Handbook Dialogue No 9 now available in hard copy
Handbook Dialogue No 9 – Human Rights and Conflict Transformation. The Challenges of Just Peace – can now be ordered in hard copy for 7,50 € (+postage) via email at the Berghof Center.
07/2010
06/2010
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.
05/2010
New Issue of Transitions Series published
The Basque Country – the Long Walk to a Democratic Scenario.
The Transition Series compiles case studies produced by participants in the Berghof programme “Resistance/Liberation Movements in Transition”. The aim of these publications is to learn from the experience of movements around the world who have used political violence in their struggle but have also engaged in negotiation processes and democratic politics, in order to better understand their dynamics and role in waging conflicts and making peace. The authors have been consciously asked to reflect on the experience of these movements from their own unique point of view. What we publish in this series is not presented as neutral or exclusively accurate commentary; we are conscious that there is no single truth in conflict transformation, and we believe that these case studies reflect important voices which are usually excluded or devalued in the analysis of conflict.
This study “The Basque Country – the Long Walk to a Democratic Scenario“ was written by Urko Aiartza, a Basque human rights lawyer, and Dr Julien Zabalo, Professor at the University of the Basque Country, in close consultation with leading representatives of the pro-independence movement. It analyses the evolution of the conflict between the Spanish state and the Basque Country, from the creation of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in 1958 to the present, with a strong emphasis on the various attempts to search for a solution to the conflict through dialogue and negotiation.
We hope that you will enjoy reading it and welcome your feedback. Two further issues of this Series will be published in the coming few months. You can also consult past issues on our website: http://www.berghof-conflictresearch.org/en/publications/transitions-series/.
A printed version of the study can be also ordered by following this link (5.00 € + postage).
03/2010
In memory of Dan Bar-On: Textbook on Israeli-Palestinian History now also available in German
A German translation of the textbook “Learning each other’s historical narrative“ of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle-East (PRIME) has been published by Berghof Conflict Research and PRIME (German translation).
For more information on Dan Bar-On’s work you may read the obituary on Dan Bar-On or our report on a Workshop with Dan Bar-On at the Berghof Center.
01/2010
New Occasional Paper available
Mediating Identity Conflicts – Potential and Challenges of Engaging with Hamas, a new issue in the Berghof Occasional Paper series by Carolin Goerzig is now available online.
This paper offers some astute insights into the dynamics of one of the most protracted conflicts of the past century, namely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the specific perspective of its most controversial party, whose voice is very often excluded or demonised: that of the Hamas movement. Through her so-called “scenario interviews” with several Hamas members in Syria, the author convincingly demonstrates that identity-based conflicts cannot be transformed without the direct participation of their key stakeholders, and that lending such actors a voice with which they can express their grievances, but also their hopes and visions for a constructive path to “just peace”, might generate creative peacemaking options – in this case, opportunities for a mediated settlement.
Hard copies can also be ordered (5.00€ + postage).
10/2009
New publication from the Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA, Sarajevo/Belgrade) in English
Helena Rill and Ivana Franovic (eds.): „I cannot feel good if my neighbor does not“. Beograd: Centar za nenasilnu akciju, 2009.
“I cannot feel well if my neighbour does not” is a collection of interviews with people from the region of the former Yugoslavia, discussing how they relate to the wartime past, issues of blame and reconciliation, and their hopes for a peaceful future.