What peacebuilding means to me…
On my first day working for Peace Research and Education (PREP), Katerina brought me to her office as part of my onboarding process. On her desk, covered in artwork and papers, something caught my eye: a songbook called Songs for Peace. It was a collection of traditional Colombian songs centered around fellowship, community, and peace.
Katerina explained that many of PREP’s meetings with FUNRESURPAZ, a peacebuilding organization in Algeciras, Colombia, were punctuated by songs used to express despair, hope, joy, and even humor. During a joint meeting between FUNRESURPAZ and Moomken, a peacebuilding organization from Tunisia and Libya, both groups sang for each other. It was fascinating to watch these people, oceans and cultures apart, dealing with very similar but diverse and complex problems, connect over music.
So what does music have to do with peacebuilding? First, peacebuilding is a creative act. And music is one of the ultimate expressions of creativity, of the human spirit. It is also universal, making it a valuable tool in the processes of healing and reconciliation. Music, John Lederach writes in his book The Moral Imagination, has the potential to transcend violence and provide “hope and…strength to resist.”
Peacebuilding, like music, is often multilayered and complex. Like the songs that get stuck in our heads, the perpetual repetition of a tune, peace doesn’t begin or end at any discernible point. And for that reason, it’s messy, and that messiness swings from the terrifying to the surprisingly mundane. There are missed deadlines. Miscommunications. Exhausted team members. Bad internet connection. Fear. Stress. Mistakes (a lot of them).
I've expressed to Katerina and Dr. Hill how intricate, tangled, and frankly frustrating the peacebuilding process is. It is not as simple as a ceasefire and a piece of paper signed by two dignitaries. It's about the farmers, artists, teachers, hairdressers, singers, construction workers, and others, not just soldiers and politicians. Woven into the peacebuilding narrative are people's trauma, anger, frustration, grief, love, and joy.
Delving into and expressing these emotions - and processing the inherent emotionality that is unavoidable in the art of peacebuilding - requires an immense amount of trust, both in yourself, your team members, and the process itself.
That’s why inclusivity is crucial for peacebuilding. PREP, Moomken, and FUNRESURPAZ have incorporated this through participatory action research (PAR). It is a form of research that does not delineate between the researcher and the “researched,” but rather involves all parties in the process.Those who would traditionally be research subjects may not have come from academic backgrounds, but PAR teaches us that everyone has something valuable to contribute.
Katerina and I discussed this after a meeting with Moomken team members in November in which participants were encouraged to envision what the products of their research might look like. It was a long and, in some ways, circuitous process. One member, frustrated, exclaimed that it would be much easier if our team at PREP simply told them what to do.
But this isn’t the point of peacebuilding. Furthermore, it’s ineffective. Peacebuilding research only works when the voices of those closest to violent conflict are put first and when participants trust themselves and their peers. The knowledge that everyone was capable of accomplishing something and that everyone cared about the results finally allowed the team to move through the process effectively. In the words of one FUNRESURPAZ member, “la gente no sabe que sabe” (the people don’t realize what they know). Activities that elevate a multitude of voices cultivate trust, especially self-trust, and in this we see steps taken toward meaningful change.
As a grad student, it’s easy to get bogged down by the technical and the academic. But part of my job – now and in the future – is to embrace the messy and the emotional. That’s what peacebuilding requires of all of us. We cannot silo our work from the frustration, pain, and joy we feel when we encounter difficult situations, often ones fraught with trauma and violence.
