Reconciliation In Practice: Selected observations about the assumptions informing practices of reconciliation

To reach its recommendations, this study draws on the insights of twenty seasoned reconciliation practitioners across six continents and explores the veracity and reliability of a selection of widespread assumptions, held by sections of the policy as well as practitioner communities about how reconciliation best works in practice. Apart from identifying and briefly discussing both “reliable” and “unreliable” assumptions, listed below in summary form, this paper also identifies stubborn challenges and related recommendations that are relevant for advancing reconciliation practice.

Reliable assumptions:

1. Concrete interests shared between hostile groups, often deeply symbiotic and interdependent, can provide an effective entry point for reconciliation during any phase of the conflict.
2. Informal processes can, and often do, provide the kind of trusted, resonant leadership without which reconciliation is unable to proceed, whereas formal processes often lack this precise quality.
3. Formal acknowledgement of harm inflicted, followed by rapid and concrete policy change and sustained dialogue, can restore some measure of trust, and open pathways for reworking damaged relationships.
4. Acknowledging personal trauma, and learning to live with this woundedness while gaining better understanding and deeper empathy of others, are important requirements for leaders of reconciliation.
5. Women offer innovative, critically important support to sustainable reconciliation. Significantly, this often happens in situations where women are excluded from sufficiently meaningful participation in mainstream reconciliation processes, either structurally or culturally.
6. Replacing unrealistic expectations with pragmatic, incremental gains towards a desired future has the potential to contribute to reconciliation, even where inter-group trust is at a historic low.
7. Multi-identity groups working together on urgent communal priorities, such as local resource-sharing agreements, conflict mitigation, and basic security, including food, shelter, livelihoods, and health provision for all, can improve reconciliation between deeply distrustful and hostile groups.
8. Truth-telling can counter denialism and revisionism, thereby making a recurrence of violence less likely.
9. Local initiatives can help to reconcile divided communities, even when national reconciliation is at a dead-end.
10. Community-level reconciliation is able to provide creative impetus to frameworks and policies aimed at promoting national reconciliation.

Unreliable assumptions:

1. The assumption that reaching an agreement about cessation of violence is sufficient for sustainable reconciliation was shown to be potentially misleading.
2. The assumption that agreements between adversaries that do not comply with international standards of justice or the full expectations of all sides are doomed to fail, was shown to be incorrect at least in some cases.
3. The assumption that transitional justice mechanisms, such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), trials, reparations, and redress contribute to reconciliation as free-standing initiatives, was shown to be potentially misleading.
4. Assuming that public truth-recovery inevitably leads to personal contrition, forgiveness, and discernable levels of individual victim/perpetrator reconciliation, was found to be misleading.
5. Assuming that TRC recommendations will inevitably be implemented by governments who commission these instruments, was found to be misleading.
6. The assumption that public truth-recovery alone would generate public support and political will for redress (including amongst beneficiary groups of past injustice), was found to be misleading.
7. Assuming that it is always advantageous to facilitate face-to-face dialogue is incorrect.
8. Assuming that reconciliation should always be achieved through talking is misleading.
9. Assuming that national reconciliation is sustainable without engaging foreign
   stakeholders, such as funders, occupiers, spoilers, proxy forces, and regional and
   international powers is often incorrect.

Recommendation:

1. Develop communities of practice and policy-making that analyze reconciliation practices globally and feed findings into relevant policy and programming processes, and into reconciliation practice. This should crucially include interrogations of the assumptions that underpin reconciliation policies, programming, and practice across contexts.
2. Integrate contextually competent and culturally informed psychosocial trauma and healing support at all levels of reconciliation programming where at all possible.
3. Gender justice within reconciliation should go beyond “affirmative mainstreaming” to ensure that women are key, strategic partners from the onset and that reconciliation processes initiated by women are adequately supported.
4. Explore potential entry points for reconciliation with key stakeholders at any time during a conflict spiral.
5. Link processes and create synergies across societal levels and sectoral interests.
6. Strengthen trust in reconciliation processes through meeting realistic, step-by-step short-term commitments.
7. Identify and monitor mutually accepted signs of progress to mark medium-term goals such as increased inclusivity, deepening fairness, and improving trust.
8. As part of a delicate balancing act, keep a focus on the longer-term goals of  addressing the root causes of the conflict—while promising (and delivering) more modest, incremental changes towards the larger goals.
9. Make provision to address past violence publicly, even if in a compromised form, provided it is acceptable to a majority of victims and does not run an undue risk of reigniting the violence or re-traumatizing victims.
10. Facilitate understanding and empathy in culturally, politically, and gender-sensitive ways and with adequate preparation.