect”. When governments of countries, notwithstanding their sovereignty, are unable to protect their citizens against war crimes and genocide, the international community will intervene – a revolutionary concept just recently affirmed by the UN Security Council.

But when the rubber hits the road, as it has in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Canada has generally equivocated. It has sent mixed messages to Washington, to Canadian troops, and to countries in conflict who need solid commitment followed with action.

Now, Canada is no clearer on where it stands. The much-awaited process to review Canada’s foreign policy died with the fall of the Liberal Government, the Canadian initiative to address the challenge in Sudan and Darfur, led by Senators Jaffers and Dallaire and Robert Fowler has been disbanded. The Canadian public is uncertain of what Canadian forces are doing in Afghanistan; and the current conservative Minster of Defence, Mr. O’Connor, recently declared that Canada is not able to deploy more troops for other missions, even though he expects Canada will be called to do so. In fact, even with a vigorous recruitment program, O’Connor says that it will be five years before Canada’s armed forces have enough personnel to take on more assignments. Yet the Conservative Government talks about building a stronger fighting force.

Is this really the path Canada should take? Can it afford it? Does it build on the Canadian advantage?

What should Canada do?

There is an answer. Canada should and can stake out a leadership role in preventing mass violence. How? By building the capacity for Early Warning and Early Response. Indeed, not counting the costs of the American-led war and occupation in Iraq, it has been estimated that for every dollar spent on peace, twelve are spent on war-making. Yet, everyone agrees that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And Canada does not have the military –industrial complex nor the tax revenues to be a fighter on the world stage. Neither does that role reconcile with ordinary Canadians’ image of themselves, at home or abroad. Certainly a well-equipped and trained modern force able to carry out a limited number of peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions is appropriate, but why not invest in prevention in the first place.

A good beginning has already been made on Early Warning. Most every government in the world has some capacity to identify potential violence. Ministries of defence, justice, and foreign affairs scope the horizon, including looking inside the country, with a view to predicting and preventing violence. And two nongovernmental organizations, Swisspeace and the International Crisis Group are pre-eminent in the business of Early Warning. Neither, however, connects Early Warning to Early Response, although the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation in Ottawa is demonstrating that this can be done. Mass violence can be prevented. How? By taking low-profile, early activities that include diplomacy, mediation, and economic development always with an eye to the types and forms of violence that are present or likely in a country at risk.

But no country has seized upon the Early Warning-Early Response prevention agenda. Canada can. Norway and other middle powers in Europe have staked out a role as mediators in international conflict situations. They have committed resources to the role of mediation, including efforts to end civil wars. And they have built expertise and good reputations there. Canada could, but hasn’t. And if it concentrated on that role it would be entering a marketplace that is already filled with UN Special Envoys, eminent persons like Jimmy Carter, and regional bodies such as the Organization of American States.

Prevention, however, is given lip-service around the world, but no teeth. Canadian leadership is needed to build a global Early Warning – Early Response System and to cultivate and then deploy from Canada, teams that can work early and effectively to prevent killing. Right now, being outside the region and having access in Washington, Canada is well-positioned to support a desperately-needed constructive dialogue between the USA and Iran to prevent escalation of that conflict into violence; it can tackle the necessary challenge of engaging rebels and even so-called terrorists in preventive dialogue with their adversaries, and it can work in a low-keyed manner to change the course of direction in little-known countries like Cameroon that are destined for violence if left on their present track.  At a fraction of the cost of peacekeeping and waging war, Canada can help ensure there are no more Darfurs. Doesn’t that make sense?

 

For more information contact:

Dr. Ben Hoffman,

President and CEO,

Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation

Suite 1105 - 1 Nicholas Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 7B7
http://www.ciian.org

Executive Summary:

            Despite differing organizational cultures and political worldviews, it is possible for national militaries and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to find common ground in the effort to prevent violent conflict.  While mission accomplishment is the bottom line for most professional militaries, doing so at the least possible cost in both lives and treasure is, or should, always be an important consideration.  This is where soldiers and civilian humanitarians can find mutual interests and ways to complement each other.

Wise commanders understand that the most successful army is one that achieves its goals without firing a shot.  Hence, prevention in the realm of violent conflict, as in medicine, should be preferred as cheaper and easier and, in the long term, less likely to foster vengeance and further violence that threaten a victory or cure already realized.  The leadership of civilian non-governmental organizations dedicated to peace and the minimization of human suffering are beginning to realize these goals might be better advanced through coordinating some activities with the military rather than always opposing military operations regardless of their motivations.  This is especially true in parts of the world where “Western” humanitarians are starting to be seen as representing the enemy and where it is impossible for them to do good deeds without some level of armed protection or collaboration with those capable of protecting them.

In some countries, national militaries and NGOs are far ahead of their American counterparts in finding areas of overlapping interests and ways to work together.  There are examples of soldiers regularly being seconded to NGOs for technical activities like demining and others where military schools teach NGOs and journalists how to survive and operate in conflict zones.  Even in the United States, contact and collaboration between the military and civilian humanitarian organizations is on the rise albeit mostly in irregular and ad hoc ways.

It is important and mutually beneficial for soldiers and civilian humanitarians to find new and more institutional ways to collaborate and share their expertise and capabilities in areas where their interests overlap to prevent violent conflict.  To do so, they must explore new opportunities in training and field operations to maximize their success.  This is already beginning in the United States with the establishment of liaison offices, joint conferences and training programs like “Peacegaming.” and “Winning the Peace”.

 

Collaboration Among Military Forces and Non-Governmental Organizations in Preventing Violent Conflict: A Call NOT to Arms

 

Introduction:
            This paper is based on the assumption that American military leaders believe that it is nearly always preferable to win victory at the lowest possible cost in lives and treasure and that they are willing to employ any and all available tools to accomplish the mission at hand.[1]  It also presupposes that one national resource often forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant or unapproachable by them, the non-governmental organization (NGO) community, can be convinced to collaborate in areas where their interests overlap.  This is not a new concept, as the United States Military and American NGOs have often found ways to collaborate in response to natural disasters such as the Pacific Tsunami and recent hurricanes.  There has also been some limited collaboration in post-conflict or stabilization situations as in the Balkans.  New to the game is the notion of collaborating to prevent violent conflict in the first place, something obviously in the interest of both soldiers and civilian humanitarians.  This paper seeks to focus on a few of an increasing number of activities of unofficial and non-governmental actors with which the audience is likely to be unfamiliar.  Since many of these efforts are quite new and innovative, they have generally not yet been reported on outside of the immediate circles of their participants.  The bottom line is that, while NGOs have not very often been considered in discussions of joint operations, many of them are reconsidering their relationships with the Military and exploring new reasons and ways to work together.  The Department of Defense would do well to examine how the NGO community can help it to win without fighting.  

Purpose:

            The purpose of this paper is to discuss briefly some of the ways professional military establishments (in this case that of the United States) and non-governmental organizations can collaborate to achieve a goal that is important to them both- the prevention of violent conflict.  It briefly describes shared characteristics as well as differences between soldiers and civilian humanitarian workers and reasons for them both to embrace and reject collaboration.  It highlights some of the “bridging” activities that are ongoing in the United States and the key players involved.  Finally, it details some specific programs and draws conclusions about how to further promote the process of increased understanding and improved relationships between the United States Military and humanitarian NGOs.

 

Characteristics that both unite and divide:[2]

            There is a vast array of what are collectively termed NGOs or Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs) in the United States.  Many work internationally in nearly every imaginable field.  There are those that focus on emergency humanitarian assistance, longer term development, conflict prevention and resolution, governance, human rights, rule of law, education, media, medical and psychological services, and so on.  The list is truly boundless.  They range in size from a handful with thousands of employees and budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars to little “mom and pop” enterprises scraping by on a shoestring  Many of these organizations can have an impact on military operations and, if successful, may even help to preclude resort to the employment of force. 

            But why should civilian humanitarians care about helping the United States Military save its resources?  Certainly, for most of them, the answer does not lie in aiding mission accomplishment, the soldier’s top priority.  As patriotic as many NGO workers are, few would wish to be characterized as “force multipliers” for the military in its role of promoting national interests.  Their sine qua non, is, however, mitigating human suffering.  And the area of overlapping priorities lies in the realization that helping to prevent violent conflict keeps any military from needing to be employed in reaction.  Once the NGOs come to understand that, at least in democracies, war mongers rarely wear uniforms[3] , it is easier to see their way clear to collaboration.

