Mark Tamthai

[Ed. Note: The author is the director of the Humanities for Society Centre, which is part of the faculty of arts at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. This article was presented as an address at the U.N. Peace Day celebration at the U.N. mission in Bangkok on Sept. 19, 2000.]

Many of the violent conflicts which are taking place around us in the world today are conflicts occurring between groups which are formally part of the same country. Mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of such conflicts are glaringly lacking. While the United Nations provides a mechanism for resolving international conflicts, which can be viewed as intraworld conflicts, the intranational conflicts are left to whatever devices each country has to deal with these forms of violence. Much of the needed peacemaking in today’s world takes place at this level, and appropriate national mechanisms are needed to meet these challenges.

Whatever forms these mechanisms might take in each country, there are at least three tasks which I believe these mechanisms must address in order to make the peaceful resolution of conflicts in their countries a reality.

The first task is to reach a common understanding of the meaning of what a ‘peaceful resolution’ is. Though this may seem to be obvious, my experience has been that the differences that exist in this matter are substantial and become an obstacle to even beginning the difficult work that still lies ahead.

Let me mention two examples. Last month I participated in a meeting in Nan Province in Thailand where various groups met to discuss how to prevent the conflict between the highlanders and lowlanders in Chiang Kiang District from turning violent. One of the officials in the meeting told the gathering that he had been assigned the task of solving this conflict in a peaceful manner and that he had found a solution that was only waiting for implementation. An important part of the solution he had proposed involved the sterilisation of the highlanders since he believed that the increasing numbers of this population was one of the main causes of the conflict. Upon questioning, he stated that, to his understanding, this was a ‘peaceful’ resolution. Though it was not possible to tell if many in the room shared his understanding of what a peaceful solution entailed, and though I am fairly certain no such plan would ever be implemented, the seeming acceptance of this idea as an option was disconcerting nonetheless.

The second example comes from a somewhat different perspective, the perspective of those who have chosen to take up arms to resolve their conflict with governments. In discussions with members of such groups in Mindanao in the Philippines and Burma while on peace missions, the view often expressed to me is that justice must come before peace and that peacemaking might compromise struggles for social justice, hence, the battle cry ‘No Peace without Justice.’ However, this battle cry is actually part of the meaning of peace. A peaceful resolution of a conflict includes as part of its meaning a ‘just’ resolution, and thus, there can never be two opposed directions, one aiming towards justice and one aiming towards peace. What this reiterates is that mechanisms that ensure human dignity and mechanisms that work towards peace are, in theory and in practice, inseparable.

Though coming to a common understanding of what a ‘peaceful’ resolution is makes the other tasks clearer, the drawback is that peace may now need a reason, and the first task ends with each country having to find its reason for peace.

The second task which national mechanisms must address is that of discovering the root cause of the various conflicts in order to begin the search for a lasting peaceful solution. In many contexts, the difficulty in finding lasting solutions to the conflicts is often because what is being addressed is not the real cause of the conflict but rather a result of the real cause not being addressed. One example of this is the confusion of the desire for a place in society with respect and dignity with aspirations for independence. Part of this second task is dealing with these causes through other mechanisms of society, such as educational institutions and the media. A little knowledge of history can go a long way towards the changing of attitudes. The difficulty of identifying the root cause, and having it accepted by society at large, is often the main obstacle that peacemaking must overcome. Sometimes it can take many years if tackled on its own.

Once the second task is completed, then the third task is to affirm publicly in writing the root cause that is believed to have led to the conflict and what steps the country needs to take to eradicate this cause. This may be in the form of an official policy, such as Thailand’s present national security policy for the southern border provinces, or some other form of document. How such documents are effective probably varies from country to country. For some countries, they may take a form similar to a miniature ‘social contract’ while for others they may be the rationale needed to convince people to attempt to undergo serious changes of attitude and perception. In whatever situation a country finds itself, the value of these documents for peacemaking should not be underestimated.

To increase the chance of success of the undertakings of these intranational peacemaking mechanisms, one more dimension might be worth adding. The second task mentioned above sometimes involves the ability to be able to examine one country’s own prejudices. Since those who are part of these mechanisms are at the same time part of that society, this could pose a barrier as good intentions are not always enough to enable one to overcome these blind spots. Human frailties and social prejudices make a deadly combination and, if left unchallenged, provide a formidable opponent to any peacemaking efforts. In such cases, cooperation with other intranational peacemaking mechanisms may be of assistance in dealing with this problem if this other country is culturally similar enough to have useful insights which can identify these blind spots, but not too similar so that it shares the same prejudices. Under these circumstances, peacemaking in today’s world becomes another way of bringing the nations of the world closer together.