Peace Psychology

PEACE MAKING

Introduction

Peacemaking is necessary in violent or severe nonviolent conflicts that do not burn

themselves out. It is especially important in cases where war crimes and other human
devastation demand outside attention. Peacemaking includes both non-violent and violent
options. However, outside interveners generally want to avoid sacrificing troops. Thus, the
more energy should be devoted to non-violent processes such as negotiation. Multinational
diplomacy in violent conflicts has a higher probability of initiation and success because multiple
nations can share potential costs of negotiation and because the collective willpower of the
international community is stronger than any individual nation.

Methods of peacemaking include negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation,

arbitration, judicial settlement, regional agencies or arrangements, sanctions, blockading, and
violent intervention.

Theories of Peace Making

Martin Luther King:

Martin Luther King was placed in prison for his work to secure civil rights in America.
From there, he wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail that explores the question of why
those seeking justice should choose peaceful tactics. While King's writings do not discuss the
steps to ending a conflict, he lays out a case for non-violence as an active means of resolving
conflict and seeking justice.
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 King's theory of peacemaking is that non-violent civil disobedience is a path of actively
seeking to end injustice, without justifying violent responses. King used public displays of
peaceful violation of segregationist laws to draw attention to the justice of his cause.

Mahatma Gandhi:

Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence from the British was based on ensuring that
violence was met with non-violent resistance. Gandhi emphasized that non-violence could not
just be a tactic, but had to be embraced as a life philosophy.

Whereas King discussed the need to use non-violence as a means to an end, Gandhi
speaks of non-violence and peace as a principle that should be embraced as a way of life in
order to be effective. Gandhi argued that peace was only meaningful if it was consistently and
universally applied.

Ten Principles of Peace Making:

1. Peacemaking seeks long term sustainable solutions rather than polite agreements or
uneasy and fragile truces to difficult conflicts. 

Many times, people avoid the difficult work of conflict by layering over the problem with
a superficial, nice fix. Peacemaking takes on the painful, difficult, and sometimes frightening
aspects of conflict directly.

2. In peacemaking, truth telling and truth seeking are honored, integrity is valued, and
trust is given because it is earned. 

People learn in the peacemaking process to speak from their hearts and minds what they
have personally experienced. They are honored for revealing difficult truths when they could
brush over them. The peacemaker instills this value in the process and insists on a commitment
to truth telling from everyone participating in the process.

3. Peacemaking offers an opportunity to explore and discover that which is as yet

unimagined. 

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 In many conflicts, the conflict issues are forbidden subjects to talk about because the
anxiety of dealing with them is too uncomfortable. Peacemaking allows that anxiety to be
contained and managed. As a result, people sense relief at being able to talk about issues that
have irked them, sometimes for years. Furthermore, peacemaking allows new visions and ideas
about relationships to be explored and perhaps created. The process permits discovery of ideas
and solutions that before seemed unimaginable.

4. Peacemaking techniques are creative, exploratory, and filled with the risk, fear, and
excitement of discovery. 

Peacemaking is a fearful undertaking because no one, not even the peacemaker, knows
where people will end up. Once the process is underway, however, the fear generated from the
anxiety is transformed into the fear of discovery, which creates a certain excitement in people.

5. Peacemaking is a refuge--a safe haven from the incivility and outright nastiness of
conflict. 

Conflict can be nasty and brutal. Very few people enjoy the emotions invoked by conflict
situations. Peacemaking processes create an environment of safety and security where the
conflict issues can be dealt with carefully and respectfully.

6. The peacemaker is charged with the sacred duty of creating a refuge where people
from different backgrounds know they will be heard and understood, where their
needs and ideas will be respected, and where they can safely do the difficult work of
reconciling their differences. 

This is a primary value difference between peacemaking and other forms of conflict
resolution. The peacemaker takes on the obligation of protecting everyone, seeing that all are
given equally high respect and dignity, that all may fully express themselves or not as they wish,
all in a place where there will be no personal attacks, insults, or other emotional or physical
violence of any sort.

7. The peacemaker must create a place where people are able to approach, rather than
freeze, flee, or fight. 

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 Peacemakers, knowledgeable in the neuropsychology of fear, always recognize the
importance of the environment on preconscious brain processes. Peacemakers are therefore
charged with the duty of controlling environments that allow people to approach one another,
rather than to defend against one another.

8. Peacemaking seeks to disenfranchise, or confront in a process of controlled

escalation, those who seek unfair advantage, who exploit racial or class or gender
differences, and who prefer to maintain disparities that favor themselves. 