            Is there anything in the psychological make-up of NGO employees and soldiers that makes it more or less likely they can find a modus vivendi?   After twenty years as a soldier and nearly as long working in or with NGOs, the author has made some completely unscientific observations about similarities and differences that favor or oppose working together.  They basically follow the conclusions of the footnoted video by InterAction et al and can be summarized as those that favor and those that hinder collaboration:

Common Characteristics Favorable to Collaboration

• Dedicated to public service
• Goal-oriented
• Personal courage
• Belief in a good higher than personal gain
• Aggressiveness in achieving the mission

Differences that Hinder Collaboration (Military vs NGO)

• Hierarchically-organized vs De-centralized
• Deference to authority vs Often defiant of authority
• Used to working according to a plan vs Accustomed to improvising

Once NGOs and soldiers get used to working around each other in the field, they usually come to recognize the characteristics they have in common and learn to respect those traits in each other.  It is the differences that take more time and effort to overcome.  If they are honest, most soldiers will admit that they initially view their NGO counterparts as “bleeding-heart, scruffy, disorganized, unprofessional liberal freaks.”  Equal honesty on the part of NGOs would reveal that they initially perceive soldiers as mindless automatons (if not fascist storm troopers) without wills (or spines) who will carry out orders blindly and sometimes brutally regardless of the consequences. [4]   Efforts to overcome these prejudices will be discussed in a later section that discusses cultural bridging efforts.

            Realistically, both militaries and NGOs as organizations have certain advantages and disadvantages when it comes to a shared quest to prevent violent conflict.  The trick is to recognize where each has strengths and weaknesses and to organize in such a way as to maximize the effort toward the common goal.  Sometimes it will be the very differences identified previously that will give one or the other an advantage that can be useful.  For example, NGOs due to their looser organizational structure and lack of deference to authority can often be more flexible in their response to a crisis or opportunity, whereas the military because of its penchant for detailed planning and hierarchical structure, while sometimes less flexible, is better prepared to focus the required resources to solve a problem and has the staying power to see a solution through to the end.  With independence, NGOs often experience a lack of resources and political legitimacy, while the military’s place within the political structure provides huge resources to apply to a situation.  When the two can put their heads together and put aside their prejudices, great things can happen.[5]

            Things for both sides to learn and remember are:

• NGOs are not “herding animals.”  They will not be ordered around, controlled, or even “coordinated.”  Often the best that can be expected is collaboration and sharing of certain kinds of information.
• American soldiers are not unfeeling robots.  They have many characteristics in common with their NGO counterparts and even enjoy humanitarian missions when assigned.
• NGOs must maintain an arms-length distance from military operations, even those of peacekeeping forces.  Traditionally, they have felt their safety depended largely on being seen as separate from the armed combatants. 
• NGOs are not intelligence collectors and no attempt should be made to recruit them as such.  Certain kinds of information such as road conditions and the needs of the civilian populace can and will be freely shared.
• Often, because of their lack of hierarchy and official status, NGOs can go places, do things, and talk to people that are off limits to soldiers.
• While soldiers and their commanders have material resources that NGOs can usually only dream of, they are not at liberty to distribute or make unauthorized use of them, even in a good cause with which they may agree.

With the above points in mind, it is time to discuss what some organizations that see the potential for Military/NGO collaboration are trying to do to overcome the differences and make that potential a reality.

 

Bridging Activities:

            Official players in the United States have long recognized the potential for working with NGOs to prevent violent conflict.[6]  USAID has often been the link between NGOs and the Military, especially in natural disasters through it Offices of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Transition Initiatives (OTI).  This may even increase with USAID’s newly-formed Military Liaison Office.  President Bush has also established a new State Department Office for the Coordination of Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) under Ambassador Carlos Pasquale that is expected to take on a major role for ensuring that all U.S. agencies as well as civil society actors are effectively organized for both post-war reconstruction and stabilization and the prevention of violent conflict.[7]  This paper, however, examines less-official actors who are also taking on the task of bridging the differences between the Military and the NGO community.  Specifically, it discusses some of the activities of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)[8] in conjunction with InterAction and the Departments of Defense and State and also those of various NGOs.

            The United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., is accustomed to working with the Department of Defense.  Its published studies have included treatises and handbooks on Military/NGO peace building and conflict resolution efforts.[9]  Annually, USIP awards at least a dozen senior fellowships, and included among every group are one or two U.S. Military officers.  Frequently, senior fellows also include foreign officers who have made a marked contribution to peace keeping or preventing violent conflict.

            Recently, USIP has begun an initiative to build understanding and collaboration among NGOs and the U.S. Military.[10]  In May and July, 2005, representatives from InterAction, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department (S/CRS) and others including NGOs led by InterAction met at USIP with Mike Dziedzic and Beth DeGrasse facilitating.[11]  The purpose of the meetings was to identify and address a slate of mutual concerns.  The focus was on the exchange of information in order to address one of the major priorities: understanding principles that dictate how the various actors – NGOs, military, and diplomats – operate.

            The July meeting resulted in the following recommendations for both NGOs and the Military when operating in non-permissive environments:

Recommendations for the military:

• The military should always be in uniform when conducting relief activities.
• Military visits to NGO sites should be by invitation only and NGO views on the bearing of arms within NGO sites should be respected.
• NGOs should be given the option of meeting with military personnel outside military installations for whatever information exchanges that may occur.
• Emergency assistance and reconstruction programs conducted by the military to further political and/or military objectives should not be described as humanitarian activities.  Relief activities would be more appropriate. From the perspective of most NGOs the only time the military truly are engaged in humanitarian activities in conflict settings is when they are called upon to provide life-saving assistance to local civilians who cannot be reached by the humanitarian community. In such “exceptional circumstances” military provision of humanitarian assistance should be handed over to civilian humanitarian agencies at the earliest possible time.
• NGOs should not be described by the military as “force extenders” or “partners” of the military, or in any other fashion that could compromise popular perceptions of their independence.
• There should be no military interference with NGO services to elements of the civilian population the military may regard as unfriendly.

Recommendations for NGOs:[12]

• NGOs should not serve as implementing partners for the military in conducting relief activities.
• NGOs should not wear military style clothing.
• NGO personnel should not travel in military vehicles.
• NGOs should not have facilities co-located with facilities inhabited by military forces.
• NGOs should use their own logos on clothing, vehicles, and buildings when security conditions permit.
• NGOs should not recreate at military bases where they will be observed by local personnel to be engaged in fraternization with military personnel.

Recommendations on forms of coordination that will not involve unacceptable risk of confusion between military and NGO roles in conflict settings:

• NGO participation in security briefings conducted by the military
• Information sharing on security conditions, operational sites, location of mines and unexploded ordinance, humanitarian activities, and population movements, in so far as such information sharing is for the purpose of facilitating humanitarian operations and the security of staff and local personnel engaged in these operations,
• Liaison arrangements with military commands prior to and during military operations for the purposes of facilitating military operations, including protection of humanitarian installations and personnel, as well as informing military personnel of humanitarian principles and modalities of operation.
• As a last resort, use of military protection for convoys delivering military assistance, taking advantage of essential logistic support available only from the military, accepting evacuation assistance either for medical treatment or to withdraw from a hostile environment.
• Providing technical assistance for “last resort” military humanitarian assistance activities.

This useful round of discussions will continue at USIP, and, without doubt,

the results will be formalized in USIP publications and, perhaps, agreements or memoranda of understanding between the Department of Defense and American NGOs.  At the July meeting, there was a consensus that the timing for the next meeting at the CEO/Flag Officer level might be when the regional commanders are in Washington for a quarterly conference in early 2006.  InterAction said it hoped the current PACOM and CENTCOM participants would be joined by counterparts from EUCOM and SOUTHCOM.

            Another NGO umbrella organization, the Alliance for International Conflict Prevention and Resolution (AICPR) and its members and affiliates have also been contributing to Military/NGO understanding in other ways.  In November 2003, AICPR and one of its members, The Peace Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee) co-sponsored a conference with military and civilian participants titled “New Paths to Peace” out of which grew two projects designed to foster collaboration with the U.S. Military.[13]

The first of these projects, titled “Winning the Peace,” was designed to provide senior cadets at the United States Military Academy (USMA) with a better understanding of the environment in which they will find themselves when they go out into a violent world as young officers.  With a small seed grant from AICPR, the Department of Social Sciences, USMA, The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), and the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) at Columbia University, developed a semester-long curriculum.  The purpose of this curriculum was to give a select group of cadets basic familiarity with international organizations, NGOs, negotiations, cultural differences, civil society and Islam. 

