The purpose of this workshop was to explore post-agreement reconciliation(s) in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Colombia and to co-design a 2-year comparative research project. These are brief summaries of the expert panel presentations.
Post Agreement Reconciliation(s) in Changing Political Eras:
A Comparative of BiH, Northern Ireland, and Colombia
November 14-15, 2023
Ulster University | Belfast
Presenters
Brandon Hamber
The John Hume and Thomas O’Neill Chair in Peace
International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE)
Ulster University
Claire Hazelden
Research Analyst
Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime Programme
Northern Ireland Executive
Felipe Gomez Isa
Professor of Public International Law
Research Analyst: Pedro Arrupe Human Rights Institute
University of Deusto
Gráinne Kelly
Lecturer: politics; peace and conflict studies
School of Social and Policy Science
International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE)
Ulster University
Roland Kostić
Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Director of the Hugo Valentin Centre
Uppsala University
Duncan Morrow
Lecturer: politics; peace and conflict studies
Director of Community Engagement
Ulster University
Teri Murphy
Associate Director for Peacebuilding Research
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
The Ohio State University
Andrew Thomson
Senior Lecturer
School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice
Queen’s University Belfast
Pedro Valenzuela (emeritus and director of)
Graduate Program in Conflict Resolution
Political Science Department
Human Rights and Peacebuilding Institute
Pontificia University Javeriana
Presentation synopses
Panel: Peace Processes and Transitional Justice
Presenters: Brandon Hamber, Roland Kostić, Felipe Gomez
Brandon Hamber
Focus: An initiative to explore reconciliation in post Good Friday Agreement, people’s perception of the agreement’s impact, if/how peace dividends have been realized, and how global and regional dynamics are influencing the peace process.
Summary: Brandon has been researching and writing about transitional justice for nearly thirty years, particularly related to South Africa and Northern Ireland. During Northern Ireland’s 25th year celebration of the Good Friday Agreement, he launched an initiative (public events, community dialogues, youth engagement), involving over 800 people. What he learned was that tension remains between the past and present. Although people want to talk about the past, yet they don’t for a variety of reasons. This constant tension has a bearing on transitional justice and reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland. Overall, there is frustration with the peace process. Although there have been improvements with policing, other institutions continue to crumble, and political leadership has largely failed. The cost of living is high, unequal economic distribution remains; the “peace dividend” only applies to certain people. Middle class individuals feel more at ease and experience peace, whereas the working class have remained stuck.
There is also good news. People are growing in their comfort level with each other (across ethno-religious divides), and there is increased tolerance and respect for one another. In many neighborhoods, however, sectarianism, hate, and spatial divides still exists. Paramilitarism continues to influence everyday life. Young people are still being pulled into paramilitary activity, but at least now, they can buy their way out versus during the Troubles when it was impossible to escape. Young and old want a voice and to participate in change. For youth, they are especially concerned about climate change. Generational tensions exist as they perceive older people holding them back from participating in future oriented initiatives. Older people focus on the legacy of the past, impunity, and limited truth telling – whereas youth didn’t want to talk about transitional justice, they were not even aware of the debates. Brexit has re-polarized society, pushing people back into previous camps; mental health came up a lot (stress of living, poverty, tensions of living in particular neighborhoods, threats). And now, with the influx of refugees and migrants, there are new communities in Northern Ireland. The changing composition of communities seems mostly positive, but social bias might have been taking place during these conversations.
Roland Kostić
Focus: A research project exploring experiences and reflections of victims who testified before the Hague tribunal or Bosnian War crime chamber, recently released convicted/perpetrators, and lawyers (defenders and prosecutors) who were involved in Bosnia’s extraordinary transitional justice processes.
