Donna
Howard
3.2.1.1 Composition of teams
Team size
The team-sending organisations
have for the most part been limited to small
teams by resources and the number of qualified
volunteers available. In some cases, however,
it was decided that a smaller number of volunteers
was advantageous the work (e.g. BPT, WfP).
At its largest, Witness for Peace had 40 tong-term
team members in the field at one time; now there
are four per country. The dramatic change is
due to both limited funding and a change of focus.
At first the goal was to have as many people
as possible see what was going on in Chiapas.
Now long-term teams do more research, analysis
and writing. SIPAZ at one time had 10 team members in
Chiapas, but shrinking resources allow for only
a two-person team at present.
Organisations differ in how many
persons they place on a single team, ranging
from two to eight. Austrian Peace Services sometimes
sends people out alone; SIPAZ and Pax Christi
have teams of two or three; Osijek Peace
Teams, three to five; BPT from one to four. CPT currently has
teams in the field of four, eight, seven and
three, and PBI’s teams
have ranged from two to 25.
The total number of volunteers
sustained in the field currently ranges from
two to 50: SIPAZ has two, CPS Forum six, Austrian
Peace Services 11, CPT 21, PBI more than 50.
PBI has four on-going projects
(Columbia, Haiti, Chiapas, East
Timor/Indonesia) as does CPT (Chiapas, Hebron, New Brunswick and Colombia). Osijek has
five teams in one project.
Age of team members
PBI has an absolute lower age
limit of 25 and SIPAZ one of 23. Most other teams
will consider a person 21 years old. BPT’s lower
limit was ”people who were not mature enough
without giving an age limit; team members were
either in their 20’s or in their 40’s and 50’s.” The average age of WfP team
members is 27. Currently, seven full-time CPT
Corps members are in their 20’s, two are in their
30’s, four are in their 40’s, three in their
50’s, two in their 60’s, and one in her 70’s.
Minimum age is 21.
Culture/ Nation/ Gender
A look at national diversity
of peace teams shows WfP and
CPT at one end of the spectrum with only members
from U.S. and Canada (by choice) and PBI at the
other end with its 17 country groups recruiting
from all over the world. On the CPT Corps of
19 full-timers, six are from Canada and 13 are
from US. Each CPT team is selected and balanced
carefully by the Director. Potential members
are evaluated for personality type (e.g. leadership),
age, gender, etc. It has happened that a team
ended up being one female and four males because
of the need to balance other factors and having
a small field from which to choose.
BPT teams were mostly from western
Europe and the US, one person was Australian, and residents
of countries where the project worked were excluded.
Slightly more women than men volunteered for
BPT. Each Osijek Peace
Team includes at least one Serbian, one Croatian,
and one international. Members have come from
Austria, Germany, Britain, Yugoslavia, Rumania
and US.
SIPAZ team members in Chiapas
come from France, the Netherlands, Peru, Uruguay,
US, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Ecuador as well
as Mexico. A few of the projects under the German
CPS are carried out by nationals from the conflict
region (project of Living Without Armament in Vojvodina and of Forum CPS in Belgrade).
Diversity
Team diversity may at times seem
unwieldy and complex, but all agree that it contributes
to the betterment of the team. CPT holds the
record for greatest age diversity by far, with
one volunteer who had not turned 21 and one in
her 70’s. All teams strive for gender balance.
The matter of mixed ethnicity
on teams is a more complicated one, having to
do with justice, language, safety, and effectiveness. CPT team-mate Rey Lopez,
originally from the Philippines, was adept and
effective in Haitian culture and a PBI team-mate from Japan was effective
in Sri Lanka. However, a PBI team in Sri Lanka
recommended against having Indian team members
because of the colonial relationship between
countries.
Recall the story told in chapter
2.2.2 about the arrest of Karen Ridd and
Marcella Rodriguez in El Salvador. The two women
(Ridd is Canadian,
Rodriguez is Colombian) represent an ideal pairing
within a team - one for familiarity with proximate
language and culture, and one whose white skin
provided enough immunity that she might afford
some protection to her team partner as well.
