Inclusive Peace’s Researcher Philip Poppelreuter, shares three impressions from the recent PeaceTech Hackathon in Lausanne, where students and professionals from various backgrounds came together to solve challenges around peace & tech.

As Inclusive Peace, we have increasingly examined opportunities for using technology in our peace process support work. The first-ever PeaceTech Hackathon in Switzerland on 9-10 March 2024, organised by the EPFL EssentialTech Centre and Open Geneva, provided an exciting environment to delve further into the intersection between peace and technology. The event brought together students and professionals from various backgrounds to discuss in small groups of 5-10 individuals how technology can help tackle global peace challenges.

I had the privilege to represent Inclusive Peace as one of nine “challenge owners” at the event. Our challenge focused on entry points for refining the open-source deliberation technology Polis to render national dialogues more inclusive. Polis has been applied in several contexts to promote online brainstorming and consensus-building on various political issues among large groups of individuals. However, it is yet to be applied in the context of national dialogues, which come with specific challenges in facilitating consensus-building on highly sensitive political, social, and economic issues.

I left my first-ever Hackathon with three main impressions:

Hackathons as spaces of mutual learning and unique discussion dynamics

Hackathon participants’ diverse thematic expertise made them look at our challenge from different angles. Rich discussions on how to approach the challenge started as soon as the group assembled and pulled into different directions at times. A pronounced collaborative spirit enabled the group to jointly agree on a working process and labor division in addressing our challenge, nevertheless. It was highly interesting to see how the participants, who did not know each other, navigated the inherently challenging discussion space and created a conducive environment for mutual learning.

Handling technology with care

The conversations had during the hackathon highlighted the necessity to handle technology with care. In-depth discussions on what is technically feasible to implement with a tool like Polis will also have to explore pathways towards enhancing people’s trust and feelings of ownership in applied technologies. For Polis, for example, this implies finding ways to include communities based in remote areas with limited or no internet access in the deliberation process, collating people’s feedback on the results of the consensus-building process, and ensuring participants’ safety throughout the process. Collaborating among experts from various fields will be a genuine asset in carefully crafting a deliberation process that generates trust and maximises technology’s potential to promote inclusion.

Hackathon as the start of a process

The end of the Hackathon felt like the start of a continuous collaborative process on how to tap into the entry points identified over the two days. I see several ways to build on the hackathon and am looking to collaborate with counterparts who met at the hackathon in moving the conversations forward. I would therefore like to express my appreciation for the hackathon organisers’ initiative and great work in enabling this space to explore innovative ways of promoting inclusion, peace, and protection of human rights in the 21st century.

Collaborating among experts from various fields will be a genuine asset in carefully crafting a deliberation process that generates trust and maximises technology’s potential to promote inclusion.

Inclusive Peace’s Director, Thania Paffenholz, reflects on her recent experience supporting our partners at the forefront of steering and shaping Ethiopia’s national dialogue process. 

Author: Thania Paffenholz

I recently had the privilege to spend time with colleagues and friends from Ethiopia who are at the forefront of steering and shaping the Ethiopian national dialogue process. From my engagements last week here are some lessons from and for the Ethiopian and other multi-stakeholder political dialogue processes currently planned.

Addressing the dialogue as a three-layered complex system

Once a national dialogue process is planned or started, the focus is mostly on the dialogue space itself; questions are raised like who will participate, how to include marginalised actors, how to link the grassroots with the national process, how to get actors involved that do not want to engage or cannot be engaged out of legal or other reasons, how to access difficult to access geographical areas and how to develop the agenda setting for the process in an inclusive legitimate way. These are all pertinent challenging questions, see more below. What is not addressed sufficiently in most national dialogues are the other spaces outside the immediate dialogue that are equally important for an effective sustainable process.

The first is the political and social context around the dialogue. Comparative research from past national dialogue processes shows that support from key political, economic and societal elites as well as public support for the process are a make or break factors for any dialogue. It is not enough to have elite and public support at the beginning of the process; this support needs to be sustained throughout the process. In Yemen, for example, the dialogue process was very inclusive and decision-making was transparent and democratic. Nevertheless, the dialogue lost elite and public support over time and after the closure of the dialogue in 2014, war broke out that lasted until to date.

The third space for a national dialogue to consider is its sustainability: How can the results of such dialogues be used to shape the future of a peaceful and inclusive society? These questions are mostly left open to the end of the process. Dialogue organisers and participants often feel that there is an automatism between the discussions at the dialogue and its sustainable implementation. However, comparative research shows that the majority of national dialogue results are never implemented. It is thus crucial to shape the dialogue design and procedures in such a way that contributes to future sustainability.

What does this mean? For example, how transparent, inclusive, and democratic the selection of participants and the decision-making procedures will be designed, will determine how this will be applied in future governance procedures. The dialogue needs to pave the way into the future by example. Inclusion quotas for all delegations participating in the dialogue like gender, age, and geography, have been used in the cases of South Africa and Nepal as affirmative action for future government and public institutions. In Nepal, these quotas even permeated public life as they were automatically applied in social settings like associations or schools.