Justice is a core value of peacemaking. Resolution without justice does not resolve
conflict; it is simply a demonstration of which party holds greater power. A peacemaker's values
and integrity may require that the process be shutdown. Some conflicts are such that they must
be escalated before peacemaking will be possible. The peacemaker recognizes this and therefore
does not sacrifice justice for expediency.

9. Peacemaking involves risks, not the least of which is failure. 

No guarantees can ever be made that peace will be restored between parties. Every
conflict contains the seeds of further escalation that may take root despite the best efforts of
everyone. However, the risk of failure is never a deterrent to the attempt at peace, especially
when peace seems hopeless.

10. Peacemaking requires tremendous courage by those faced with difficult conflict.

Conflict causes people to fear others as well as themselves. What people detest in others
is what is inside of them. Thus, to confront others is to confront the same thing within. People
know this intuitively, but cannot articulate it. This fear is why so many people avoid
peacemaking-they do not have the courage to face themselves, their secret inadequacies, and
their deepest fears. Peacemaking is not easy nor is it soft.

Four C’s of Peace Making

1. Contact:
The amount of contact an individual or group has with each other could determine the
success or failure of the peace-making process. Reagan understood that meeting with the

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Soviet General Secretary face-to-face was crucial. Once the initial meeting took place, there
were three more to follow before an accord was struck.
2. Cooperation:
Myers (2010) states that a common threat or superordinate goals, which can "overrides
people's differences from one another" is cooperation (p.508). Both Reagan and Gorbachev
knew that they would need to work together for the common good in order for the nuclear
disarmament to occur. The need for the two global leaders to cooperate and communicate,
became the tie that bound them to further acts of diplomacy.
3. Communication:
There are three types of communication; bargaining mediation, and arbitration. In the
peace talks between Reagan and Gorbachev, bargaining or direct negotiation was the
communication method that was beneficial. Both leaders choose to listen to the other and
dismiss the historically negative relations that had occurred. However, communication was
hindered by tensions and an inability to reason, so peace was stalled.

4. Conciliation:
A method of alternative dispute resolution whereby a third party, who is usually but not
necessarily neutral, meets with the parties and assists them to find a way to settle their dispute.
One such conciliatory strategy is Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction
(GRIT) that aims to alleviate tense international situations.

To understand the differences between peace-building, peacekeeping, and peacemaking

(peace-enforcement), you must understand the 3 stages to a conflict:

1. The pre-conflict phase, where tensions are building, but, except for some small acts
of violence, no real fighting is happening.
2. Conflict, the tensions from the pre-conflict phase reach the point that fighting
outbreaks. There is systematic violence on the part of one or more parties to the
conflict.

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 3. Post-conflict, the conflict has ended either with the surrender of one or more parties
to the conflict or with a ceasefire agreed between parties. Violence has ceased, but
the peace is precarious.

The most basic difference among them is the stage in the conflict in which they occur.

1. Peace-building occurs before fighting happens. By establishing effective institutions

for conflict resolution, enhancing a “culture of peace”, and pursuing preventive
diplomacy, the disagreements and tensions can be resolved without resorting to
violence. Peace-building can also include socioeconomic development.
2. Peace-enforcement occurs during fighting. An external force, usually a single country,
enters the conflict and through violence brings an end to the conflict, oftentimes by
siding with one of the parties to the conflict (think Russia and Iran in Syria). This is
quite rare in modern history relative to the other two phenomena and is generally
considered to run counter to international law and norms. Not good.
3. Peacekeeping occurs after the cessation of violence, it assumes there is a peace to
keep. This is most often carried out by the UN or sometimes a regional organization
like the African Union. In the case of the UN, the Security Council authorizes
peacekeeping missions and establishes the mandate (the mission for the operation).
Peacekeepers then head to the area of recent conflict and through primarily through
the threat of force—though sometimes the use of force as well—encourage the
former combatants to comply with the terms of the ceasefire. Peacekeeping
mandates often include protection of civilians as part of the mission.
Peace-building is obviously the most effective way to deal with these, as it avoids any
destruction or loss of life. The problem is that it’s hard to get the international community to
care about your situation when it’s not full-blown conflict—there are a bunch of real conflicts to
distract them at that point. What generally happens is tensions build, conflict erupts, fighting
goes on for awhile, a ceasefire is eventually brokered, and then a peacekeeping mission begins.
What we’ve begun to see, as well, is the incorporation of peace-building activities into
peacekeeping operations and the extension of these activities after the peacekeeping mission

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has ended. Post-conflict societies are more fragile and more apt to relapse into conflict, so they
need extra help to both rebuild & return to the point they were at pre-conflict and progress
beyond that point to prevent future conflicts.