On that occasion in El Salvador, 37 Europeans
and North Americans detained. 75% of them were
held less than 24 hours, nearly all handed over
to their embassies. However, of the 17 South
American and Central American foreigners detained,
60% were held for over four days and then summarily
deported. Due to Ridd’s accompaniment,
Rodriguez was only Latin American freed the same
day.
Though diversification and undoing
racism have been PBI goals from the onset, fulfilment
has proven elusive. There is no mechanism for
recruitment in countries other than those which
have a PBI group, PBI-USA set aside board seats
for people of colour but has difficulty filling
them; there has been no successful outreach in
Africa.
Early in WfP development
it was decided that teams should be from the
US in order to contend US policy, which was a
primary goal. But Phyllis Taylor believes that
peace teams most certainly should be multi-cultural
in Israel/Palestine, for example, to establish
non-partisanship. The same was said of Osijek teams
by IFOR secretary Pete Hammerle:
the presence of both Serbs and Croats on each
team is essential.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer,
assistant professor of International Peace and
Conflict Resolution at American University, advises
that NP’s teams absolutely must be multicultural
as a manifestation of our goals. He does not
feel language should present a problem for communication
within the team - that we should require proficiency
in English or French, e.g., and interpersonal
communication skills. Training must include cultural
diversity as well as interpersonal conflict resolution
for use within the team.
3.2.1.2 Decision-making, communication,
specialisation
”Consensus process does not aim
for unanimity, nor even for each group member
to be totally satisfied with a particular decision.
It does aim for complete support.”
All teams studied rely on consensus
to make decisions within the team. Not all have
a specific plan for how to handle an urgent situation
when consensus could not be reached in a reasonable
amount of time.
SIPAZ works with a consensus
model at all levels of the organisation. SIPAZ
works with a consensus model at all levels of
the organisation. The team itself has a coordinator
whose leadership is respected in a crisis. All
are subject to decisions by the Board of Directors.. WfP teams and
delegations make decisions by consensus, but
in danger a leader may make a decision. The field
staff member in Managua may say to the delegation or team, ”You
need to come back.”
Consensus is a core value of
PBI. It is mandated and used on every level of
the organisation: ”Within PBI, consensus decision
making is not simply instrumental; it is not
just one among many possible ways to accomplish
organisational tasks and goals. It is understood,
rather, as concretely expressive, even prefigurative of
the sort of social world the organisation and
its members are working to bring about.” Policy also provides for a democratic vote
when time-restraints necessitate. The highest
decision-making body is the General Assembly
which convenes once every three years; the International
Council has authority in the interim.
The two offices of the Croatian
Team of BPT got together for what they called
an ”Otvorene Summit”
every 2 or 3 months. They met at a third place
to evaluate that period of work, update strategy
for next period, and assess the personal performance
of each team member. They then prepared a report
for the Co-ordinating Committee. All BPT teams had similar meetings.
Each Christian Peacemaker team
has a co-ordinator, a writer, and other specialisations.
Teams make decisions together; the team co-ordinator
would only make a unilateral decision if the
situation demands a quick response without time
to process it with the entire team. During CPT training, a potential team member
is required to take a work style assessment called
”Style Profile for Communication at Work” This instrument is a measurement of ”style”
which it defines as ”your characteristic way
of perceiving and thinking about yourself, others,
and things,” and it offers a descriptive categorisation
of how one works under both stress and calm conditions.
Gene Stoltzfus, CPT Director, uses this
information to create a balanced team with someone
on it who can take leadership even in stressful
times. ”We have found it almost essential that
at least one person on the team be ”Achieving/directing.”
Specialisations often occur within
a team based on the unique skills volunteers
bring with them rather than a dividing up of
responsibility. Austrian Peace Services reports
that ability in editing or drama, for example,
might be needed and nurtured within the team.
Precedents for NP team structure
and decision-making cannot be relied upon from
within the study of small teams which are quite
homogenous. Therefore, examples follow of what
has not worked: how extreme stress and dysfunctional
participants can undermine the consensus process
within larger and multi-ethic groups.
Gulf Peace Team camp members
successfully used consensus when the group was
small. But as numbers grew, fewer people took
part, perhaps because some spoke little or no
English or because meetings were poorly facilitated. The camp of approximately 70 people then
formed into affinity groups with a Steering Committee.
It was never resolved how to make decisions when
this process failed.
