Recent events in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka have reignited fears of a return to violence among communities, a place where scholars and stakeholders hoped could now safely be deemed “post-conflict.”
Dr Jude Lal Fernando, Assistant Professor at Trinity’s School of Ecumenics, and organiser of the conference ‘Peacebuilding and Local Communities in Post-Conflict Societies: Challenges and Opportunities’, highlights the many problems with the word “post-conflict.”
“The word is used to describe situations where there are formal peace agreements in place, like Northern Ireland or South Africa, or Guatemala”, he said, adding that “simply because there is an agreement in place doesn’t mean that the conflict will be resolved. The top-level violence is mitigated but other types of structural violence, cultural violence and gender violence can continue.”
Dr Fernando, speaking before the most recent atrocities in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday said that Sri Lanka is “post-war”, but not “post-conflict.”
Palestine is also included in the programme, but Dr Fernando is clear that this case study does not represent post-conflict situation, not from a political point of view, nor from a social or cultural context.
Korea and Peace Building
Discussing these issues and more at the conference on May 7th in the Trinity Long Room Hub, the main focus of the workshop will be to learn from examples of peacebuilding in post-conflict societies for the benefit of the Korean context. The conference is sponsored by the Korean Institute for National Unification (KINO) and the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice is currently in the process of signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the organisation.
Dr Fernando credits Marie Curie Fellow Dong-jin Kim as being central to Trinity establishing new relationships with Korean NGOS and think tanks such as KINU. Dong-jin Kim is an Irish Research Council Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Co-fund CAROLINE (Collaborative Research Fellowships for a Responsive and Innovative Europe) Fellow at the Irish School of Ecumenics looking at a comparative study of the peace processes in Northern Ireland and Korea.
Dr Fernando comments that case studies from Columbia to Rwanda will all bring different dimensions which could be really helpful for the Koreans, and more widely it will help “explore how the local communities participated in peace building efforts and what their aspirations are in negotiating some kind of a political settlement.”
Korea had started a peace process in 2000, which Dr Fernando comments was never mentioned in any media outlet. This process then disintegrated and now they are trying to resuscitate it, Dr Fernando added. Yong-Hoon Song from Kangwon National University will discuss ‘DMZ Borderland and South-North Korean Exchange and Cooperation’ at the conference, while opening comments will be delivered by Byoung-Kon Jun, Acting President of KINU.
Workshop Programme
Among the issues that will be discussed at the workshop are justice after genocide, reconciliation, demilitarization and denuclearization, renegotiation of borders and political structures, cross-border exchange and cooperation, land distribution, and women’s and children’s rights.
Dr Fernando argues that any peace process must pay special attention to women and children. “When the top-level negotiating process unfolds, some of the most affected ones are forgotten. Some women lose their families, as we know, and some go through sexual violence. Children grow up with this trauma of seeing violence, so it will have a generational impact.”
Speaking on the “Northern Ireland Peace Process and Local Communities”, Duncan Morrow is a Professor in politics and the Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University and a former Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council where he championed the concept of a shared future and peace-building. Also represented at the conference will be the University of St Andrews; Al Quds University; charity Misean Cara; University of Oslo; Dublin City University; Leiden University; and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, Cyprus.
Many of the discussants for the workshop are experts from Trinity College. The Belfast campus of the Irish School of Ecumenics, offers an MPhil in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation. Its Course Coordinator Brendan Ciarán Browne will be one of the discussants on the panel ‘Palestine, Rwanda, and Tamil Eelam.’ Other TCD experts participating on the programme will be David Mitchell, Assistant Professor, Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, also of Trinity’s Belfast campus; Gillian Wylie, Assistant Professor of International Peace Studies in Trinity College Dublin; and Iain Atack, Head of Peace Studies, School of Religion.
Peacebuilding and Local Communities in Post-Conflict Societies: Challenges and Opportunities will take place in the Trinity Long Room Hub, Tuesday, 7 May 2019 at 10.30am. Attendance is free but registration is essential, click here to register.
The Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict: Upcoming Events
On Thursday, May 2nd, The Loyola Institute will host an event titled ‘Justice after Genocide in Sri Lanka.’ The event will make the ‘Tenth Anniversary of Mullivaikkal Massacre of Tamils’, and will be chaired by Professor Iain Attack with a keynote from Dr. Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary-General to the UN and Co-Chair of the Peoples’ Tribunal on Sri Lanka. Also featuring on the evening will be a poetry reading from a Tamil poet and eyewitness accounts from survivors and former detainees of Sri Lanka, survivors of the Rwandan genocide and ongoing accounts of genocide.