Summary: “Peace” in Bosnia is complex, and it has gone in waves. The country made progress until 2008, but since then, there has been a decline. To unpack some of the dynamics of Bosnia’s peace process, Roland has been involved in a two-year study in which he has been interviewing 25 victims who testified in front of the Hague and Bosnia’s War Crimes Chambers, 20 perpetrators who were sentenced and have now been released, 10 defender lawyers, and 6 prosecutors involved in these processes. He wanted to learn about their experiences and their reflections (looking back at) on the transitional process. (With victims and perpetrators, there has been a 5-year lag since their participation in these formal processes.) He was curious to find out if/how everyday justice tainted the extraordinary justice processes, and what happened within the long-term experience of these stakeholders. Roland described the war in Bosnia as sociological, rooted in three incompatible nation-building processes. He discussed the peace process as being controlled by political elites. In fact, there is still an international group overseeing Bosnia. U.S. negotiators sought to establish a liberal peace, but they ignored (a) local and regional interests (b) how long the process would take. They also ignored the strength of political parties and their networks (who also control much the economy) – which has had a major impact. They privatized and now control business. “Memory” continues to be problematic in Bosnia, which has impeded a TRC-type state-level process, w/ the work of the Srebrenica commission as being one exemption to this rule. He described some of the memory wars taking place, the way political elites are trying to shape and reframe stories that come out in courts, through memorial sites, and even reaching as far back as WWII.
Felipe Gomez
Focus: The challenges of (contested) truth, memory, and knowledge making and why the application of international law is critical; how international law and transitional justice processes have evolved and the ways these new frameworks can protect against impunity/amnesty, pressure States to comply, and ultimately support the protection/respect of human rights.
Summary: Truth and memory are contested in many post-accord settings. Felipe showed pictures of attempts to remove moments of former dictators, along with anti-removal protests. He underscored that there are, and will always be, contested accounts and contested narratives of the past. Some people will even glorify and protect the past, such as the Valley of the Fallen. He went on to discuss the value of transitional justice from a legal perspective. With the growth in international frameworks has come global pressure for countries/leaders to adopt these measures. There is an increased intolerance of impunity and increased scrutiny on local and international processes – with many more international stakeholders involved such as UN bodies, OAS, EU, HWR, ICC, etc. Currently, there is a paradigmatic shift taking place, moving away from retributive responses to restorative ones. Legal standards have become more sophisticated and now there is a catalog to follow (truth, justice, reparation, nonrecurrence, etc.), alongside IHRL, international jurisprudence organizations, and UN basic principles. Truth, justice, and reparations are interdependent and complimentary – a wise combination that is the most adequate way to pursue national reconciliation after years of conflict and abuse of human rights. Felipe emphasized the right to truth. Not only do victims have a right to the truth, but society should also know about the truth, about the abuses that took place in the past. “Knowledgement” (knowledge making) and acknowledgement to victims, and public recognition of victimhood is critical. The State has a duty of memory, a duty to create the conditions that allow individuals and society to develop memories (inherent plurality of memories). Memory is also a process of social creation and recreation – through literature, cinema, theatre, museums. One good example is ESMA in Argentina. As it relates to transitional justice processes, having truth commissions can help push against denialism.
Panel: Peace Processes and Reintegration
Presenters: Andrew Thomson, Claire Hazelden, Pedro Valenzuela
Andrew Thomson
Focus: Comparative research focused on the (re-)integration of right-wing, pro-government militias in Northern Ireland and Colombia.
Summary: Right-wing non-state armed organizations may or may not have a relationship with the State, and they may not be politically aligned. They are usually reactionary and anti-insurgent. They are an understudied group in peace processes. Much of our academic and policy work on negotiations, agreements, DDR, and transitional justice assume the State is dealing with direct opponents (i.e. insurgents). Little work has focused on managing “pro-government” paramilitaries. In particular, insufficient attention has focused on how individuals from these “pro-government” paramilitaries might experience reintegration differently to members of insurgencies/guerrillas. Andrew has been comparing Northern Ireland’s UVF/UDA and Colombia’s AUC and contrasting those to the IRA/INLA and FARC/ELN. The design of reintegration process in Northern Ireland did not distinguish between insurgent groups (IRA/INLA) or loyalist groups. In Colombia, FARC had a specific collective DDR, a ‘reincorporation’ and ‘normalization’. An individual process was designed for AUC.