Several AICPR members provided classroom instruction and role-players in the final practical exercise.  One of the AICPR member organizations that provided instruction was the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at the Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.[14]  The key to this cooperation between AICPR and USMA was the mutual understanding that such training holds the potential for giving Army officers non-lethal tools for accomplishing their mission.  Colonel Mike Meese, Head of the Social Sciences Department, plans to build upon last-year’s pilot program to train an increasing number of senior cadets every year. 

The vision of the originators, Major Christina Schweiss (formerly of the Social Sciences Department), Ms. Andrea Strimling (FMCS), and Professor Andrea Bartoli (CICR) is that the program will ultimately not only train young officers to win without fighting but will also contribute to Military/NGO understanding through an ever-increasing number of interactions between military students and NGO instructors.  As the program matures, it has the potential to be included in some form in every U.S. Army and USMC officer basic and advanced course.

A second project that grew out of the “New Paths to Peace” Conference is one AICPR calls “Peacegaming.” Noting that Washington is a place people come together for a myriad of meetings and conferences where they pass like ships in the night and usually accomplish very little, AICPR decided to attempt to apply military techniques of wargaming to preventing and resolving violent conflict.  Since the spring of 2004, AICPR has hosted a number of workshops and planning sessions supported by the Stimson Center, the National Defense University, and the Foreign Service Academy to design a pilot peacegame that will contribute to Military/NGO collaboration in a real-world effort to prevent violent conflict.  The key to this effort has been the desire to overcome a major shortcoming of sophisticated wargames sponsored by the U.S. Military at great monetary cost-the failure to bring in NGOs and international organization (IO) representatives at the scenario-building stage.  The fact is that NGOs, and to a lesser extent IOs, are normally the first in and the last out of any theatre of potential violence.  The use of military force usually comes after an extended period of NGO involvement during which they build up great knowledge and expertise that, when ignored by scenario writers, makes for an artificial, even dangerously-flawed game in preparation for battle. 

This effort culminated in a roundtable at the Foreign Service Academy in May 2005 that focused on collecting information to design a game exercising the prevention of violent conflict in the small West-African country of Guinea-Bissau.  This roundtable, paid for by the Compton Foundation, included representatives from the NGO community, the Department of Defense (including EUCOM and JFCOM J9) the Department of State (including the Africa Bureau, the American Embassy in Dakar, Senegal, and S/CRS), the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and, most importantly, Guinea-Bissau civil society  and Government.[15]  An AICPR member, the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland (CIDCM), used the input derived from the roundtable to create a conflict prevention game scenario for Guinea-Bissau.  The next step will be to actually “play” the game once AICPR raises sufficient funds or finds an official sponsor willing to share the cost estimated to be no more than $100,000.

The Peacegame relates directly to another conflict prevention activity in which AICPR has been heavily involved, the International Peace and Prosperity Project for Guinea-Bissau (IPPP-GB).  This project owes its existence to a retired businessman from Massachusetts, Mr. Milton Lauenstein.  A few years ago, Mr. Lauenstein started looking into the realm of conflict prevention and, despite being quite impressed with the quality of human resources being utilized by NGOs and academic institutions, recognized an amazing amount if inefficiency and lack of cooperation compared with the commercial enterprises where he had been so successful.  Eventually, he decided to try to show that with proper organization, it should be possible, at great savings in lives and treasure, to prevent mass, organized violence.  With a small group of academics and practitioners he had assembled, Lauenstein began the search with for an appropriate test case.  He chose as Technical Advisor for the project the noted scholar Michael Lund and for Project Director the experienced practitioner Benjamin Hoffman.  Lund gave Carleton University in Canada a set of parameters for the search that can be roughly summed up as:

• A country that has not yet fallen into mass violence but appears headed in that direction within 2-5 years
• A country that is not of strategic interest to major powers and, hence, is mostly neglected by them and international organizations making it possible for a small NGO-like effort to have a significant impact
• A country that is small and poor enough where a moderate investment of money and human resources, intelligently-employed, could help the population avoid the apparently impending tragedy

            Ultimately, Guinea-Bissau was selected as the test case, and Ben Hoffman has subsequently conducted extensive assessments of the situation and, with great flexibility, has reacted with small but strategically-timed infusions of resources to help the country get past rough spots like national elections last summer that could have proven a trigger to the outbreak of violence.[16]  This author would generally describe the guiding principles of IPPP-GB as:

• Get in early (estimated 2-5 years from likely start of mass violence)
• Make a detailed assessment with an interdisciplinary team of experts
• Identify key Bissauan players who will lead the effort and make it local
• Think long-term and keep focused, but be prepared to react to sudden threats without sacrificing everything to putting out brushfires
• Take a holistic approach building in multi-sectoral/multi-disciplinary collaboration
• Build upon interim successes by garnering more international support, thereby leveraging the limited Lauenstein resources
• Stay involved for as long as it takes to help local leaders create alternative, non-violent mechanisms by which potentially violent conflict can be transformed

            So what, one might ask, can or should the U.S. (or any interested) Military do to help, and what does this have to do with Peacegaming?  As discussed previously, the May 2005 Roundtable attended by people with expertise in Guinea-Bissau and/or conflict prevention in general, provided the CIDCM scholars with the detailed knowledge they needed to write a realistic scenario that includes military activity/assistance.

            The “can” is pretty easy to identify, and would be played in the game.  First, the only national seaport has been blocked to shipping for three decades, ever since independence fighters sunk two ships at the mouth of the harbor to hinder reinforcements from the colonial power.  IPPP-GB believes that any modern Western Navy with a salvage capability could open the harbor relatively easily thereby not only helping the country economically but also giving the population a visible sign that better days are a possibility.  Playing this salvage activity in the peacegame could be a precursor to the actual operation which could be justified as important training in salvage operations.

            Another game activity that could be transformed into reality would be the downsizing and professionalization of the Guinea-Bissauan Army.  Currently, it has approximately 9,000 poorly-equipped and ill-trained soldiers.  Military experts with experience in demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), with whom IPPP-GB has consulted, estimate that the country requires a security force (Army and Police) closer to 3,000.   DDR coupled with job creation projects related to the reopening of the harbor would be a great boost to the stability of Guinea-Bissau.  A smaller, but more professional force could also be an attractive addition to United Nations or African Union peacekeeping operations.

            The “why” the U.S. or any other professional Western military might want to game and then carry out these activities in collaboration with a civilian conflict prevention effort like the IPPP-GB is also really not difficult to comprehend.  While Guinea-Bissau is tiny (population approximately 1.5 million), it is located in a volatile part of West Africa where off-shore oil is beginning to be a factor.  If Guinea-Bissau or any of its neighbors becomes a failed state, there could be regional ramifications.  Also, while the potential for mass violence in the country is primarily ethnic (95% of the Army belongs to the Balanta ethnic group which represents only 30% of the total population); religiously, the population is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.  In short, an outbreak of mass violence and resulting destabilization in Guinea-Bissau is certainly not in the best interests of any well-meaning country.  Consequently, since the IPPP-GB is laying out a rational roadmap for preventing mass violence in the country, and relatively cheap (relative even to providing humanitarian aid in case of war and possible destabilizing population displacement to neighboring countries) military assistance could help, what is there to lose?  This could be a place where there is a nexus of National and humanitarian NGO interests and an excellent pilot for civil/military engagement in peacegaming that could then be applied to many other countries.      
           
Conclusion:

            This paper has only scratched the surface of the transition that is taking place in relationships among NGOs and military forces.  There are numerous NGOs and academic programs that are studying and promoting this new avenue to preventing violent conflict.[17]Collaboration has worked in natural disasters and sometimes even in time of war.  Now is the time to make it work in preventing war as often as possible.  In many cases, military forces with the blessing of their national civilian leadership may be able to take relatively inexpensive steps to assist NGOs in heading off mass violence.  Soldiers, with their NGO and IO counterparts, can practice collaboration using peacegaming just as the armed services have for years practiced fighting jointly in wargames.  There will never be a “Goldwater-Nichols” mandating jointness among NGOs and the Military, but NGOs can become part of our joint thinking nevertheless.    

