PEACE MAKING

The term "peacemaking" is used in two ways. First, peacemaking is sometimes used to refer to a stage of conflict, which occurs during a crisis or a prolonged conflict after diplomatic intervention has failed and before peacekeeping forces have had a chance to intervene. In this context peacemaking is an intervention during armed combat.

The second way the term is used is to mean simply "making peace." Idea of making peace implies a certain devotion towards that goal. Peacemaking is necessary and important in cases of protracted violence that do not seem to burn themselves out and in cases where war crimes and other human devastation demand the attention of outside forces. In both cases, peacemaking always implies the threat of violent intervention as an act of last option. In the second case it may demand violent intervention sooner rather than later.

FACTORS PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE 

Social psychologists have focused on four strategies for helping enemies become comrades. We can remember these as the four C’s of the peacemaking:-

  Contact

  Cooperation

  Communication

  Conciliation.

Contact: Might putting people into close contact reduce their hostilities? There are good reasons to think so. yet, despite some encouraging early studies of desegregation, other studies show that in schools mere desegregation has little effect upon racial attitudes, like the one study by social psychologist Walter Stephan (1986). According to him, sometimes desegregation has led to increased prejudice (especially by Whites toward Blacks) and sometimes to decreased prejudice (especially by Blacks towards Whites). But on balance the effects are minimal for both Black and White students. In most schools, interracial contact is seldom prolonged or intimate. When it is structured to convey equal status, hostilities often lessen.

Here equal-status contact means the contact made on equal basis. Just as a relationship between people of unequal status breeds attitudes consistent with their relationship, so do relationships between those of equal status. Thus, to reduce prejudice, interracial contact should be between persons equal in status.

Cooperation: Although equal-status contact can help, it is sometimes not enough. Contacts are especially beneficial when people work together to overcome a common threat or to achieve a superordinate goal. A superordinate goal is a shared goal that necessitates cooperative effort; a goal that overrides people’s differences from one another.

In his boys’ camp experiments, Sherif used the unifying effect of a common enemy to create cohesive groups. Then he used the unifying power of cooperative effort to settle the conflicting groups. Taking their cue from experiments on cooperative contact, several research teams have replaced competitive classroom learning situations with opportunities for cooperative learning. Their heartening results suggest how to constructively implement desegregation and strengthen our confidence that cooperative activities can benefit human relations at all levels.

Extending these findings, Samuel Gaertner with his fellows (1990, 1991) reports that working cooperatively has especially favorable effects under conditions that lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their former subgroups. If, for example, the members of two groups sit alternately around a table, (rather than on opposite sides), give their new group a single name, and then work together, their old feelings of bias against the former outsiders will diminish. “Us” and “them” become “we”.

Communication: Conflicting parties can also seek to resolve their differences by bargaining either directly with one another or they can ask a third-party to mediate by making suggestions and facilitating their negotiations. Or they can arbitrate by submitting their disagreement to someone who will study the issues and impose a settlement. When a pie of fixed size is to be divided, adopting a tough negotiating stance tends to gain one a larger piece (for example, a better price). When the pie can vary in size, as in the dilemma situations, toughness more often backfires. Third-party mediators also help resolve conflicts by facilitating constructive communication. Their first task is to help the parties rethink the conflict and to gain information about the other party’s interests. By prodding them to set aside their conflicting demands and opening offers and to think instead about underlying needs, interests and goals, the mediator aims to replace a competitive “win-lose” orientation with a cooperative “win-win” orientation that aims at  a mutually beneficial resolution. Mediators can also structure communications that will peel away misperceptions and increase mutual understanding and trust.

Conciliation: Sometimes tension and suspicion run so high that communication becomes all but impossible. Each party may threaten, coerce or retaliate against the other. Unfortunately, such acts tend to be reciprocated, thus escalating the conflict. In such times, small conciliatory gestures by one party may elicit reciprocal conciliatory acts by the other party. Those who mediate tense labor-management and international conflicts sometimes use one other peacemaking strategy. They instruct the participants in the dynamics of conflict and peacemaking. The hope is that understanding – understanding how conflicts are fed by social traps, perceived injustice, competition and misperceptions and understanding how conflicts can be resolved through equal-status contact, cooperation, communication and conciliation – can help us establish and enjoy peaceful, rewarding relationships.

The changing nature of war: One of the factors underlining the urgency of the study of peace and conflict transformation is the changing nature of war.  Wars have afflicted humankind for at least as far back as recorded history, but in the modern age war and violent conflict have devolved into something more destructive and devastating than ever before. 

In the course of the 20th Century we have seen a shift in victims of wars.  The past century has seen a shift in casualties from combatant to civilian, from men to women, from adult to child.  In pre-modern times, wars were fought between opposing armies and civilians were less directly affected.  However, the nature of modern warfare and the production of modern weapons have changed all that.  The use of weapons such as long-range rockets that kill indiscriminately, particularly when deployed in the aerial bombing of urban areas, and anti-personnel land mines that mainly kill and maim civilians, and continue to produce new victims long after the actual warfare has ceased, has shifted the balance in favor of civilian casualties.  In 1914-1917, in the predominantly trench warfare of World War I, 5% of the casualties were civilian.  By World War II in 1939-1945, the number of civilian casualties had risen to 50%.  In the Vietnam War of 1963-1975, civilians accounted for 80% of the war casualties, while in the present-day conflicts, civilian casualties amount to 90-95% of all those injured and killed.

New types of war need new a style of peace-making: Traditionally, peace-making was carried out by high level committees who brought the warring parties together to negotiate a settlement or at least a cease fire that would halt hostilities until a permanent settlement could be worked out.  One of the best-known examples is the 1953 cease fire between North and South Korea, brokered by the United Nations, which de facto erected a cease-fire line, dividing the country along the actual line of battle at that moment, and created a demilitarized zone to separate the opposing armies.  Until today, no peace treaty has ever been signed by the warring parties.

From outside mediators to grass-roots peacemaking: In conventional or traditional diplomacy, peacemaking was usually done by outside mediators.  The thinking was that the parties involved in a conflict would be unwilling to make concessions or propose compromises, but that mediating teams acceptable to both sides would have greater flexibility to suggest and negotiate peace settlements on terms satisfactory to all.  Outside mediators could suggest alternatives and encourage a shift in attitudes and thus move things forward in the direction of peace