Claire Hazelden
Focus: Northern Ireland government’s initiatives and approaches to reintegration and paramilitarism.
Summary: Many frameworks and different agreements have fed into the Executive’s current TPP program. The Good Friday Agreement lacked formal DDR mechanisms and decommissioning. Prisoners were released with the expectation of upholding democratic commitments. But there was no follow up on individuals or the tracking of recidivism. There is anecdotal evidence that some individuals have fully reintegrated, some are now involved in their communities, even as politicians – but others did not follow that path and they are now involved in criminality and paramilitaries. Violence continued after the agreement, through splinter or dissident groups. There is now less inter-group violence, but intra-group violence is prevalent. The Fresh Start Agreement in 2015 was an attempt to solidify the peace, to encourage progress and hope. But there was a collapse in the Executive, paramilitary murders took place, so by 2018, there was a formal call to tackle residual paramilitary behavior. In the New Decade New Approach of 2020, tackling paramilitary was named as a priority but no specifics were given. It did not address on-going membership, that young people continue to be pulled in and involved, and that children are groomed. Groups were also not differentiated. The government does not know how many people are still involved in paramilitary activity. Some groups use the branding of a paramilitary organization for criminality by exploiting it versus truly accepting its ideology.
Pedro Valenzuela
Focus: An overview of the reintegration process for leftist and FARC guerillas in Colombia.
Summary: Colombia has a long tradition of DDR – they were demobilizing guerillas as far back as the 1950s. Colombia started using the term DDR in 80-90s; over the years, approximately 50,000 individuals have been demobilized. The country has grown in its knowledge/expertise, and an enormous bureaucratic system now exists. There were two tracks for demobilization: individual or collective. Individual demobilization refers to persons who deserted the organization, and collective demobilization refers to processes resulting from negotiations with the organizations. However, the model was the same: Working assumptions about the demobilized include that they are a threat because they know how to handle weapons and are used to resorting to violence to achieve objectives. Thus, an overarching goal or motivation of Colombia’s DDR efforts was to avoid these threats and that former combatants do not recidivate. They encourage reintegration using different types of incentives such as economic (jobs), health and security insurance, and education. The main objective has been to dismantle the entire organization. Historically, ex-combatants were treated and seen as passive receivers by the state.
But that all changed during FARC negotiations. The FARC didn’t accept these assumptions and refused to accept a model had been used as a counterinsurgency strategy to encourage desertion, and that had been used in the negotiations with their nemesis: the right-wing paramilitary groups. They rejected the term DDR. They argued that disarmament didn’t apply to them, for they would not be turning in their guns – they would abandon them, but not turn them in, as that was something done by defeated organizations, which was not their case. They also rejected the term demobilization. On the contrary, their goal was to mobilize for change, to pursue the group’s political agenda. And they rejected the term reintegration because they had always been living in society. Besides semantics, there were important differences with the previous model of DDR:
- The objective to maintain the structure of the organization, as opposed to dismantling the organization. They needed the structure to pursue the group’s political goals.
- A focus on collective vs. individual benefits (although ex-combatants can choose the individual demobilization path).
- Active FARC participation in the design and implementation of both the peace agreement and the DDR process (as opposed to being a passive receiver of the benefits of a process designed by the state).
After years of negotiation, a big surprise came when the referendum lost by 1%. Because citizens had become polarized on the agreement, they successfully renegotiated a few points, i.e. they had to change language, particularly around gender issues (re: Catholic and Pentecostal movements). Obstacles to the implementation of the peace agreement and the DDR process have been the result of the election of a conservative government who promised they would shred the peace agreement to pieces, and by unforeseen logistical difficulties.
Panel: Peace Processes and Reconciliation
Presenters: Gráinne Kelly, Teri Murphy, Duncan Morrow
Gráinne Kelly
Focus: Everyday reconciliation indicators in hyper-local communities in Northern Ireland.
