Sustainable Reconciliation

There is no handy roadmap for reconciliation . . . no short cut or simple prescription for healing the wounds and divisions of a society in the aftermath of sustained violence. Creating trust and understanding between former enemies is a supremely difficult challenge.

It is, however, an essential one to address in the process of building a lasting peace. Examining the painful past, acknowledging it and understanding it, and above all transcending it together, is the best way to guarantee that it does not – and cannot – happen again.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Foreword to the IDEA Handbook Reconciliation After Violent Conflict

Societies still divided because of past conflict exist in all continents. From Peru or Argentina to Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Serbia to East Timor, Sri Lanka or Nepal, issues of justice for yesterday’s violent oppressors and war leaders continue to pose dilemmas for today’s democrats seeking to bridge past divisions and look to the future.

Peaceful coexistence and the eventual reconciliation of divided communities – in other words, societies learning to live with themselves – is fundamental to preventing the recurrence of violence and building long-term, sustainable democracies. 

The IDEA Handbook Reconciliation after Violent Conflict presents a ‘governance approach’ to reconciliation. From this perspective, sustainable reconciliation requires the deliberate construction of political and institutional processes that may include truth commissions, international or national justice mechanisms, methods of compensation or reparation, social and psychological counselling projects, dialogue processes and support for civil society grass-roots initiatives. Work is now underway to develop a cadre of experts who have experienced conflict in their countries to assist in the design and development of practical reconciliation measures, and to engage in outreach and dissemination activities with future organizers and partners.

IDEA Work on Reconciliation

Since the 2003 publication of the Reconciliation After Violent Conflict Handbook, IDEA has been working to promote both broader understanding of a governance approach to reconciliation and its practical application in specific post-conflict contexts. Activities to date include the following:

Publications

• Translation. To make the insights and analysis contained in the Reconciliation Handbook both to broader and specific targeted audiences, a Policy Summary of the Handbook has been translated into a number of languages. French, Spanish, Sinhala, Tamil and Burmese. In the latter three cases translation has been directly connected to IDEA-supported reconciliation activities in the countries concerned (Sri Lanka and Burma.)
• Collaboration with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)/Spanish UNHCR Committee in the framework of their project “Conflicts: Prevention, Resolution, Reconciliation”. IDEA contributed to their meetings in Valencia, Spain, in February 2004 and in Barcelona, Spain in June 2004. The outcomes of the resulting "Barcelona Process" include a range of both publications and advocacy activities.
• Providing international actors with a series of occasional reconciliation policy papers. Papers produced to date:
• • “Reconciliation in Times of Transition: The Role of Parliaments and Inter-Parliamentary Bodies” a policy input to 110th IPU Assembly held in Mexico City in April 2004. An edited version, the Handbook Making Reconciliation work: the role of parliaments was jointly published by IDEA and IPU in early 2005. The Handbook, which was formally launched in November 2005 in the Parliament of Burundi, Bujumbura, is also available in French, Spanish and Arabic translations. It also served as a key reference point and resource for a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-sponsored international donor conference on “Parliaments, crisis, prevention and recovery” held in Brussels on 19-21 April 2006, and the Guidelines for the International Community on Parliaments, Crisis Prevention and Recovery subsequently produced by UNDP.
  • “Reconciliation Lessons Learned: Sierra Leone and Timor Leste” was presented at the annual Head of Field Presences Meeting of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in October 2004. International IDEA was asked by OHCHR to undertake a study of ‘reconciliation lessons learned’ from the recent experience of UN missions in Sierra Leone and Timor L’Este.
  • Reconciliation and the Peace Process in Sri Lanka: Frameworks, Challenges and Ways Forward. A report published in the follow up to a series of IDEA-sponsored national and regional reconciliation consultations held in Sri Lanka in 2004-2005.

Regions

• Latin America. In co-operation with the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH), International IDEA has been taking forward the analysis contained in the Reconciliation after Violent Conflict Handbook by focusing on the relationship between processes of reconciliation and agendas for democratization in the Latin American context (see Project Description).

  Using five country case studies (Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru) as a starting point, the analysis aims at relaunching the debate on reconciliation and democratization in the region. A publication 'Verdad, Justicia y Reparación: desafios para la Democracia y la Convivencia Social' (‘Truth, Justice and Reparations: challenges for democracy and social coexistence’) comprising the five country case studies, a regional overview and a summarized version of the IDEA Reconciliation Handbook was launched in July 2005 in Costa Rica jointly with IIDH, followed by related national events in the five case study countries.

