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Cross-Conflict Participation Coming from a background as a psychologist and peace activist, I brought to the programme the theory and practice of these fields. Having arrived in Paris the second week of January, 1993, to begin my consultancy, I quickly sent faxes to leading psychologists and peace activists around the globe asking their inputs into our proposal. There was little time, only 3 weeks before the proposal had to be submitted so that it could be translated and sent to the Executive Board members who would meet in May to vote on the proposal. In those few weeks, having received many replies, I fashioned a composite of their suggestions into a proposal for what I called "cross-conflict participation." The concept of "cross-conflict participation" was based on the social psychological principle that reconciliation is best accomplished by having the former antagonists participate together on projects aimed at common "superordinate" goals - i.e. goals which were above and beyond the lines conflicts that had separated them and from which they would both benefit. (I even wrote an article for the Director-General to a major psychological journal explaining this principle). In terms of one popular formulation of conflict resolution, the programme it aimed to establish "win-win" situations for the antagonists. UNESCO's role would be that of a catalyst bringing the antagonists together to plan joint projects, finding the funding for these projects, and helping them work together to accomplish common goals. In order to expand this into a wide social movement, it was proposed that UNESCO establish training programmes which would train the development workers of other agencies, international, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The training methodology was to be drawn from the best practitioners in the field. In particular, this meant drawing from the experience and methodology of the Quakers and the Mennonites, two ancient religious groups who did not talk much about their religion or try to convert people to their faith in words, but who showed their religion by their deeds, working as peacemakers in every part of the world. Throughout the world, whether in Central America, Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Far East, the Middle East or the Balkans, one was told the same thing, the best peacemakers are the Quakers and the Mennonites. In particular we would build on the training method developed by John Paul Lederach and the Mennonite Central Committee which they call "elicitive" because it assumes that each person brings to the training a unique and valuable set of experiences with conflict transformation which can be shared with others in order to work out an appropriate methodology. The goal is to develop a permanent process of growth in networks of "peace promoters" who continually develop through mutual learning and support. This is to be accomplished through periodic reunions by which their field experiences inform and further develop the training process for new promoters and for the network as a whole. Ultimately, the goal was to train those who would promote a broad social movement of non-violent change for peace and justice. |