Importance of Peace Making

1. Peacemaking is necessary in violent or severe nonviolent conflicts that do not burn

themselves out.
2. It is especially important in cases where war crimes and other human devastation demand
outside attention.
3. The effects of conflict are far-reaching. The majority of those risking their lives trying
to reach Europe are from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and other areas beset by violent
conflict, insecurity or political repression. Globally, the numbers of those forced to leave
their homes due to war, persecution or natural disaster have reached staggering heights: at
the end of 2014, United Nations estimated 19.5 million of these are people who have fled
their country as refugees and half of them are children.
4. Military answers to political problems alone don’t work.

At the heart of many violent conflicts lie issues of inequality, injustice and exclusion.
While criminality can feed on and into a conflict, there are often genuine and unaddressed
grievances at play and expressed in violence. Many extremist armed groups don’t start out
that way, they radicalize over time — all the more reason to engage with the underlying
issues fueling radicalization early on. And while military force may be deployed to counter a
military threat such as the Islamic State group, it cannot resolve profound underlying
political, social, economic and governance problems or sustain peace. In fact, it can
sometimes complicate that task.

5.  Conflict shatters lives and stunts development.

More than 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by violent conflict, and the gap
between those countries enjoying relative peace and those afflicted by conflict is growing. The

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newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals respond to the fact that no low-income conflict-
affected country achieved a single one of the framework’s predecessor, the Millennium
Development Goals. Peacebuilding approaches, including mediation and diplomacy, dialogue
and participation, are an essential part of the toolkit we need to meet Goal 16: to “promote
peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.”

How Psychologists can contribute to Peace Making?

1. Psychological research findings can be usual for peace processes.

2. Psychologists as a professional group can involve in negotiations or other peace-related
processes.
3. Applied psychological counseling skills such as active listening, basic empathy,
multicultural competency, acceptance, rapport-building etc. can be utilized to train both
sides of the conflict for a smooth transition to peace processes.

How can we achieve peace in our daily life?

By practicing: Gratitude, meditation, patience,, listening, exercising, forgiveness, relaxation,

caring for others, clearing the mind, thinking before speaking, reasoning before responding and
loving adversaries

Women's Role in Peacemaking

Women can be either victims of conflict or agents of peace building. Many a time,
women have averted conflicts and have been responsible for resolving conflicts. Peacemaking
needs the involvement of women. During violent conflicts and wars women are forced to
assume new roles as heads of families, providers, combatants, and freedom fighters.

Women’s roles in peacemaking across conflict areas, in the last decade, highlight the
importance of moving women beyond the “humanitarian front of the story.” Women have and
can continue to influence peacebuilding processes so that they go beyond defining peace as the
absence of violent conflict and focuses on the principles of inclusion, good governance and

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justice. Women need to be present to discuss issues such as genocide, impunity and security if
a just and enduring peace is to be built.

Women’s involvement in peacebuilding is as old as their experience of violence. Women

are not “naturally” peaceful. Women have played a variety of roles throughout history that
support war and other forms of violence, from warriors to supportive wives and mothers calling
men to the battlefield. However, their gender identities allow them to do some forms
peacebuilding that men cannot do. In addition, some women have found it advantageous to
draw on skills, assets, and capacities that are available to them in oppressive patriarchal
systems and harness these for productive use in peacebuilding.

However, communities that use all the talents, experience, and wisdom of both men
and women are more able to address the needs of their members. If women are excluded from
participating in community decisions and leadership, or are so busy with household
responsibilities that they do not have time to go to community meetings, then the talents,
experiences, and wisdom of half of the population will not contribute to community life.

In 1995, the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on women held in Beijing, China
created a rippling of new ideas and conversations among women involved in civil society
around the world. The civil-society campaign on women in peacebuilding led to the October
2000 signing of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. Resolution
1325, recognizes that civilians - particularly women and children – are the worst affected by
conflict, and that this is a threat to peace and security. Resolution 1325 includes calls for
women’s participation in conflict prevention and resolution initiatives; the integration of gender
perspectives in peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions; and the protection of women in
regions of armed conflict. Resolution 1325 has further mobilized women around the world to
recognize the important roles women play in peacebuilding and to “mainstream gender in
peacebuilding.” According to the United Nations, mainstreaming a gender perspective is the
process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including
legislation, policies or programmes. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s
concerns and experiences an integral dimension of design, implementation, monitoring and

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evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that
women and men benefit equally.

