The Power of Joint Learning as Strategy for Peacebuilding:

Insights from Southern Thailand

Norbert Ropers

30 MARCH 2015
Since the term peacebuilding was introduced
into the discourses of academics and practitioners
working on violent conflicts in the 1970s, the definition has undergone remarkable changes. At the
beginning it was very much focused on the work
of civil society organizations working on peace
from below in contrast to the peacemaking
from above. From the 1990s, international organizations and development agencies increasingly
used the term to emphasize the holistic character
of transforming violent political conflicts. Currently, there is an emerging common understanding that protracted armed conflicts need equally
protracted multi-track peacebuilding efforts. In
the case of fragile states these efforts should be
closely connected with state-building and socioeconomic development.
The expansion of the definition of peacebuilding reflects the complexities involved in ending
political violence that is deeply rooted in society.
But this also implies a risk that some of the basic
features of the original meaning of peacebuilding may be sidelined in its course. Simon Fisher
and Lada Zimina raised this issue in their essay,
Just Wasting our Time? Provocative Thoughts
for Peacebuilders that differentiated between
technical and transformative approaches
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to peacebuilding.1 While this dichotomy may be

too simplistic to capture the diversity of peacebuilding practices, it is helpful to underline that
genuine transformation requires a serious and
sustained engagement by all parties to understand
each others different perspectives on their shared
conflict.
I am convinced that one core element of effective peacebuilding can be described as joint
learning and with this I do not only mean the
learning by individuals, but also the learning by
organizations, institutions and finally societies at
large. Some prefer to call this capacity building
rather than learning, but essential is that the capacity building is taking place in a context which
makes the participants aware of the relationship
with each other and that without some kind of
understanding for the perspectives of the other
side it will be difficult to transform the conflict.
One can also call this empathetic learning.
Another core element of effective peacebuilding is closely connected to learning and capacity
building: What are the discourses which frame
the efforts to overcome violence and create
peace? Are they mainly framed by discussions on
insurgency versus counter-insurgency or by problem-solving debates on how to improve justice,
equality and collective dignity in the region? Ob-

viously, this is not an either/or questions. There

will always be a multiplicity of discourses. But the
key issue is, how much public attention, financial
and human resources and energy are spent on
hard power and security measures in comparison
to efforts toward joint problem solving?

Conflict in the Deep South

The peacebuilding efforts in the Deep South
of Thailand, respectively in Patani (as many Malay Muslims like to call the region), are a good example for the challenges of peacebuilding in the
broader as well as in the more narrow sense. The
conflict is one of the internationally less known
internal disputes. Although the violence led to
more than 6,000 deaths and the injury of more
than 11,000 people since 2004, it rarely appears
as a topic in foreign media. The reasons are that
most of the incidents of violence only affect a
relatively small number of victims and perpetrators at any given time, and that there are so far
only very few cases of an overspill of the violence
to other regions of the country. Nevertheless,
the conflict is currently the most violent one in
Southeast Asia and even though the number of
victims came slightly down in 2014 in comparison to 2013, there are no indications that this
conflict will end soon.
As in most other protracted subnational conflicts, the root causes and history of the southern
Thailand situation are contested among the parties. The fairest way to engage with this is to acknowledge that the thinking and acting on both
sides are very much influenced by their different
historical narratives and discourses. The essence
of the conflict can best be captured as one of
competing legitimacy, a term coined in this
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case by Duncan McCargo, a British political scientist. While the Thai mainstream discourse argues that the region belonged since time eternally
to the Kingdom, the Patani-Malay movement
argues that their violent annexation is an issue of
unresolved colonialism that needs to be rectified.
During the last decade the conflict has seen a
few efforts to find some kind of peaceful settlement. Some of them were initiated by the government, others by third parties, but none of them
was based on an official acknowledgement that
there is a politically driven conflict which needs a
political solution. This only happened in February
2013, when the Secretary General of the National
Security Council (NSC) and a representative of
the Barisan Revolusi National (BRN) agreed on
the start of an official peace dialogue with the
help of Malaysian facilitation. Since then the peace
efforts in the conflict in southern Thailand have
taken up a new format, that of a multi-track process, including Track 1. It is still highly fragile and
there is no guarantee for success, but there is now
the opportunity for transformative learning on all
three tracks (Track 1 is the official process that
involves the top leaderships of the conflicting parties; Track 2 includes civil society representatives
and other leaders, such as religious and business
leaders; Track 3 involves the grassroots actors).

