The Death of Conflict Resolution

The convenor for this plenary is Goran Bozicevic from ARK/Centre for Peace
Studies (Croatia). Clem Mc.Cartney, an independent consultant from Northern Ireland, has been invited as one of the resource people to the session and
has also helped us greatly to produce this written version for the Reader.

What do we mean by this title? It is intended to be very open, but, we hope,
not too confusing. We could be making a statement that Conflict Resolution has
died. Or we could be asking a question about the future of Conflict
Resolution. We are not presuming that there will be a consensus at the
Triennial on the subject and we all use this session as an opportunity to
debate what Conflict Resolution has to offer and what harm it can do. The
result of this discussion could be that we are clearer about the kind of
efforts we can take in response to conflict.

In order to find an appropriate response we need to understand the nature of
conflict. However we do not anticipate spending too much time at the session
itself discussing our views on conflict and we assume there might be a good
deal of agreement on the following statement: Conflict is neither bad or good.
It is part of life and life with no conflict is no life. It is an opportunity,
a wind, a move. It's like a young free horse. Conflict does become a problem
when it is a reflection of injustice and inequality in society and when our
attempts to deal with conflict themselves create more injustice, violence, pain
and suffering. In those circumstances we have to find ways of responding to
conflict which are constructive and point to a better society where conflicts
can be a creative force.

We would like to suggest two specific problems with Conflict Resolution which
we might need to discuss. First of all there is the nature of the industry
which has grown up around Conflict Resolution. It is a good income generator ,
not just for the bad guys. Conflict Resolution/Management is an industry, a
business which works as a market economy. It has experts, rules and models,
different approaches, tools, trainings, prices, fees, - and clients, the
'sides in conflict'. Its image has been carefully built as a mixture of
academia and activism.

The second issue which we hope will be discussed is the appropriateness of
Conflict Resolution as a set of models or techniques for dealing with conflict.
These approaches are themselves intimately related to the development of the
Conflict Resolution industry.

Without that analysis it may only be a superficial process which seems to rely
on the expert and takes away peoples confidence in their own abilities. It may
look superficially attractive to pacifists: "Give them a training, put them in
a model, educate them about 'steps' and 'rules'". What is really needed are
ways to get to the deep roots of the issues and the deep structure of relations
and begin to develop new paradigms to replace them. Perhaps because of the
assumption that conflict can be a force for good, we seem to be trying to find
a non-judgemental response which does not just accept the status quo and which
is not simply amoral? And therefore has conflict resolution given activists
that tool or method, or if it is inherently flawed itself what else can
activists do? After all activists are rushing to do conflict resolution
training or to offer training to others. It is not just corporate people from
outside that are doing it.

Most of all we hope that the session will be constructive and the critique of
conflict resolution will help us to look at alternatives. In particular we will
compare the idea of a model based on popular empowerment, on the way people
deal with conflict every day and the views of those who argue that change has
to come at the macro-politic level.

We hope you will bring your own experience of conflict to the session and test
the ideas discussed against that experience and as a result we hope we will all
have a better understanding of what more we can do to ensure that conflict can
be a force for good and not a cause of more harm.