 

William A. Stuebner; United States; United States Joint Forces Command, J9, Joint Experimentation; E-Mail William.Stuebner@je.jfcom.mil; Telephone 1-757-203-3237

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This article is being collaboratively written and developed via an online moderated dialogue.

Evan

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Question: What is the root cause of domestic/international violence and is there a common root cause between domestic and international violence?

 

Evan,

I'm really looking forward to this online dialogue with Frema Engel. Recently I read her book, Taming the Beast, and I was struck how the 4 "Rs" she identifies in the context of workplace violence are so applicable to the international politcal violence prevention work I'm involved in these days. Recognition, Roots, Response, and Recurrence.

The question of root causes is obviolsy central to any effort to prevent violence or to reduce it if it is ongoing. But 15, even 10 years ago I would not have agreed (easily, or quickly) that working in domestic violence ( cases of absue in the home, usually perpetrated by men on women and children) was really comparable to working in international conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Now, I'm a little more inclined to say there is a strong comon denominator: violence as the abusive use of power.

Before I got around to distilling my experiences in cases of wife abuse and the many conflicts and wars I've worked in for the past 30 years, I would have argued more of an "IR" explanatory model for inter-state violence and a socio-cultural one for inter-ethnic, intra-state violence. That is, I would think that the inherent anarchical nature of the international state system would be a central explanatory concept for inter-state war (and even in the case of insurgencies, one might argue the rebels are using violence because when push comes to shove where States are concerned, shove it is).

And of course, there ar so many helpful models to look at causes of international and intercommunal conflict (proximate causes, triggers, structural causes). And we could add to these analytical concepts and models, demonstrating the complexity of international warfare and insurgencies within states. That discussion would seem to take us a long way off from domestic violence.

What concerns me is the focus on conflict itself, including even the aspiration to "resolve" it. I have come to think that the conflation of the two words, "violent" and "conflict" cause many of us to misplace the focus of our analysis and the ways of addressing conflict, wars. When the words are conflated, "violent" is an adjective describing a noun, "conflict". I find more every day that I work in "violent conflict situations" it is really the Violence itself that needs attention, as a noun in its own right. So the causes of conflict become violence (perceived or real) and these are either direct, overt, operational manifestations of violence OR structural. Hitting, kicking, removing, or shooting someone is obvious violence. So I keep thinking, how can we prevent hitting, killing? And is that done by helping people express conflict nonviolently? Yes, but if the hitting and killing are indeed cuased by deeper rooted strucutral violence and my analysis goes there, when I look at structural "causes" of conflict they turn out to be violence themselves. They are not just curious cuasal phenomenon. They are again perceived or real violence that is being done to a person, group or society. Of course, it seems more than reasonable they would give rise to conflict: to the "perception of incompatible interests", to use a comon definition in the conflict resolution field. But they may also give rise to various forms of direct viloence (riots, assassinations, insurgenices, terrorist acts, cvil wars). And the cycle of violence is apparent.

How does that aply to domestic violence? I don't know and I'm not even sure my thinking about the need to focus more on violence as the abusive use of power is correct.

I'm glad this is a informal dialogue and as I said, I look forward to Frema's first round of responses.

Ben

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Ben,

You really got this dialogue off to a great start. I'm somewhat reluctant to comment about international conflict and violence because as you know this is not where my experience has been. In recent years I've been concentrating my attention on workplace conflict and violence that is for the most part contained in work organizations, but has, in some cases, extended to the community in which these organizations are located. Nevertheless as an observer in world events, I think that we can draw a few analogies to the international scene.

Let me comment about the link between conflict and violence because I’ve been preoccupied with trying to understand this. I'm going to stick to my experience with workplace problems, although I am also comfortable commenting on family life as appropriate.  

First the obvious: chronic or unresolved conflicts lead to an exacerbation of tension, frustration, anger and entrenched positions.  When people reach the boiling point I see three things happening most often.  One, they turn their emotions inward and get depressed, burned out, or become physically ill.  Two, they become apathetic and "turn off", ignoring what goes on around them, and adopting the position that "it is none of my business". They become the silent bystander to abusers and their targets and ignore what they see happening around them. Third, they act out their feelings.  One can see it in their behavior - how angry, resentful, hurt and offensive they are to those around them; that is, they become violent.  The violence of course is often expressed verbally, or they become a bully in every sense of the word.  At times they take let out their feelings through physical behavior.  

These scenarios get played out all the time in the workplace.  One question I always ask unhappy employees is why they don’t leave if they dislike the situation and the people they work with so much.  Is it worth getting sick over, or letting the situation consume them?  The answer almost always boils down to people’s feelings/beliefs of some sort of acquired rights to be there, or else they don’t feel things will be better for them anywhere else.  These beliefs are not based at all on any hard evidence at all.  Nonetheless, it is very hard to move people out of this thinking into realizing there is a whole world waiting for them, and if they were to make a move they would probably have something better and they would certainly be happier working in another environment.   However, most people just do not like or want to change, and so they stay and tolerate the intolerable, becoming resigned to their destiny.

So we have unhappy people, believing they are right and the other person is wrong, not wanting to take the first step to settle their differences.  What seemed to be once, well functioning units becomes hostile and toxic. The environment becomes full of animosity and contempt and people can’t work together anymore.

What I have been increasingly struck with, is how entrenched people’s positions have become and how easy it is for workplaces to become hotbeds for conflict, violence and meanness.  I also see – from my experience intervening in these environments – that it is not so difficult to repair the problems when conditions are right.  In the workplace, it takes a senior person who is tired enough, who wants things to change and is ready to invest the time, money and resources to make it happen.  It also takes the right intervention (Here my Four R’s for Violence Prevention comes in handy, for you need to understand the Root causes) the right intervention (Response) and a strategic approach to resolving the issues and getting results (Prevent a repetition). 

Most of the time, I see how important it is to “set the stage” (strategic plan), and to “force” people to get involved, and be willing to participate in training, mediation or alternate dispute resolution processes.  How amazing it is to see how quickly resistance can be broken down and partnerships in peace-building formed when the process is planned, “staged” and the boss (“higher authority”) is involved. The critical steps with the approach is to coach the boss and have him/her involved in the process, be able to redefine the problem in terms of a performance issue, and make a demand for resolution.   

Having said all of this, I don’t understand really why violence is such a predominate behavior for so many discontent, angry, frustrated people.  I often wonder if humankind is hardwired for violence. Or, are we sorely in need of leaders of workplaces and governments like Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi, people with exceptional high morals, strong resolve in their beliefs, charismatic, and who are excellent role models and can lead the way.  It doesn’t work (in the workplace at least) when there are double standards, when people aren’t taken seriously, when leaders are weak or lack resolve for things to be different. It does work when leaders are involved, resolve problems, treat people respectfully (this doesn’t mean they always get their way) and able to build a sense of community at work.  

Where am I going with this? If we are to expand this thinking into the community and countries, would not the same apply?  Do we have double standards, do we tolerate or ignore so-called innocuous behaviors early on, do we set up conditions whereby people don’t feel they have any options other than to negotiate and talk out their differences?  Lastly (for today at least) do we have strong leaders with exceptionally high moral standards, who are charismatic, excellent role models, and who can lead the way?

Ben, I’m looking forward to your response and continuing this dialogue.

Frema

 

Frema Engel

Engel & Associates, Montreal

Organizational Architect:  Inspiring employees through community-building at work

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Hi Ben and Frema:
Thank you both for your thoughts about possible root causes that might be common between violence at the international and domestic levels.
Your replies raise some fascinating parallels between the possible root causes in the two contexts and it also provides a good transition to my next question about interventions.
As Ben notes, while looking at the International level there are certainly a lot of factors and causes of violence that are not relevant at the domestic level such as the inherent nature of the state system to cause inter-state wars but there are some similarities when we turn our focus to  violence.
It’s interesting to note that Frema’s Four R system can be applied to both domestic violence and international violence and, as it turns out, we’ve just explored the second R: Roots.
But, if we now turn our attention the third R (the Responses) we can see that Frema has already mentioned some important factors in her interventions that help workplaces become less violent. Two interesting things that she mentioned are the role of leaders and the strategic plan that guides the intervention.
So, I would invite Ben to now respond to Frema’s reply and to another question about interventions:
1-What role does the strategy of the intervention play at the international level? More precisely, could you comment on the notions of “forcing” people to the peace table and the role of higher authority in the intervention.