Photo: from Chairat Jirojmontrees blog at www.wewatch.info

In the following section I would like to analyse

the opportunities and challenges of this process
with respect to six basic requirements of effective
peace processes:
(1) The political will to
find a peaceful settlement
The classical test for the political will is the
BATNA question: What are the Best Alternatives to a Negotiated Agreement? Before 2013

one might argue that at least on the side of the

Thai government the dominant opinion was
that addressing the conf lict with the classical
instruments of securitization, development aid,
some administrat ive concessions, and more
recently, restorative justice measures were sufficient to contain the conflict at an acceptable
level. To quote the unconvent ial def in it ion
of power as the capacity not being forced to
learn by the social scientist Karl Deutsch, one
could argue that more recently the state is prepared to learn notwithstanding its hard power
to contain the situation on the ground. With
respect to the Patani-Malay movement organizations, most observers would argue that the
willingness of the most relevant BRN to engage depends primarily on how much they can
expect to gain relevant political concessions at
the end of the process.
(2) The preparedness for
respectively the hard work on concessions
One of the characteristics most common in
the majority of successful and sustainable peace
processes is that both negotiating parties (in the
case of two-party conflicts) have made some kind
of concessions. These concessions are sometimes
discussed before hand within the respective parties, but are not made public to prevent undermining ones own negotiation power. But there
are also many cases in which the concessions only
emerged at the end of long and sometimes painful
negotiation processesinterrupted by phases of
re-escalation of the conflict, threats and mutual
disappointment. It is in these phases that peace
efforts need most the spaces, structures, capacities
and skills for joint learning. Some argue that the
BRN team which met with the NSC in 2013 had
already made one key concession with respect to
the acknowledgment of a solution within the Thai
constitution, but had received little in exchange
for this.
In the Thai case, it is most likely that the negotiations on the political concessions from both
sides will come to occupy centre stage when the
parties have created sufficient trust and confidence in the process that they can embark upon
to identify the parameters an inclusive political
settlement. Substantially, these negotiations will
very much be a mixture of a joint learning process and an effort to make best use of their relative power vis--vis the other.
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(3) Inclusivity as requirement and

challenge for sustainable peace
Working towards inclusivity of all conflicting
parties and affected stakeholders is currently seen
as a basic requirement to reduce the number of
potential spoilers and to enhance the durability of peace processes and agreements. This is
not an easy task because the actors in charge or
control of violence claim to be the key actors and
decision-makers, but there are many others who
claim legitimacy as representatives of people affected from the conflict and the outcome of the
peace efforts. As a rule of thumb, it is particularly
important to have a broad and deep participation
of the public in these processes which can provide them with legitimacy and sustainability.
In Thailand the current government under the
control of the National Council for Peace and
Order (NCPO) has decided in collaboration with
the Malaysian facilitator that this principle of inclusivity should apply to the Patani-Malay movement organizations. The issue of inclusivity on
the side of the Thai polity has not been raised so
far and might also not be relevant right now, but
will come up immediately after an elected government will be in place again. The issue of public
participation has not yet been decided from the
perspective of the government, but it is obviously
of key concern for the people on the ground, for
it is here that learning and capacity building have
played the most explicit role in their engagement
with peace efforts.
(4) Joint learning and capacity building
on the individual level
While the general structure and dynamism
of the conf lict in southern Thailand has not
changed considerably over the last decade, there
are three developments which have the potential of becoming game changers. First, there are
the more effective counter-insurgency strategies
which the Thai security agencies have applied in
2007/8 and more recently in 2013/14; second, the
Peace Dialogue initiative from February 2013;
and, third, the mobilization of civil society activists and movements during the last three to five
years.
It is the latter aspect which is particularly relevant in the context of empowering people from
different backgrounds to engage with each other

to analyse the conflict, to understand each others perspectives as well as the drivers of enmity,
and to make best use of the tools which are available to organize this kind of learning effectively.
Many civil society organisations (CSOs) have engaged in these efforts. One initiative, which the
author is most familiar with, tries to combine the
joint learning with efforts to explore and discuss
options to promote the peace efforts from the
perspective of civil society. It is called the Insider
Peacebuilders Platform (IPP). 2 It tries to avoid the
pitfalls of pushing these very diverse actors into
any kind of coordinated strategy. Instead, it uses
the joint learning as an opportunity to nurture a
multi-party and multi-partial peace constituency.
3
Another initiative supported by the Sasakawa
Peace Foundation is the Peoples College. It is
an effort to apply the methodology and the tools
of independent adult education to the arena of
knowledge and skills relevant to effective peace
processes and to generate a critical mass of qualified citizens who can act as interlocutors and
connectors between parties and communities.

Insider Peacebuilders Platform at the Prince of Songkla University,

Pattani Campus. Photo: Berghof Foundation

(5) Learning and capacity building

on the institutional and organizational level
Learning and capacity building is not restricted
to the skills and knowledge of individuals, being
they high-level negotiators or peace activists on
the ground. It is also connected to institutions
and organizations, particularly those that are
directly connected to the conflict, like the security agencies or the resistance movements and
their political affiliates. During the last few years
people engaged in complex and protracted peace
processes have realized that it is helpful to adapt
the structures of existing organizations to explore
options, manage negotiations and supervise the
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implementation of agreements. In many cases,