• In South Asia IDEA has been conducting or supporting a variety of reconciliation-directed activities:
• • How is reconciliation perceived and understood in South Asia, a region characterized by multiple and diverse religious, cultural and historical perspectives? To explore this question IDEA, in collaboration with the Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) regional network, organized a regional reconciliation sympo sium held in New Delhi in March 2005 that brought together a wide range of South Asian thinkers and practitioners in the field of reconciliation and peace building. The report Reconciliation in South Asia: Exploring the Terrain presents critical reconciliation-related issues for the region discussed at the symposium.
  • In Sri Lanka a series of national and regional dialogues have taken place, between the Sinhala and Tamil communities and with policymakers, on the importance of making reconciliation an integral part of the peace and conflict transformation processes. The dialogues have been organized in partnership with the conducted with local partners the Berghof Foundation, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). IDEA has also convened a national interfaith dialogue and supported translation of the Reconciliation Handbook Policy Summary into Sinhala and Tamil. As well as organizing a follow up consultation in March 2006 on current developments in the Sri Lankan peace process, addressed among others by former prime minister Ranil Wikremesinghe, IDEA has also published a related policy paper Reconciliation and the Peace Process in Sri Lanka: Frameworks, Challenges and Ways Forward.
  • In Burma IDEA has produced the Reconciliation Handbook Policy Summary in local translation. As part of its efforts to develop an overarching programme on South Asian approaches to reconciliation, in February 2004 IDEA invited four Burmese active ists to observe the Sri Lankan dialogues on reconciliation and to meet with Sri Lankan activists. In November 2005 a series of workshops for representatives of opposition groups to share reconciliation experiences from Asia were convened.
• In West Africa IDEA has conducted a series of consultations with a broad range of local and international stakeholders to assess the diverse reconciliation-related needs and challenges of the region. The first consultation, organized in collaboration with the Gorée Institute, Senegal in May 2005, brought together practitioners, analysts and policy-makers from the Francophone countries of the region. Also present were Pierre Schori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Côte D’Ivoire and senior representatives of the Senegalese government. The second consultation (April 2006) held in Accra, Ghana in partnership with the West Africa Network For Peacebuilding (WANEP) and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) assessed critical reconciliation issues in the Anglophone countries of West Africa.
• Western Balkans. Over a decade after the 1995 Dayton Accords and the bitter conflicts that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, IDEA decided to test the hypothesis that developments in the Western Balkans had reached the point where it might be feasible to consider the development of a regional reconciliation initiative aimed at addressing unresolved institutional aspects of the painful legacy of the recent past. To this end a high-level consultation on ‘Promoting Sustainable Reconciliation in the Western Balkans’ was held in April 2006.

Reconciliation Resource Network (RRN)

• To support the overall development of its work on reconciliation, in October 2005 IDEA convened the first meeting of the Reconciliation Expert Network (REN) in Ottawa, Canada and hosted by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The main objectives of the network are:
• • to promote the exchange of policy-oriented thinking, practical experience and critical perspectives among the global community of reconciliation policy-makers and practitioners
  • To identify issues deserving of further attention and analysis by IDEA and/or other relevant actors

  In line with these objectives the REN brings together a small but diverse group of experts and practitioners from three principal constituencies:

• • Contributors to the IDEA Reconciliation Handbook Reconciliation after Violent Conflict
  • Practitioners involved in different ways in IDEA-sponsored reconciliation programmes in the field
  • Selected reconciliation researchers and academics.

  The second REN meeting, held in Stockholm in March 2006, focused on current reconciliation challenges in South Asia and Sri Lanka in particular. In addition, it was decided to give the network a public profile in the form of a new dedicated website known as the Reconciliation Resource Network (RRN). With funding from the Swiss Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs work on setting up the site was initiated in summer 2006 with a view to launching the RRN in early 2007.

  Addressed to the diverse and geographically dispersed community of reconciliation practitioners, analysts and policy makers, the RRN is intended to serve as an online forum for sharing information, best practices, links and other resources. In addition the RRN will also provide a forum for structured, searchable discussion of emerging issues, challenges and trends in the field of reconciliation.