Latest Berghof Handbook Dialogue on Human Rights and Conflict Transformation online
We are very pleased to announce the release of Berghof Handbook Dialogue No 9: “Human Rights and Conflict Transformation: The Challenges of Just Peace”. Berghof Handbook Dialogues aim to address topics of particular relevance for societies in conflict and the practice of conflict transformation. In each Dialogue, practitioners and scholars debate and critically engage in light of their experience. At the centre of the latest Dialogue is the relationship between human rights protection and conflict transformation, which seems straightforward, but is not an easy one. Over and over again, the question has been asked whether the two share a common agenda or actually pursue competing goals. Contributors to this Dialogue aim to go beyond the divide and polarising language of “peace versus justice” in order to gain a clearer understanding of the potential – and limits – of bringing together human rights and conflict transformation in specific contexts. Drawing evidence from contexts such as Nepal, South Africa, Israel/Palestine, Uganda and Colombia, they argue that a more thorough emphasis on human rights – as causes and manifestation of conflicts, but also as normative and practical intervention tools – contributes to bringing conflict transformation closer to its aim of tackling conflicts at their deepest roots. The lead author and her respondents engage in a rich dialogue on areas of tensions as well as complementarity between the two sets of practices: they encourage mutual learning and joint work, and stress the importance of locally-designed, timely and context-specific initiatives, as well as of hard-nosed analysis of the political context and use of human rights and conflict transformation discourses.