new peace support infrastructures have also been
created, for example, in the form of joint or separate peace secretariats, for monitoring missions or
of multi-partial expert panels.
One key challenge in most asymmetric conflicts is that the non-state actors have more difficulties to organize themselves effectively with
respect to their institutional capacities. Often, the
majority of their efforts are focused on the armed
struggle and their political wings have little experiences in mastering the encounters with the
other side or the international community. Only
recently, peer-to-peer exchanges with more experienced non-state armed groups have helped to
cope better with this challenge.
In the case of Southern Thailand the NCPOled government has established a new structure
composed of three tiers to engage in peace talks
with the other side. It offers better chances for a
coherent support than the weak structure during
the 2013 talks, although its shortcoming is weak
inclusivity with respect to the overall polity. But
because this government will be in charge of the
peace talks only for a limited period, it offers a
unique opportunity for the agencies involved to
learn about the thinking and reasoning of the
other side and to adapt their own strategies accordingly.
For the main Patani-Malay movement organizations, the task of adapting their structures
and capacities to the needs of a sustained peace
process is even more challenging. They are struggling with the risks of transforming their clandestine structures and to find an effective way
to project their political demands and to provide
their political wing(s) with knowledge, skills and
power of persuasion.
Finally, institutional learning is not only an
important task for the conflict parties, but also a
challenge for all stakeholders, particularly those
actors in civil society who would like to support
the peace process effectively. I would like to mention here in particular two initiatives that were
generated in the context of the IPP. One relates to
the joint establishment of an initiative called the
Peace Resource Center, which makes the state-ofthe-art knowledge on peace processes available
in an effective manner for the people involved in
this process. The other one relates to the creation
of a Common Space which is an institutionalized,

inclusive informal dialogue comprising representatives of all key stakeholders and which serves as
a kind of safety net for the official talks. Both are
still work in progress, but the IPP activists see
them as important contributions for the collective learning of all communities affected.
(6) Initiating and nurturing peace discourses
on the level of communities and societies
At the end of the day sustainable peace agreements need the support or at least the toleration
by the majority of all communities affected. This
is one of the reasons why non-state actors urge
in most cases the need to put the peace process
on the national agenda and to have the agreement ideally endorsed in the constitution or other
binding legal documents. This has often created
one of the final hurdles for the political settlement and can delay its conclusion for a long time,
as the case of Nepal demonstrates.
An important element for this transformation
is the how communities and the media perceive
the confl ict and peace efforts. The Northern Ireland case has demonstrated that how politicians
and other influential persons as well as ordinary
people talk about the confl ict can have a significant impact on the chances of its transformation. 4
This has led many peace and media activists to
the conclusion that it is important to develop and
support peace discourses systematically in order to counter the otherwise dominant securityfocused discourses in areas of armed conflict.
One way of working on this is to organize regular
Peace Polls and to publish their results widely and
engage with them in the public fora. 5
The peace community and sections of the
media, particularly from the alternative and local media in Thailands Deep South, have been
working on this basis for several years and they
have achieved some remarkable results. However,
this movement has not reached the mainstream
media in Thailand and the Thai Buddhist and
Thai Chinese communities in the region have not
been sufficiently involved in these discourses, and
they remain as challenges.

In conclusion
This article argued that joint learning and capacity building are some of the key ingredients of
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effective peacebuilding. They are obviously not

the only ones. Peacebuilding also needs the political will on both sides for genuine concessions
and a sound support from all relevant communities, but the joint learning and capacity building
can become triggers to initiate these changes.
This is what many peace activists working on the
confl ict in Thailands Deep South aspire for.
Norbert Ropers
December 2014
Dr. Norbert Ropers is a Senior Research Fellow
at the Institute of Peace Studies (IPS), and Center for Conflict Studies and Cultural Diversity
(CSCD), at the Hat Yai and Pattani campuses of
the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand.
Dr. Ropers is also the Program Director, Southeast Asia, of the Berghof Foundation. Find out
more about the work of the the Berghof Foundation in Southeast Asia here: http://www.berghoffoundation.org/programmes/southeast-asia/

Deep South line solder. Photo by Chairat Jirojmontree

Please visit wewatch.info for more images from

Thailands Deep South.
Notes:
Simon Fischer & Lada Zimina: Just Wasting
our Time? Provocative Thoughts for Peacebuilders, in Beatrix Schmelzle & Martina Fischer (eds):
Peacebuilding at Crossroads? Dilemmas and
Paths for Another Generation, (Berghof Handbook Dialogue Series 7. Berlin 2009), pp.11 35.
2
The IPP comprises the following organizations: Deep South Watch (DSW); the Center for
Conflict Studies and Cultural Diversity (CSCD)
1

and the Institute for Peace Studies (IPS), both

part of the Prince of Songkla University (PSU);
the Off ice of Peace and Governance, K ing
Prajadhipoks Institute (KPI); the Institute for
Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS), Chulalongkorn University; the Peace Information Center
(PIC), Thammasat University; the Institute of
Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP), Mahidol University and the Berghof Foundation.
3
Cf Norbert Ropers & Mathus Anuvatudom: A
Joint Learning Process for Stakeholders and Insider Peacebuilders: A Case Study from Southern
Thailand, Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, Vol. 2,
No 2 (2014), pp. 143-9.
4
Cf Katy Hayward & Catherine ODonnell: Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution. Debating peace in Northern Ireland. London: Routledge2011.
5
Cf Colin Irwin, The Peoples Peace Process
in Northern Ireland. (California: Create Space
2012).

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