Week 3: C-A-P-S! Caps! Caps! Caps!
In week 3, I started my online course in conflict analysis offered by USIP. One of the main objectives of conflict analysis, as I've learned, is actually inward-facing. Without introspection, our conscious or unconscious biases could cause us to overlook key stakeholders in the peace process. For example, one could choose to include only individuals and groups who were not seen as the aggressors in a conflict, but this would leave out key groups that may have already felt marginalized, which may have led them to engage in violent conflict in the first place. While it might seem like a bad idea to engage violent groups, it is often essential to do so, in the right way, to ensure the peace process is sustainable, inclusive, and reconciliatory. Otherwise, international intervention into the conflict may end up causing more problems than it solves.
One thing that the CA course really forced me to think about in a different way is the idea that conflict is a force—and not an inherently bad one, either. Our job as peacemakers is to think critically about the conflict—its actors, causes, and accelerating factors—and use this information to harness the conflict toward reconciliation.
In my own life, I tend to avoid conflict. It's uncomfortable. It's challenging. It's risky. But it's also rewarding when engagement in conflict is done correctly and productively. As a law student, I'm learning that navigating conflict toward a positive outcome is the name of the game in American legal practice. Our adversarial process is very conflict-oriented, but the focus is on winning the case and representing your clients' interests, which tends to work well for a court room, but does not necessarily help in the peacebuilding world. Similarly, mediation of peacebuilding talks started out as a diplomatic exercise, meaning that there was little analysis of the conflict itself and a lot of emphasis on making sure the interests of a particular country were represented.
Now, as practitioners have gained more experience and understanding, the field has shifted toward an analysis-based approach. When done right, the CA process should produce a "validated, participatory, inclusive" solution, according to guest lecturer for the CA course, Juan Diaz-Prinz. In other words, it should produce a report that is based on feedback from experts from the countries or groups affected and validated by individuals immediately impacted by the conflict on the ground.
I feel very grateful that I work in a place that is so committed to continued learning, critical thinking, and professional development and improvement. The skills I'm learning in this course are ones I would not have learned except after years of working in the field.
While participating in the course, I have also been continuing my research on community-based policing efforts around the world to determine if, when, and how states should engage these groups to fill in gaps in their security services. This week was focused on narrowing down the long list of countries I've compiled to zero in on a few representative case studies. I've tried to gather groups and countries all over the world so that we have a variety of groups from across the spectrum (community watch groups to citizen militias). Right now, I'm thinking I will focus on Mexico, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. I've generally tried to avoid countries that are in the Sahel or Maghreb regions of Africa because the goal is for the JSD team to be able to use my research to apply to countries in those regions.
In the next couple of weeks, I will start really digging deep into my country case studies to find out all I can about the groups in these countries so that I can use the skills I'm developing in my CA course to analyze what has made the groups successful or not.
In other news: the Caps won the Stanley Cup, and the city has been celebrating for about a week now. Go Caps! Here's a picture of me and my friend, fellow WM Law student Christina, at a place called the Bullpen, where literally hundreds of Caps fans went to watch what turned out to be the final game of the series!
And no, we weren't trying to be Golden Knights fans with our all-black outfits—we were originally going to the free movie series in Canal Park when we decided we should probably check out the Caps game after seeing the crowd at Bullpen.
Not saying we were good luck charms for the Caps in their final game but . . . they did win their first-ever Stanley Cup championship when we were watching. Coincidence? I think not.