What can we learn from the failing reconciliation process in Northern Ireland? Antti Pentikäinen writes on “Insider Reconcilers Dialogue for Sustaining Peace” in Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation latest publication.
Full article here.
Training insider reconcilers to create sustainable peace
When Antti Pentikainen was early in his career as a peacemaking practitioner, his work assisting Nobel Peace Laureate and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari took him to conflict zones and immersed him in mediation processes.
However, as he did this work, he began to notice that something wasn’t quite right.
“Although Ahtisaari was cautious of time, I saw that these processes in general drag on,” he told S-CAR News.
He noticed that these processes seemed unable to account for “the urgency of the pain people have,” and he realized that although people affected by conflict seem to know best what the problems are and how to fix them, they rarely have access to the mediation process.
S-CAR Establishes Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation
George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) has received a generous gift from James Hoch and his family to establish the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation.
The center will bring scholars and practitioners together to build knowledge of reconciliation practices and apply them where needed in the U.S. and in post-war contexts abroad. The gift will fund the first years of the center’s operating expenses, the hiring of an executive director, and reconciliation research that incorporates “insider reconcilers”—people in conflict areas who understand the local context and social structures to better facilitate reconciliation.