The inclusion challenge
Getting Inclusion right is at the heart of broad-based dialogue processes. However, there is often big confusion around inclusion centred around misunderstandings of the goals and strategies of inclusion. Is inclusion seen as representation, as a process or as an outcome? The simple answer is, that it is all of this, but different strategies and procedures need to be applied for each of these goals.

Inclusion as representation has three dimensions: First, who are the groups and constituencies participating in the dialogue; second, what is the quota system across delegations (the so-called ‘Inclusion formula’) representing the population right large as delegations will nominate or elect their members, they will have to apply a quota system during this process determined from the beginning, i.e. gender – what is the ratio of men and women within the delegations; age; geographic distribution, etc. Third, specific marginalised groups will get an extra delegation. For example, this happened in the Yemeni dialogue where women, youth and representatives from a marginalised geographical area received an extra delegation to ensure that their interests were met.

Second, inclusion as a process means that it is crucial how inclusion is practised during the process, ie. Are selection and decision-making criteria transparent and inclusive, or do they favour some over others? For example, in one of the very representative Somalia Dialogue processes, all decisions were made by a leadership committee comprised only of the big clans.

Third, inclusion as an outcome, it is not only important to have an inclusive process but to design for inclusive sustainable outcomes.

Strategic communication is a lacking essential
Strategic communication is an absent feature of many national dialogues. While operational communication is always practised (press briefings, social media or website information on the process) a holistic proactive strategic communication strategy that is better understood as active marketing of the dialogue, is mostly missing. Why is it important? Public and elite support is essential and can only be achieved with proactive strategic communication that guides all activities, gets the awareness and buy-in of the population and prevents potential conflicts.

Timeframe
Finding the right balance between rushing for results and leaving no one behind is a context-dependent and essential question bothering organisers of national dialogues. If the national dialogue is rushed, it often lacks legitimacy as it does not take sufficient time to get all relevant stakeholders on board or procedures right; if a national dialogue or its preparation is dragged on for too long, there is also a risk of losing public and elite support. Strategic communication is the most important element to counteract these risks in both cases.

Agenda setting
This is a complex task and often part of the national dialogue process at the beginning. The most important is to listen to people and develop an agenda that is legitimate and representative. Important as well is important to consider the mandate of the dialogue and other processes or institutions in the country that might be able to take over and immediately address some agenda points so that they do not have to be dealt with by the national dialogues. Not overloading the agenda to be able to produce implementable results is another important takeaway from other processes.

Armed conflict and national dialogues
National Dialogues often take place when there is still violence in the country. Evidence shows that national dialogues can take place in parallel to violence and there are different ways of including or connecting armed groups to the dialogue process – however, if armed conflicts are managed it is often easier to pursue the dialogue.

Protection, safe spaces and psycho-social support
Another set of overlooked issues in dialogue processes is the protection of participants. Often people take risks in participating in dialogues and their political and physical security needs to be considered when planning the dialogue process. Protection from social media shaming campaigns is a very relevant feature of current processes that is equally overlooked.
Creating the dialogue as a safe space is equally important as is psychosocial support for participants during the entire process as most people are traumatised and need healing and support to be able to participate.

Preparing for a national dialogue is a major task
Next to the political and technical preparations for a dialogue, preparing participants for the dialogue is key. Some groups are often much better prepared than others, which creates inequalities. Hence, systematic capacity building for understanding the dialogue and its functioning, as well as how to strategise for influence and develop joint positions are needed components.

In late January, we co-organised a peer convening of religious actors in Nairobi, Kenya to discuss how findings from our recent report on the role of religious actors in formal peacemaking could help to encourage more thoughtful and effective engagement of religious actors in peace processes in the Horn of Africa. In this blog, our Peace Process Support Advisor, Rainer Gude, shares key findings and takeaways from the event.

At Inclusive Peace, we often organise peer exchanges and we know from experience that people have a lot to learn from each other’s stories and reflect on recent research collectively.

Recently, we convened with religious actors from Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan to discuss how findings from our recent Peaceworks report on the role of religious actors in formal peace processes could help to encourage more thoughtful and effective engagement of religious actors in peace processes in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. We wanted to share a glimpse of what these collective reflection processes might bring to us as peace practitioners.

So what did the combination of collective reflection on research, storytelling, and strategising produce during the convening? Here are my thoughts.

First, it became clear to me that people find not only solace but new strength and new ideas in learning from others. Participants felt that the different contexts, though very different, had a lot to teach one another.

I also got a sense of an emerging regional network of religious actors. The power they have to support one another was evident and the request to continue to convene and accompany each other through the peace work was expressed.

During the peer convening, I saw how religious actors realised that they could create collaborations and support each other bilaterally across country borders. Many new connections were created and existing relationships strengthened.

I knew we religious actors do good work, but now I have some new vocabulary and proof to explain what we do for peace. (Participant at the religious actors peer convening)

Tools, concepts, and even simple vocabulary to better explain and map what and how religious actors work were found to be useful. At the same time, it was also expressed that religious actors, while having rich and large networks, also need capacity and support to fulfill their peace work. An important area that often came up during the conversion was trauma healing – without the knowledge of how to deal with both their traumas and the traumas of their constituents, the impact of even the most “useful” research” will be limited.