 

 

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Question: Are there interventions that are common between the the two levels ?

 

Question: What is the biggest obstacle to living violence free at the international/domestic level?

Question: Do you see lessons learned from efforts to reduce domestic violence applicable to international violence (i.e., intra-state civil war, the “war on terror”)?

 

 

It took a long time for the Canadian government to realize that state failure is a problem. State failure is nothing new. There have been many occasions historically where states have failed following on the collapse of empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today most states that are weak or failed or collapsed are so because they are fairly new and they have not had the opportunity to develop effective political, economic and social institutions.

State failure is now in the news largely because it is considered to be a security and not just a developmental issue. To put state failure on the radar screen you have to convince people that their security may be affected. That's not easy to do. We Canadians tend to feel we are isolated from the world's problems. Nevertheless, when our neighbour to the south decides that this is something important, we usually go along with them. Not always. But we have been active with working in partnership with our allies on these issues for the last 10 years on peace support missions, in the Middle East and in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Canada needs to figure out which failed states are of importance to us.. We could say all of them matter, but they matter for different reasons. It is going to take lengthy discussion between academics, NGOs and the policy community to set out a list of priority countries. The Canadian government has already produced a list of countries but there only a few failed states on it among the 50 or so potential candidates.

To be sure, there will always be situations that will require more than just Canadian efforts. On other occasions there will be situations, a relatively small country for example or an island state, where Canada could have a significant impact by taking the lead or even acting on its own. For example, the collapse of Nigeria or North Korea would be overwhelming. Both would produce significant regional problems. For a medium-sized country like Canada, we have to look at our engagement in these kinds of situations in terms of our own effectiveness. Given that we will be part of a team working together, our contribution may amount to less than 5 percent of the total.

It may be that in a situations of lesser salience, Canada could be more effective. There are fewer things to do and the problems may be less overwhelming. So it is not an easy choice. Can we risk ignoring a small country's collapse, knowing that we might be pretty effective in doing something about its problems? For example, in Haiti, the mistake we made in the early 1990s was pulling out too quickly. Had we stayed the course, we would not have seen a recurrence of that country's problems. The lesson there is that in a small country one can be fairly effective, but you do need to stay the course.

Similarly, what we are watching unfold in Sudan right now is a very anxious moment, to say the least, because there is a great deal of hope that the African Union will be able to develop its own conflict prevention and management capacity to address the problems in Sudan and elsewhere on the continent. But what is anxious about it, is that we are not absolutely certain that the outcome will be a positive one. There is partly the obligation to contribute to the African Union's capacity, and Canada is doing that with a fair amount of aid that is being distributed to both Sudan and the African Union. But we have to wait on the "sidelines", while people are being killed. For those who monitor human rights abuses, this is simply not appropriate.

In general terms, there is now an almost unshakable belief that regional organizations should take more of a leading role in addressing security problems including state failure. It is easy to say that NATO is probably the most effective military organization and has experience in dealing with these issues in the past and should take on some role, for example, in Sudan. But what is the long-term sustainability of that process, and how will that be perceived by those within Africa, who historically have experienced outside interference far too often? Unfortunately, the UN has not come out looking very good after many of the recommendations in the High Level Panel were rejected , so there will continue to be increasing support for regional solutions to regional problems.

One could argue that integrating states into global, regional or local institutional frameworks is in itself a preventive measure. However, it may be premature to draw a conclusion as to whether these kinds of conflict prevention mechanisms work. These are long-term efforts, and it is sometimes in the range of 15-20 years before we have any degree of certainty about whether they have been successful. For example, we don't have a precise methodology yet, that would allow us to firmly conclude that shoring up human security in weak states is actually going to lead to long-term prevention. We would like to think it does, and we need to develop tools to allow us to evaluate that impact.

For the Canadian government there is a real challenge ahead. It is difficult to convey the long-term consequences and risks associated with failing to act at the earliest stages. But if the Canadian government is going to talk about state failure in the context of prevention, then we do need to think strategically and we do need to identify both the risks and the rewards of acting in a preventive way. Canadians need to understand that it is in their interest to do so.

David Carment is Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa and a fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. You can access research and interviews of Professor Carment on the issue of State Failure here: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/cip-pic/current_discussions/...

“It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory …”

As a young man, I read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. I was struck with how much the actions of leaders then, as they led their people into bloody conflicts, resembled those of modern heads of state. The obvious conclusion was that in the last 2500 years, man has learned essentially nothing about how to avoid the tendency of groups undertaking to kill each other in a never-ending quest for power and status. The fact that millions of people have been killed by other people, and that the killing persists has never stopped bothering me.

In a world of accomplishments unimaginable in Thucydides’ day in many other fields, this lack of progress in political science is hard to understand. The amount of resources dedicated to finding new and more destructive ways of killing each other and the things we have built is shocking! While much, much less, the resources devoted to achieving a peaceful world are very large – surely large enough to achieve more than has been accomplished. I find it impossible to believe that man is not capable of reducing the extent to which people organize to kill each other. This thought has been with me for decades, during which my primary attention was directed to other things.

Early in 2001, about the time of my 75^th birthday, I found that I had enough time and money to attempt to try to contribute to ameliorating this sad state of affairs. Against the advice of my wife and close friends, who believed that progress in this field was not possible, I embarked on a mission to see what I could contribute to a reduction of organized violence in the world. I, too, was skeptical about whether one person with limited means could have any real impact on a problem as old as humanity. However, I reasoned that if I did nothing, I certainly would accomplish nothing. So, I plunged into what has been a most interesting and exciting activity.

Prior to 2001, almost the only knowledge I had of political science was what I had gathered from the popular news media. I had never taken a single academic course on the subject. Clearly, if I hoped to make a contribution in this field, I would have to learn something about it.

I immediately started a self-education program. From the beginning, professionals in the field were most helpful. People such as Mary Anderson of Collaborative Action, Kennette Benedict of the McArthur Foundation, Karen Colvard of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Mari FitzDuff of Brandeis University, Necla Tschirgi of the International Peace Academy introduced me to colleagues, invited me to meetings, recommended books, and provided valuable advice. Within 5 years, I had read well over 100 books on the subject, attended many meetings, joined organizations, became acquainted with a great many people in the field, and sponsored different kinds of projects.

My primary vocational back ground was in industrial management. I had been president or chairman of several small corporations and had taught business part time at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and at Northeastern University. I came from a world in which leaders ask themselves each morning, “What can I do today to achieve better results?”

I found that the world of political science is strikingly different. There is an enormous amount written about organized violence, but little that is likely to lead to effective action. Almost all of what I read was either descriptive of what existed, or dealt with what could or should be done, but with no attention whatsoever to what might motivate whom to respond to the recommendations. The more I read, the more I became impatient with the use of the passive voice and the absence of concrete plans to act to prevent violence. The authors seemed not to realize that to influence actual events, they needed to present a plan specifying who was to do what, when and why. They seemed to assume that if they had a good idea, someone, somewhere would read about it and find a way to implement it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often.

My first thought had been that by sponsoring research work on the causes of, and possible cures for, organized violence, I could contribute to reducing organized violence. I did in fact sponsor some research projects. However, while more knowledge is always potentially useful, much of the research I read about seemed to have very little chance of becoming practically useful. For example, I couldn’t see how research into what sort of childhood experiences brutal dictators had had could be applied to reducing organized violence, interesting though it may be. Moreover, I became convinced that in this field, lack of knowledge is not the main problem. It appeared that enough knowledge and skills needed to reduce violence were already available, but that society was not organized to use them effectively. Therefore, I abandoned my thoughts of funding more research, and turned my attention to the challenge of promoting practical actions that could be expected to contribute more directly to reducing violence.

To help identify actions I could take that would offer a reasonable chance of reducing violence, I organized small meetings of leading professionals to discuss what might usefully be done. I sponsored a contest run by Columbia University for papers on practical steps that would reduce violence. My involvement in the research projects already mentioned also contributed to my knowledge of the field, and thus to acquiring some ability to judge what could be effective.

In the late ‘90s, The Carnegie Corporation sponsored a blue ribbon commission on the prevention of deadly conflict. Its Report was excellent, except, like so many others, it didn’t go so far as to present a plan of action. Recently, one of the distinguished commissioners wrote to me that so far as he was aware, the  activity, which had cost millions, had had no real effect “whatever”. For all of the millions it cost, and for all of the talent that went into the work, the project never got down to developing plans of action that would lead to practical results.

