It's a wrap! Highlights from Chulalongkorn University's Conflict Resolution Program...

"Suppose we did our work like the snow, quietly, quietly. leaving nothing out". --Wendell Berry, 2009

• Many Paths to the Top of the Mountain

• Many paths to peace as there are people… So meet some of my colleagues in Rotary Peace Fellowship Class 21. Many ways to manage peace and conflict… at the end we must decide how we want our society to look like today and for our future generations…

• All of the Peace Fellows were doing things that contributed to peace in their own way.

• Ana Patel – Director of International Peace Programs for Outward Bound – Survival training between people of cultures in conflict.

• Sherif Elegnahy – An Egyptian Judge and former Fullbright Scholar, bringing mediation to Egypt and the Middle East.

• Maqsood Sheer – With Rotary, has brought computers to many school districts in Afghanistan and now is re-establishing a rural school after the founder was killed by the Taliban.

• Stine Marie Jacobsen – A project artist, asking people “what was the most violent movie you’ve watched” - indirectly getting them to talk about violence and their role in it.

• Richard Chepsergon – A school teacher who facilitated dialogue between two warring tribes who had been killing each other over cattle rustling in Kenya –AND THESE ARE JUST FIVE OF THE FELLOWS…

• We first learned to take conflict apart… thanks to Johan Galtung’sTheories…

• We looked at: Negative Peace – Absence of physical violence - Peace that is enforced often by force to keep people from killing each other and…

• Positive Peace… the underlying conditions that will allow for a prolonged peace by attempting to change attitudes in society while providing structures which will help meet the needs of the parties in conflict so peace is long lasting…

• Looked at the ABCs Attitudes/Actors, Behaviors, and Contradictions/Connectors/Dividers

• We looked at Cultural, Physical and Structural

• We looked at Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and Peacebuilding (Johan Galtung)

• Basic facts about conflict…

• General Trends…

• Uppsala Conflict Data Program – Dr. Erik Melander

• 118,000 Battle Deaths, down from 130,000 in 2014

• Civilian Deaths 20% in 1900 – Now 80%

• The majority of battle deaths were caused by ISIS/Boko Haram in 2015

• The increase of religious wars or jihadi wars since 2001

• Rape is Sex as Violence is to Power… it destroys it. Dr. Chaiwat Satha Anand

• Success Rates of Independence Groups Using

Non Violence vs Violence

Success

50%

25%

Partial Success

22%

10%

Failure

20%

60%

• Gender in Peace – Irene Santiago – Peace in Mindanao - Peacebuilding occurs when the connectors outnumber the dividers…

• 80-90% of all victims of war civilians/ 70% are women and children

• 80% of refugees in war are women and children.

• Only - 50 % of peace process lasted more than 5 years – had women participating

• 12% of all peace processes have had women participants.

• Gender in War

• The concept of “masculinity” needs to be revisited

• Power and control through violence must not be glorified

• To say “man up”… or “be a man”

• Violence as a “right of passage”, as the preferred solution

• There are more tools in the inventory of being a man…

• Seeking Inner Peace – Dr. Hansa Dhammahaso, Forest Monk, Director Peace Studies at MahaChulalongKornRajaVidyaLaya Buddhist University

• Seeking Inner Peace concurrent with Outer Peace

• Inner harmony leads to outer harmony

• Perils of greed, conceit and unyielding views upon the greater society seeking harmony

• Becoming a Peace Engineer

• Inner peace/Harmony/Meditation

• Conflict analysis

• Creating conditions for peace building - often an incremental“agile” process

• Bhichai Rattakul, the architect of peace between Thailand and Vietnam after the Vietnam War.

• “A river cuts through rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence”

• Dale Carnegie, no one thinks themselves as the bad guy…

• Dialogue is the always the beginning of a peace process…

• To understand, not judge…

• To allow for expression and acknowledgement… sometimes that all people need…

• Dialogue – Understanding the “OTHER” to understand their needs towards common ground

• Malay – Thai – Muslim fishermen whose village has been raided 300 times by security services

• Thai Military – In charge of managing conflict – 5700 Civilian Deaths since 2004 vs 5700 Military Deaths

• Former Khmer Rouge Soldier at Pol Pot’s Cremation Site

• Conflict Management – We can decide how to architect our society and decide levels of…

• How much… Negative Peace vs. Positive Peace

• What is our… Acceptable level of conflict = Acceptable level of risk

• Accept the risk, avoid the risk, transfer risk, mitigate the risk

• Creating an environment of trust and understanding...

• Spawns dialogue and understanding of needs

• Presents opportunities for conflict transformation

• To build a more long lasting peace solution