Lastly, what stood out to me, was the importance of bringing people together and creating, and holding the space, for collective learning.

What ensues is often out of the facilitator’s or convenor’s control, which is a good thing – the organic work of the participants can emerge where it needs to.

This was an important step. There is so much wisdom in this room and so much we learned from one another. I hope we continue to walk and work together. (Participant at the religious actors peer convening)

In his peacebuilding classic “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace”, John Paul Lederach speaks of the “critical yeast” rather than the critical mass, of people that need to come together from across a system to change it. In his understanding, change emerges when the potent ingredients of a mixed group (age and regionally), applied research, and a facilitated process come together.

In Nairobi, I saw this emerging mix play out. New cross-border initiatives were created in this fertile mixture of ingredients and the result might very well be the necessary critical yeast to set change in motion.

While the recognition of the significance of mental health grows within the peacebuilding domain, there still is a tendency to overlook how important it is to address traumas before engaging in peace processes or national dialogues. As a part of our work to accompany religious leaders in Tigray, Ethiopia, Inclusive Peace recently helped organise a retreat focused on trauma healing. In this blog, Rainer Gude, our Peace Process Support Advisor, shares his insights and experiences.

“You walked with us, helped us recognize our own trauma, stayed with us in our pain, and helped us to drink from our own well and restore our ‘hilina.’”

Hilina is a word found in Tigrinya and Amharic and means both ‘conscience’ and ‘humanity’ and is both individual and collective. The words are from one of the participants in a recent trauma healing workshop with religious leaders in Tigray that I helped facilitate at the beginning of November. But what is Inclusive Peace doing in a trauma healing workshop and what does all this have to do with our work to support the national dialogue in Ethiopia?

A year on from the “Pretoria Agreement” that stopped the guns in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, many questions remain about how to move forward. One of them concerns trauma healing. Wars always leave wounds, visible or not, that take time to heal and sometimes those unhealed wounds stand in the way of what comes next.

In May of 2023, I went with a colleague to Mekelle, in Tigray on a listening tour to visit Religious Leaders. While at Inclusive Peace we specialize in national dialogues and peace processes and are doing what we can to support the Ethiopian National Dialogue in various ways, we also know from comparative experience that you have to meet people where they are. What came from that trip to Mekelle was that a national dialogue simply seemed too distant amid the religious leaders’ pain and trauma. Subsequently, we were explicitly asked to organize a trauma-healing retreat for religious leaders. And a few months later that is exactly what we did.

The retreat was held in the beginning of November in collaboration with our partner, the African Council of Religious Leaders (ACRL), an organization with expertise in trauma healing. ACRL has designed trauma healing retreats tailored specifically for religious leaders who are often traumatized on various levels: first as victims of a conflict themselves, then by hearing all that their communities have suffered as many people come to them seeking comfort, and lastly as they feel their powerlessness in the face of widespread trauma that they were not even necessarily “trained” to deal with.

What else can I say about those intense, sad, powerful, beautiful retreat days? Certainly, I am not the same person I was before. But besides that, I have seen the power, and necessity of trauma healing and how it is a gate-opener to dealing with other broader issues related to peace.

“First you deal with people’s pain, where they are, then you can move forward from there.” Trauma-healing expert, Alfred Kibunja, African Council of Religious Leaders

In my work with Inclusive Peace, I had come to understand our approach of accompanying actors in peace and political transition processes as an act of accompaniment, of “walking with” others. But I had not quite realized where that journey could begin. The retreat participants saw no interest or connection in speaking about the National Dialogue process at the beginning of the retreat. But after a week of collectively sitting with their pain and co-creating spaces for healing, they were ready.

In a process that can only be described as accompanying, walking with, and creating a safe shared space, different religious leaders of various ages and religious backgrounds, male and female, were finally permitted to share their pain. They could safely realize that it is OK to talk about it, OK to cry, and OK not to be OK. They also found that healing was within their reach and indeed in their hands. An analogy of the healing body came to me: Any doctor will tell you that doctors do not heal anyone, the body heals itself, and as a doctor, you can only help it along the way.

Speaking about peacebuilding or political solutions or even trying to mention national dialogue when people are not ready, even with all its positive potential, would be like trying to get a plant to grow by pulling it up from its stem: You risk unrooting it. You can nourish the plant’s roots where it is and give it the sunlight of hope.

No matter how urgent or necessary the peacebuilding and national dialogue and anything else may be, sometimes the best thing to do is pause and take a step back. Trauma healing in this context gave the participants a new perspective and new energy to move forward, to heal, to even imagine what their religious communities could contribute to a national dialogue, but even more importantly, what they could contribute to a better future.

During the retreat, the participants and I experienced that while the truth may not be relative, it is relational, and in restoring relationships with themselves and their community, they were on the path towards restoring the wounded relationships with their neighbors. They understand that healing (and even peace for that matter) is a journey, not a destination, and it is a journey that is better walked together. I, and we at Inclusive Peace, are honored to walk with them.