It would be naïve to assert that all women respond in a similar manner in a given
situation or that women are “natural peacebuilders.” Gender identity is performed differently
in different cultural contexts. Sex and gender identity must always be viewed in relationship
with an individual’s other identities such as his or her race, class, age, nation, region, education,
religion, etc. There are different expectations for men and women in the home, marketplace, or
government office. Gender roles also shift along with social upheaval. In times of violent
conflict, men and women face new roles and changing gender expectations. Both biological and
sociological differences affect violence and peacebuilding.

Below are the some widely accepted reasons why inclusion of women in peacebuilding is
vital. These reasons were highlighted by Lisa Schirch and Manjrika Sewak in their paper on "The
Role of Women and Peacebuilding” (2005), written for the Global Partnership for the
Prevention of Armed Conflict:

● Because women are half of every community and the tasks of peacebuilding are so great,
women and men must be partners in the process of peacebuilding.
● Because women are the central caretakers of families in many cultures, everyone suffers
when women are oppressed, victimized, and excluded from peacebuilding. Their centrality
to communal life makes their inclusion in peacebuilding essential.
● Because women have the capacity for both violence and peace, women must be
encouraged to use their gifts in building peace.
● Because women are excluded from public decision-making, leadership, and educational
opportunities in many communities around the world, it is important to create special
programmes to empower women to use their gifts in the tasks of building peace.
● Because women and men have different experiences of violence and peace, women must
be allowed and encouraged to bring their unique insights and gifts to the process of
peacebuilding.

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● Because sexism, racism, classism, ethnic and religious discrimination originate from the
same set of beliefs that some people are inherently “better” than others, women’s
empowerment should be seen as inherent to the process of building peace. Like other
social structures that set up some people as superior to others, the sexist belief that
women’s lives are less valuable than men’s lives leads to violence against women. When
women engage in peacebuilding, they often challenge these sexist beliefs along with other
structures that discriminate against people.
● Because the United Nation’s Security Council Resolution 1325 created a mandate to
include women in peacebuilding, women now have the opportunity to use this policy to
open doors to new opportunities for women in peacebuilding.
● Because women have already proven themselves to be successful peacebuilders, basing
their strategies on the principles of inclusivity and collaboration, and producing
peacebuilding outcomes that are broad-based and sustainable, their efforts should be
acknowledged and expanded.

As activists and advocates for peace, women ‘wage conflict nonviolently’ by pursuing
democracy and human rights. As peacekeepers and relief aid workers, women contribute to
“reducing direct violence.” As mediators, trauma healing counselors, and policymakers, women
work to “transform relationships” and address the roots of violence. As educators and
participants in the development process, women contribute to “building the capacity” of their
communities and nations to prevent violent conflict. Socialization processes and the historical
experience of unequal relations contribute to the unique insights and values that women bring
to the process of peacebuilding.

Following are some lessons learned about women and peacebuilding, shared by Lisa Schirch
and Manjrika Sewak on "The Role of Women and Peacebuilding” (2005), in a paper written for
the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict:

● Women and men experience conflict and violence differently. The costs of conflicts are
borne disproportionately by women and children. Since women pay the primary price when
peace is absent, they are important stakeholders in peacebuilding.

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● Women play important roles in peacebuilding and are essential to creating long-term,
sustainable peace. Women’s peace initiatives have facilitated multi-track interaction and
have transcended the boundaries of nationality, religion, class, and socioeconomic
background in their work for peace. Women’s peace initiatives have a track record of
producing turnarounds in conflict negotiations by conceptualizing agreements that are
more inclusive, community-based, and more likely to be successful in the long-run.
● Direct violence against women is an important dimension of civil unrest, and therefore
needs to be included in peacebuilding programmes.
● Structural or cultural violence against women in the form of unequal access to education,
jobs, and leadership opportunities, for example, is an obstacle to building peace and
therefore needs to be included in peacebuilding programmes. The presence of trained
gender advisors for all peacebuilding organizations and staff, in addition to training in and
opportunities for gender analysis by other staff, can help institutionalize a shared
responsibility for ongoing gender analysis of all programs.
● When groups try to infuse a gender analysis into their programmes by hiring gender
advisors, they often inadvertently ghetto-ize gender issues, leaving them isolated rather
than integrated into programming. Gender training programmes for entire organizations,
on the other hand, empower everyone to be involved in gender mainstreaming. Creating
gender units within the U.N. programmes was among the first generation of attempts at
gender mainstreaming in peacebuilding.

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