The Art of Peacemaking

Progress with our volunteer peacemaker team is happening. Slowly. As we look into the coming year and begin to implement our visions, we are realizing more and more what a challenge it is to work as a team towards the goal of peace, but we’re also discovering just how necessary it is to work together. We all have valuable things to offer, but no one person has what it takes to carry out the team’s vision alone. Unlike many of the volunteers, I have had some formal training and job experience in the field of peacemaking, however, unlike all of the other volunteers, my knowledge of the Lao cultural context and language are extremely limited. I’m learning to bite my tongue and simply listen during those times when, as a foreigner to this country, I truly can’t add anything valuable to the discussion. And so we move forward in tiny steps through a process of constant dialogue.

Dialogue: an essential tool in such an unscientific domain as peace and conflict studies. Through our groups many trainings and interchange sessions, we are learning that even within the small community of conflict resolution scholars, for example, there is a broad array of methods, not all of which are complimentary. The techniques taught by a visiting professor from Canadian Mennonite University may be very different than those taught at a special training in the Philippines or, for that matter, from the traditional Lao conflict resolution methods. And much to the dismay of some of my Lao friends, there is no one right conflict resolution strategy for every situation. In the art of peacemaking, the mediums are endless.