Summary: Gráinne started with a critique of the concept of social reconciliation because it focuses on the horizontal and excludes the vertical dimension. She made a direct connection to this concern through supporting evidence drawn from her current research project. Situated in hyper-local communities, the research team has been learning how individuals experience reconciliation taking place in their everyday lives. They have now identified approximately 120 indicators, with a significant percentage of them relate issues for which the State has some/all responsibility (such as policing, housing, justice, education, economic development). She noted that there has long been debate in Northern Ireland that too much emphasis has been given to the embedding of peace through ‘community relations’ while the State’s involvement and its responsibility for the conflict has been largely ignored. Reconciliation happens in different ways, at different levels and therefore must include and connect the horizontal and vertical dimensions. Many commitments to reconciliation have been made in various agreements w/in Northern Ireland’s peace process. Some initiatives have worked (at lower levels), but many of these commitments have been difficult to implement in practice. Education, political leadership, and compromise on governance issues are particularly problematic. As a result, there is a crisis of trust in institutions – not just locally, but also internationally (populism). In this research project, focus groups took place in 10 different communities. Some were single identity groups, others geographically mixed. Transcripts were then coded, clustered, and topics were identified. The most referred to indicator was safety and security. Clearly, these dynamics have tangibly changed over the years: personal threat has gone down, there is less suspicious, a reduction in punishment attacks, less paramilitary behavior, and better relationships with police. There are also stronger interpersonal and inter-group relationships (friendship, marriages). But people still cite safety and security concerns. As an example, identity issues are easily trigged by the clothes people wear, body markings, and the marking of territories.
Teri Murphy
Focus: Cautions and considerations for reconciliation efforts within peace processes that are typically marked by disorder and uncertainty.
Summary: Being left in a state of limbo and liminality are hallmarks of peace processes. Teri used a recent example of meeting with the Tharu in Nepal, families of the disappeared who have been trapped inside years of obstructed and aborted transitional justice processes. She identified the unique ways this ethnic group understands reconciliation, i.e. being reconciled to their disappeared loved ones versus how the State has conceptualized reconciliation – underscoring that multiple reconciliation(s) need to take place within transitioning contexts. She raised questions about the character of transitions, and then discussed how ritual theory might be a useful frame for understanding and responding to behaviors (state, non-state actors, civil society). Transitional processes are innately liminal states, characterized by dissonance, uncertainty, and disorder. At the start of peace and reconciliation processes, communities remain preoccupied with threats to their identity and existence. Memories are recent – the experience of fear and violence is salient. After an agreement is signed, groups are still socially, ideologically and physically disenfranchised. There is a widespread lack of trust. For these reasons, a movement toward reconciliation will initially require a minimum level of social confidence and trust building. Teri advocated for more flexible designs that also take into consideration time, future shifts in leadership or the socio-political landscape, and ones that can adapt to the unexpected and emergent (vs. technical and linear). Careful consideration must be given to how spaces are designed, facilitated and sustained - guided by a vision of reconciliation that is transformative, one that offers the psychological potential to restore and (re)/create relationships.
Duncan Morrow
Focus: The journey toward peace.
Summary: Power renegotiated at the macro level has complex and often unanticipated consequences at micro and meso- levels, which in turn can undermine the stability of the macro arrangement. Some of this arises from a misapprehension that peace processes are essentially ‘political’. Where IR theory and game theory predominate, negotiations are usually understood within the context of the stabilization of power relationships, settled by political and military leaders. Solutions are usually sought on the foundation of formal constitutional arrangements, ideological symbolism and military adjustments. If we assume, however that peace processes are not defined by formal politics or military formation, but imply change at the level of meaning, identity and relationships across all of society in ways that cannot be controlled or possibly even imagined in detail, then our approach to peacebuilding might change. Peace represents a real challenge and it is complex. How do we learn to live and work together in a constructive partnership? Agreements and constitutions cannot resolve this challenge. And in the case of Northern Ireland, which is a “post imperial” context – there are layers of complexity in how to move from multiple and differently perceived histories to a shared future. Changes do need to take place in the quality of relationships, in meanings, and identity. Negative peace is a start, limiting violence is important, but if meaning, identity, and relationships don’t change, conflict will be triggered and reignited.