In addition to the report, the commission sponsored the writing of a number of books on the subject. Two of them, The Costs of Conflict and The Price of Peace, helped to convince me that prevention is much more cost-effective than dealing with violence after it has erupted, to say nothing of the deaths and suffering caused by war. So I began focusing on the question of how I could contribute to preventing violence.

Not only do adequate knowledge and skills already exist for addressing successfully the potential for violence, but there is no shortage of other resources needed to get the job done. The amount of money and effort devoted to “the peace movement” is enormous. I have been greatly impressed with the number of highly intelligent, energetic and dedicated professionals that there are in the field. But I was also struck with the disastrous lack of organization that is impeding the achievement of practical results.

Literally thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are devoted to actions addressing one segment or another of what could be an integrated program to prevent violence, including conflict resolution, mediation, education for peace, arms control, security, the reduction of the poverty that can lead to violence, better governance, and others. But there is little coordination of their activities, no setting of priorities, and no integration.

NGOs vigorously compete with each other for funding at the same set of potential donors. Many are committed to a particular approach and refuse to support alternatives. In their competition for funds, they flock to places in the news, places in which violence has already broken out. As a senior official in one large donor organization told me, there is no chance of getting the directors of a foundation to appropriate money to support a long-term project at a place no one ever heard of, where the objective was no noticeable result (no violence).

The obvious sources of potential preventive action would seem to be the UN and the US. Except for the UN peacekeeping activities, which have been initiated only after violence has occurred, neither has been effective in preventing violence. Political considerations and constraints seem to prevent either organization from mobilizing its resources to prevent violence before it has occurred. The world has been appalled as these organizations have failed to act while thousands have been slaughtered in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and many other places.

One approach to prevention has been recommended by a number of professional authors, but, until recently, had never been tried. It involves identifying a vulnerable place well ahead of actual widespread violence, working with local leadership to determine what is required, obtaining the needed help from the most appropriate sources, and continuing the program for however many years are needed to develop a sufficiently stable situation that violence becomes highly unlikely.

One of the groups I had formed, called “The Reducing Political Violence Action Group”, came up with a plan which I proceeded to fund. It was to select an appropriate place to initiate a “test case” to demonstrate what could be achieved using the approach just mentioned to prevent violence. It developed criteria for selecting the place and commissioned Carleton University to gather data and to make recommendations. Based on their work, it selected Guinea-Bissau in West Africa for the project, which we called the “International Peace and Prosperity Project” (IPPP). The country was desperately poor, the government was weak, and violence was widely expected to erupt. It had the advantage of being unknown to most, so that there was almost no activity there by NGOs, so that IPPP could expect its influence to be felt.

Two of the members of the group, whom I had come to know and respect, agreed to lead the project. Ben Hoffman, who had had considerable field experience with The Carter Center, and Michael Lund, an international authority on violence prevention, agreed to lead the project.  Dr. Hoffman is the Project Manager, while Dr. Lund serves as Technical Advisor.

The first visit of the project team to Guinea-Bissau was scheduled for August, 2004.  In the process of arranging for introductions there, we became aware that August was in the middle of the rainy season, and that many of the people we wanted to meet would not be there then, so the trip was postponed until October. Then, shortly before the group was to leave, a group of soldiers mutinied, took the head of the army hostage, and then killed him. We considered canceling the trip, but since more violence did not break out immediately, and people who knew the country thought that it would be safe, the team went anyway, and met no violence. An IPPP team has visited there repeatedly since then.

Originally, we considered establishing a continuing presence in Bissau, the capitol, which I planned to fund. After visiting a couple of times, however, Dr. Hoffman decided that having an IPPP office there would detract from the basic idea of leadership by local people, so we decided not to do so. The IPPP role was to encourage local people to solve their problems themselves, with our acting as a sort of catalyst, and helping to obtain whatever assistance they needed from the best available sources.

The new head of the army, General Tagme, felt that the proper role of the army was to stay out of politics, and instead, to support civilian government. We encouraged him to pursue that policy, and he has done so. We have responded to his request for expert advice by bringing in capable retired senior military officers from other countries, which he has appreciated. In recent months, when violence threatened, he has steadfastly held to his policies, has supported the civilian government, and has helped to maintain the peace.

In April, IPPP arranged a meeting of the heads of most of the civil society organizations of the country to help get a consensus as to how we could be most helpful. At the meeting, the group decided to form a task force, and elected one of the group, a remarkable woman named Macaria Barai, as chairperson. Since an upcoming national election was widely expected to trigger violence, they decided that their first priority would be to work for an orderly, peaceful election. IPPP provided encouragement and modest financial support. The task force drew up a “code of conduct” for the candidates to sign, in which they agreed to refrain from the kinds of words and actions that might provoke violence. It launched a campaign to promote an orderly election, including radio ads, banners, T-shirts, and, of course, enlisting the help of their organizations across the country. It also had the support of the army.

The election was held in June, 2005. Over 85% of the eligible voters turned out. Surprising those who know the situation, the election was a success. Because none of the candidates won a majority, a run-off between the top two vote-getters, held in July, was also orderly. The new president was inaugurated on October 1.

I went with the project team to Guinea-Bissau for the first time in June of 2005. I was impressed both by the ability, cooperation, and determination of the local people and with how little they have to work with. A war in 1998-9 destroyed 80 % of the already tiny economy, so the country is desperately poor. But, if violence can be averted, it appears that there are many opportunities for economic development that can be exploited with relatively little investment. While poverty, corruption, tribalism, and governmental weakness continue to make the situation vulnerable, the stage is now set for the various actors to work together with continuing help from IPPP to build a peaceful and more prosperous country.

Regardless of what transpires in Guinea-Bissau in the future, what I saw on my trip there convinces me that the approach being used there is sound and much more cost-effective than massive inputs of money and people trying to tell local people what to do. It was designed as a demonstration project and the experience there will help others design more effective violence prevention projects in other places. The continuing IPPP story is to be reported and disseminated widely for that purpose. While I am continuing to fund the project alone, it will soon outgrow my ability to do so, so Dr. Hoffman is actively seeking other sources of support. IPPP is so promising that I hope very much that he is successful.

In my reading, I became aware that in many places, local people, faced with the prospect of violence, had found ways, suited to the local situation, to avoid it. Many of these actions involved very little money, and thus were very cost-effective. I contacted the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quaker) and Pax Christi (Roman Catholic) and offered to support such efforts as they could recommend. Through these organizations, I have funded local projects in South America and in Africa. Both organizations are aware of my interest in funding additional projects that they can recommend, based on their knowledge of the local situations and people.

Because lack of integration and cooperation among those working for peace is such a serious problem, I was drawn to the idea of getting a group of international organizations and experts together to plan joint actions they would commit to implement together. I found that the then executive director of the Alliance for International Conflict Prevention and Resolution, Bill Stuebner, shared my view, so we set about arranging such a meeting. Bill got into contact with the Belfast Local Strategy Partnership, which agreed to share the expense with me, even though the subject was to be violence prevention world-wide, with no special focus on Northern Ireland. By the end of the first three-day meeting held in Belfast in December, 2004, the participants had formed several committees to pursue projects that seemed likely to help in the prevention of inter-group violence. At the next meeting, in May 2005, also in Belfast, the participants decided to form an organization called the International Conflict Prevention Consortium (ICPC) to continue the work. Dan Smith of International Alert and Liam Maskey of Intercomm were elected as co-chairs.

ICPC projects in progress or under consideration include:

• The Consortium is considering how best to collect and to disseminate early warning information from the best sources.
  
• Members are seeking ways to link effective responses to early warnings.
  
• Member organizations are planning a collaborative project to help another fragile state, Guinea, to avoid potential violence.
  
• The Consortium is exploring the possibility of developing a regional West African prevention program.
  
• The Consortium is exploring the possibility of developing a regional West African prevention program, in which IPPP and the collaborative initiative in Guinea may represent the first examples.
  
• Members are seeking donors to fund these initiatives and to promote more collaboration among actors.
  

I am continuing to provide funding to ICPC because it represents so much potential for improving the effectiveness of violence prevention activities.

