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19.5: Assessing Conflict Transformation in Four Peace Processes

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    77222
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    Many looked to South Africa as an exemplar of nonviolent conflict transformation, or at least transition from a white supremacist non-democracy to an all-race democracy. Ending decades of apartheid under domestic and international pressure seems to have been easier than transitioning to a post-apartheid democracy where political and economic opportunities are open to all without regard to race. The key here is that ending or remedying the effects of the structural violence of economic inequality has hardly occurred at all, at least not perceptibly for most black South Africans, as the burgeoning shanty towns demonstrate. The vulnerability of single-party rule to corruption is taking a toll and what Tutu described as disillusionment is overtaking the hope and aspiration that characterized the initial democratization process.

    In Bosnia things are not much better than they were at the end of the armed conflict, if at all. The Dayton agreements legitimized two entities with two languages, two governments, two identities, two economies, and affiliations of the entities with those who started the conflict as a means of dividing and annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina to their newly independent states. Right-wing secessionists control Republika Srpska, right-wing parties and leaders control Serbia and Croatia, and the only signs of unrest are from those further right or who advocate further right policies than those who currently hold power.

    In spite of the persistent de facto socio-economic segregation in Northern Ireland and continuing signs that non-dualistic conflict identities remain relatively influential, especially among young people, there does also seem to be a ray of hope that, as the Good Friday agreements allowed, if or when a majority of those living in Northern Ireland support unification or at least union with the Republic rather than the UK, such a nationalist transition might take place and peacefully at that. How peacefully such a change might be would depend in large part on exactly how Protestant North Irish negotiate a relationship with their Catholic neighbors both in the North and in the North’s relationship with the Republic. This is not meant to suggest that such a change is inevitable, but both parties in the north (i.e. nationalists and unionists) seem at least open to a relationship with the Republic that continues to allow the fairly unhampered movement of people and goods across a border that Brexit would or could impede. This is an example of positive peace, encompassing consensus on social justice issues in addition to arrangements to end hostilities (negative peace).

    Like South Africa, despair is a defining feature of the political climate in Palestine as well as among liberal Israeli Jews and peace activists who oppose the occupation and support Palestinian rights. The main difference here is the longevity of that despair. No less than the Shin Bet has identified despair, not organized political resistance, as the primary motivation for Palestinian attacks on Israelis over the past several years. Most of these attacks, by the way, are against uniformed officers of the Israeli state, not against civilians. Among the civilians who are attacked, a large number live in settlements in Area C and are regarded by most if not all Palestinians as instrumental to the occupation. As the reality for a two-state solution on the ground is, literally, slipping away with the “swiss cheese” looking jurisdiction in Area C and the increasingly Bantustan situation of the cities and towns in Areas A and B, there seems to be no way forward. At the same time, the occupation cannot go on forever, although as yet there is not a center or center-left coalition clearly opposed to it that could wrestle power from Netanyahu’s Likud-led ruling right-wing alliance.

    Failure to achieve conflict transformation has social, political, and economic costs. Low-intensity conflict fueled by unreconciled or unacknowledged grievances continues with an ever-present potential to escalate. Politically, the failure to transform a conflict post-violence leaves the situation unstable with problems related to the perception of legitimacy (or illegitimacy) or the post-conflict political institutions (all four cases including anti-PA demonstrations in the last two years). The economic costs are primarily that human capital remains undeveloped, unemployment is high, people are undereducated, and a failure to address the structural violence that almost always or always accompanies direct violence means that many people do not see any difference in their quality of life during and after the violent conflict has ended. A key question here – one that could be taken up in a more thorough and comparative study, concerns the role of Nongovernmental Organizations or NGOs and grassroots peacebuilding organizations and whether their efforts to transform a conflict through people-to-people peacemaking might be able to succeed where institutions and political leaders fail.


    19.5: Assessing Conflict Transformation in Four Peace Processes is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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