BUILDING PEACE: SUSTAINABLE RECONCILIATION IN DIVIDED SOCIETIES

Abstract

The world craves and yearns for peace. The niggling question that agitates researchers, intellectuals and scholars is the design for durable serenity and peace for humanity. John Paul Lederach is one such pollster proffering to find lasting solution to conflicts. Lederach commences his work with an inquiry: ‘what are the useful concepts and perspectives for building peace?’. In Building Peace, he focuses upon the necessity of constructing relationships across multiple social levels, de-emphasizing the role of political elites, and instead he focuses on both mid-level elites (bureaucrats, intellectuals, religious leaders, influential persons among others) and grassroots-level activism. He insists that it is this group that can actually communicate peace like an osmosis infiltration into a virgin atmosphere. He emphasizes the need to develop long-range objectives and to delink expectations of short-term results. Lederach accentuates the need for implementation of training programmes to create a culture of peace within the society. Trained mediators should be indigenous to the society. In doing this, the hope is that the parachute problem of credibility (the idea that mediators are dropped from above (IGO/foreign government), and have no particular attachment to the conflict may be reduced, thereby initiating transformation of the conflict.