Still another activity to which I contributed some seed money is very promising. Arguably, the most successful violence prevention program the world has ever seen was the work done by Max van der Stoel as High Commissioner on National Minorities in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He contributed directly to preventing impending violence in the Baltic states, Macedonia, Moldova, and elsewhere. Based on that success, he and his former chief of staff, John Packer, are encouraging other regional multinational organizations to establish similar offices to prevent violence in their regions. I was so impressed with this idea that I and a Japanese friend funded the first two interns in regional organizations to help get the project started.

One of the reasons I have chosen the projects that I am funding is that unlike many other initiatives, these are likely to “do no harm”, to use the title of Mary Anderson’s book. In many cases, gifts intended to provide humanitarian aid have been diverted either to line the pockets of corrupt politicians or, worse still, to fund violence. When large quantities of food are shipped into a country, prices sometimes fall so low that local farmers abandon their farms, no longer able to make a living. When large organizations come into a poor country, they hire many of the ablest of the local people, denuding government and the economy of their most important resource. Foreign aid can support a whole new “industry”, thus providing local governments and business people an incentive to prolong the problems that occasioned the influx of so much money. The book “The Road to Hell” and others I have read present many actual case studies of the harm done by many well-meaning projects. More modest initiatives, led by responsible local people, can avoid such unintended consequences.

My venture into a world with which I was hardly aware until 5 years ago has been interesting, exciting, and rewarding. In the beginning, I couldn’t believe that one individual with a limited budget could have any real impact in an effort in which man has made so little progress over the centuries. However, as I got better acquainted with the field and the people in it, I became convinced that the effort I was making could produce a worthwhile result. The demonstration project in Guinea-Bissau promises to encourage others to pursue a more effective approach to helping fragile countries avert disaster and rebuild. ICPC, with its new leadership, is pursuing initiatives which have the potential to make an important improvement in violence prevention activities. Similarly, the effort to establish violence prevention offices in regional multinational organizations will save many lives even if only partially as successful as the one in OSCE.

At a meeting in New York, I happened to meet one of the “Indigenous Guards” I had helped to fund in Colombia through AFSC. Hearing directly from him what they had been doing to protect themselves, successfully and non-violently, also helped to make me feel that the effort was worth all I have put into it. It is now clearer to me than in the beginning why I am funding violence prevention activities.

It is no longer “still the same old story”. Recent studies have produced convincing data indicating that the number and intensity of violent situations has declined sharply since the early ‘90s. Clearly, this at least partially reflects preventive actions that have been taken, including some of those mentioned above. This gives me hope that in fact, man can reduce the extent to which groups of people set about savaging their fellow men. It gives me hope that what I have been doing is not foolish, but that it can actually contribute to saving lives and suffering of fellow human beings. What could be more exciting and satisfying?

Milt Lauenstein
October 22, 2005
 

Recently, Martin Griffiths has written an excellent paper on UN mediation, stressing the importance of the maverick qualities that are inherent, in his estimation, in effective mediators*. As someone who has mediated at the Track I level, working to reach and implement peace accords, I agree with Griffiths. Low-powered, neutral mediation and a lack of creativity and drive will not get the job done. And I have now come to recognize the importance of these maverick qualities as they apply to the prevention of violence in the first place. Indeed, there is a need for the “peace guerilla” in violence prevention.

What is a “peace guerilla”? And why are they needed? Let me explain.

With private funding from Mr. Milt Lauenstein, a number of senior practitioners in conflict resolution and peacebuilding have been working to prevent armed violence in Guinea-Bissau. This small West African country was selected by Dr. David Carment and colleagues at Carleton University, Ottawa, as a country in which we could demonstrate the strengths (and weaknesses) of a prevention initiative that applies lessons learned and best practices. Guinea-Bissau would be a “test case” for prevention that is early, holistic, vertically and horizontally integrated, and sustained; but especially, our effort would identify local leadership and we would work primarily as a catalyst to identify needs and mobilize resources on the basis of sound analysis of the forms and causes of violence.

Nine months into a dynamic, new violence prevention intervention, a team of five of us recently visited Guinea-Bissau on the eve of its highly contested, potentially violent presidential election. Mr. Lauenstein came along to see what we were doing with his investment in prevention, and the professionals involved on this mission were Dr. Michael Lund (USA), retired Brigadier Vere Hayes (UK), Mr. Jeff Mapendere (USA), and myself. We were accompanied by a two-person documentary film crew that had begun some months earlier to follow my work in peacebuilding, with a particular focus on reconciliation.

Just prior to lift-off from Canada to France, where all seven of us would meet en route to Dakar and then Bissau, I was struggling with how we could describe to the film crew what we were actually doing in Guinea-Bissau. What made it different or even unique as a violence prevention initiative? What was our goal? What was our modus operandi?”

Now, the original model we had adopted, based on a solid review of lessons learned and guided by Michael Lund, was to engage all the key stakeholders in a facilitated joint diagnostic of the conflicts in the country and to jointly design a plan to prevent violence and build sustainable peace. This approach in itself was not new, perhaps, as there is a strong history of efforts at multi-stakeholder, multi-issue consensus building; and a good number of peacebuilding efforts have been trying to improve the coordination of action.

But our approach would try to overcome the shortcomings of other efforts, along these lines: we would not offer a particular service and get caught in the “mandate trap” that so many other NGOs and UN agencies do; we would not prescribe but elicit solutions; we would not establish a country office but support local actors to take leadership; we would not focus on one sector, or even on those sectors commonly associated with peace and development, while ignoring others, especially the security sector and elite actors whose machinations were whip lashing the country from violent pillar to violent post; and we would advocate for peace, lobbying at the regional and international levels in New York , Washington and wherever needed. The idea was to be active across all sectors, facilitating horizontal integration; and to likewise be active from the community level through local NGOs to the executive offices of the World Bank and other relevant institutions, seeking vertical integration.

But, as with so many best intentions and theoretically sound designs, reality on the ground dictated modification. And these modifications would be needed immediately.

The head of the armed forces had been assassinated in October, 2004, just prior to our first “scouting mission’ to the country to confirm Dr. Carment’s selection of Guinea-Bissau. And with that assassination and the upcoming presidential election, we had to move to a crisis management mode rather than have the audacity to try to impose our joint diagnostic multi-stakeholder process on the country. People who knew Guinea-Bissau, external actors from UN agencies and donor embassies, scholars inside and outside the country, and the people in the country had been quick to tell us exactly what was needed. There was an urgent need for security sector reform, for dealing with an economic crisis and long-term development, for improving governance, and supporting the growth of an active civil society. But most importantly, there was a need to stabilize the country. Politicians were mobilizing discontent and inter-ethnic hostilities. Mass violence was possible.

Indeed, the army had a practice of being deeply immersed in politics, with a history of coup d’etats, assassinations, and a full-scale war in 1998. We were told that doing things to keep the army out of politics and building what someone called a “contre pouvior” (a mobilized, influential civil society) to those with guns - were immediate priorities.

Guinea-Bissau was on the verge of erupting or imploding and our lessons-learned, inspired approach to violence prevention would not apply. If we were unable to respond to these needs, if we had insisted that our original model was the only way to proceed, if we have been constrained by the nature of our mandate and the funding we had, we would have had to go home.

We decided otherwise. It was apparent that we needed to be responsive, dexterous, and deliver concrete actions or services in the now clearly defined immediate areas of need: the role of the armed forces in Guinea-Bissau and the role of civil society.

This “emergency room” diagnostic, which also recognized how critical to peace the machinations of political elites were, plunged us into a set of actions that were strategically-informed, but carried out in a way that surely must have confused some of the other members of the peacebuilding community, including the INGOs and UN actors already on the ground. And while we had named our project the International Peace and Prosperity Project to demonstrate that we had indeed listened and knew that both economic development and conventional peacebuilding were required, we focused mostly in this critical period on the peace agenda. And we resisted being stereotyped as a provider of a singular program or service.

We also had the good fortune to meet Ms. Macaria Barai and her colleagues in the nascent nongovernmental sector in Guinea-Bissau. We had found local leadership that managed to be sufficiently nonpartisan in a very politicized country and we chose to work with and through them.

What did we do? How was it different? And how did the term “Peace Guerilla” come to describe us?

First, we forged a relationship with the newly installed head of the armed forces, General Tagme, especially because he was talking publicly about the need for reconciliation of factions within the armed forces. This was powerful language in a country wracked by a pattern of attack and revenge. While we were not inclined to be a granting body in the usual sense, and because we did not have large sums of money to issue as grants in any case, we were able to direct small amounts of money to the military in very short order to do simple things that might persuade otherwise discontented soldiers that remaining loyal to Tagme and acting professionally, staying out of politics this time, was worth it. And when we convened a meeting of some fourteen representatives of civil society around the issue of “reconciliation” and they were moved to form a Task Force that would mobilize the citizenry around a fair and free presidential election, we could offer a small grant that would give them the resources to get started immediately. We were not encumbered with a bureaucratic process of reviewing grant applications, and we were able to direct small amounts of money to strategically identified areas on a “just in time” basis. We hoped, of course, and we lobbied that the UN and country donors would eventually come through on long-term funding that would make structural change possible.

We also mobilized at the regional and international level, writing letters on behalf of Guinea-Bissau, trying to get it on the radar screen of agencies and institutions whose engagement was necessary. We wrote and disemminated professional papers that quickly introduced Guinea-Bissau, clarified the issues and needs, and invited action. We wrote letters to the editors of newspapers to mobilize resources for the election. We commissioned a body of international legal scholars to write a neutral option about a controversial matter bearing on the election and before the Supreme Court in Guinea-Bissau. And we invited local leaders to travel abroad to tell others about their country and to request assistance.

So, as the film crew began to prepare itself to document these actions and human stories in Guinea-Bissau, I was pressed to explain who we were and what we were doing. I thought about how our efforts were always informed by moment-to-moment conflict analysis, by a deep probing of violence and the role of power in Guinea-Bissau, about the immediacy and dexterity of our actions, about our moving across sectors horizontally and within sectors, vertically, to encourage integration of effort. It struck me that we were “peace guerillas”. Like guerilla warriors we tried to “hit” strategically identified “targets”. We were mobile, we were light on our feet, administratively and physically, we were active through collaborators and we were focused on one objective: that we would prevent mass violence.

So I told the film crew we were “peace guerillas”. The label seemed to fit. The film crew has adopted it as the working title of their film. And like Martin Griffiths, I have come to recognize that we must embrace the qualities and modus operandi of both the “maverick mediator” and the “peace guerilla” if we are to be effective in achieving our ultimate goal: peace.

But there are downsides.

The downside to acting as a “peace guerilla” is running the risk of being misperceived by others, foreshortening the full response that is needed to prevent violence. The “peace guerilla” may be seen as impulsive, reactive, and his or her commitment to long-term violence prevention and peacebuilding “processes” could be misunderstood. A “peace guerilla” is obviously working outside the normal cycle of donor funding and peacebuilding programming. This can make other needed partners in violence prevention uneasy as the “guerilla” is seen moving quickly, appearing here and there, possibly even messing up the tidy world of larger organizations and systems.

The “peace guerilla” may not be seen as acting in a disciplined way. The analysis of need and the identification of required accomplishments needed now to stabilize a violent situation, to build the basis for further, deeper prevention work, may not be as obvious or as urgent to others as it is the “peace guerilla”. This can give others pause, and even a reason to dismiss this type of “maverick” activity.

While working hard to forge and mobilize partnerships, and wanting to achieve short –to- intermediate goals so that long-term sustainable peace may be built, the “peace guerilla” may be reluctantly accepted by other actors in the peacebuilding community but only on a short-term basis.

The “guerrilla’s” refusal to stake out territory, to be seen to offer a singular service or to have a conventional “model” of operating, can make others uncertain of the professionalism and predictability of the “guerilla”, thereby reducing the ease with which others might engage with the “guerrilla”.

There is also the simple fact that an effective “peace guerilla” may cause jealously and resentment in others who, because of who they are and what they do, cannot achieve what the guerrilla does.

Being aware of these “downsides”, however, should not discourage appropriate people at appropriate times from taking on the role of a “peace guerilla”. Strategically-informed, quickly executed actions that mobilize needed resources to achieve stability and build the basis for locally owned long-term violence prevention programming is absolutely necessary in potentially volatile situations.

Antidotes to being misperceived, misused or mistreated are necessary. Ultimately, both local actors, whether government officials, the military or civil society as well as other providers of peacebuilding services must trust the “peace guerilla”.

Some ways in which the “peace guerilla” can neutralize potential downsides, build trust, and achieve maximum value include:

• Having funding and administrative arrangements that allow maximum executive decision-making and flexible operating procedures;
• Demonstrating professional competence in conflict analysis and violence prevention;
• Having no stake in self- or corporate promotion;
• Being an active listener and adjusting priorities and responses to what those who know are saying is needed;
• Being sufficiently transparent to all key stakeholders;
• Putting resources in and providing tangible support to local leadership disposed to nonviolent, practical actions;
• Being comfortable and competent in working in all relevant sectors, including security;
• Being seen to act across sectors, facilitating integration of effort, and vertically within sectors, supporting practical immediate activities at the community and international levels;
• Demonstrating a broad repertoire of competencies and actions, from facilitation to mediation, to violence prevention advocacy, to having the technical know-how of lobbying for action; and
• Remaining engaged.


Ben Hoffman, Ph.D.,
Director,
International Peace and Prosperity Project
2005

* Talking Peace in a Time of Terror: United Nations Mediation and Collective Security By Martin Griffiths, March 2005, available for download here: http://www.hdcentre.org/datastore/shaping%20opinion/Talki...

Dear All:

The International Academy has received a small grant  from the Secure World Foundation. After careful deliberation of how to best use these funds, we decided that collaboratively writing an e-book about violence prevention would be a good starting project for the Academy.

This new e-book will have chapters that ask and answer hard questions, highlight the ethical and moral dilemmas, and set violence prevention on its best contemporary footing.

Therefore, we suggest that the style of writing be “loose” and “reflective” - a ” thinking out loud” which captures key issues and insights about violence prevention on paper.

Additionally, to ground the chapters in real-world experience and to keep them from becoming too abstract or academic, we ask that you focus either on a country you have recently worked in (i.e. as a “case study” ) or, practical experiences relating to policy and its applications.

We hope this kind of writing process will result in a book that gets beyond the surface treatment of conflict sensitive programming and preventing failed states to a deeper understanding and more “buzz” about the importance, challenges and ways to do effective violence prevention.

We have created a blog ( http://iarpv.blogspirit.com ) that will allow authors to post their material and others a chance to add comments too. This overall exercise of writing the book will provide the authors with a chance to reflect on their own practice and force us to examine our working assumptions, successes and failures in violence prevention.

Getting Started

So, to get started I urge you to visit the blog and look around to familiarize yourself with the layout and operation of the site.

There, you will see the list of Possible Chapters and you will be asked to select a chapter which you would like to be the principle author of or suggest a new chapter topic.

Once chapters have been selected (hopefully over the next 4 weeks) we will ask you to write and post a first draft for comment on the blog. The draft does not need to be very long (5-15 pages would suffice).

Please email your drafts to Evan at iarpv@yahoo.ca and he will post them online for you.

If you have any questions about how to add a new post or respond to someone else’s post then please email Evan Hoffman for technical assistance.


Please ensure that all drafts are posted online for comment by January 9th. 2006.

Once this has been done, please read the others’ work too and add your comments to their pieces by using the "add comment" button.

Please make your comments on the others' articles by January 15th.

After this step the International Academy will hire an editor to pull the material together and format it into the e-book. Also, a graphic designer will “spice up” the book with some interesting art and graphics.

The finished e-book will then be available to the public free-of-charge on the blog by April 1 2006.

Thanks everyone, and I look forward to us working together in a dynamic way to build a very interesting new book over the next 6 months!

Sincerely,
Ben Hoffman



POSSIBLE CHAPTERS AND THEIR AUTHOR(S)
PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME TO THE CHAPTER TOPIC WHICH YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE THE PRINCIPLE AUTHOR OF AND/OR SUGGEST A NEW TOPIC BY USING THE "ADD COMMENT" BUTTON.

-role of power in preventing violence

-facilitating the peaceful transition of political power to prevent violence

-how to network and/or collaborate effectively

-key skills needed for the violence prevention practitioner

- how central to preventing violence is eliminating corrupt governments?

-the role and challenge of advocacy in Early Warning and Early Response

-new directions: future concepts and emerging trends in violence prevention

-the importance of local actors in violence prevention

- domestic and international violence prevention: is there a difference?

- what is needed to deal with terrorists: more enforcement or more talk?

-why I fund violence prevention