The affinity groups were not
very functional in the Gulf Peace Camp. There
was no common language, little experience with
affinity groups, some without experience of nonviolent action,
no shared cultural identity nor ideological cohesion,
and a disproportionate number of people with
serious psychological needs. In spite of all this Robert Burrowes concludes,
”It is clear from the historical record that
the preferred organisational unit for effective nonviolent action
is the affinity group.”
Similar problems were experienced
by the Cyprus Resettlement Project. The transnational nature
of the team made it harder to consense over
aims, approaches, roles, etc. Team members did
not share a common language, and translation
did not make up for it.
Mir Sada was
an event rather than an on-going project, so
it never had time to discover better practices
of communication and decision-making. Nonetheless,
its difficulties inform NP in these areas. The
dominant language was Italian, and even with
consecutive translation in meetings non-Italians
were at a disadvantage. Members were formed into
affinity groups, but the speakers’ council, without
a mandate, functioned more like a parliament.
The structure ceased to be a democracy when subject
to the overriding will of the organisers.
3.2.1.3 Length of stay, overlap,
introduction of new member
At the peak of need for accompaniment
in Guatemala, PBI experimented with a two-tiered
system of long-term team members and short-term
escorts. Hundreds of two-week or one-month escorts
were recruited and sent into the field to join
long-term team members, who maintained the political
contacts, analysed the political situation, and
determined the team’s work priorities. The long-term
team members were responsible for orientation
and support of these escort volunteers.
Formal orientation manuals were
created for the short-term escorts. Regular discussions
amongst volunteers analysed political situation
and risks. Logs were kept noting threats, surveillance,
or suspicious coincidences to maintain continuity
and organisational memory amidst rapid volunteer
turnover. PBI discontinued the use of short-term
escorts in 1989 because short-termers weren’t
getting deep enough preparation and it was a
tremendous burden on the team which stayed in
the field. This discontinuation meant the loss
of 100 volunteers per year, ”but PBI was more
concerned about maintaining trusting relationships
in the field, a high-level of discretion and
analysis, and a strong sense of team continuity
and affinity, all of which were suffering.”
Liam Mahony sees
risks for short-term volunteers. Lack of time
to relax and learn the ropes makes mistakes more
likely, with a potential of being dangerous or
costly to the reputation of the organisation;
cultural ignorance can result in offensive behaviour
and perhaps damage to the relationship of trust
with the accompanied groups; and natural inquisitiveness
can be intensified by the brevity of the visit
and go beyond the bounds of the distancing necessary
in the accompaniment role. The combinations of short and long-term
volunteers ”that work”, Mahony concludes, involve some
level of supervision of the short-termers by
either staff or longer-term team members who
provide continuity of analysis and build long-term
relationships with the various groups. This supervision
should be combined with explicit behavioural
guidelines, clear role definitions, and careful
screening of volunteers. ”What doesn’t work at
all is for an organisation to simply send short-term
volunteers without guidelines or rigorous supervision,
or for inexperienced volunteers to come without
any organisation at all. Although many of these
volunteers do excellent accompaniment, the exceptions
wreak havoc, damaging the credibility and effectiveness
of all other accompaniment groups working in
the conflict. The risk can be reduced through
supervision or training but never entirely eliminated.”
Pat Coy’s analysis
is that frequent turnover can ”work against and
have a largely negative impact on the team’s
ability to actualise the consensus principle
of full participation. [It] contributes to repetition
and inefficiency in discussion and decision making
and increases frustration with the consensus
process. It also disrupts personal relationships
on the teams and changes team power dynamics
in ways that frequently--although not always--have
deleterious effects on the consensus process.”
SIPAZ team members commit to
one year of service; WfP team
members to two years; CPT corps members to three
years. All three organisations have a high rate
of extention beyond this initial commitment:
SIPAZ has one volunteer who has been on the team
for four years now; WfP Director
Steven Bennett says they have to recruit very
little now and can be very selective.
Sandra van den Bosse revealed
some pitfalls in the arrival of a new BPT team
members: ”An introduction packet was written
but not always followed. Sometimes the departing
team member was reluctant to leave, causing troubles;
sometimes they were eager to leave and too negative
towards the new team member... Sometimes the
new team member thought they knew it all already
and refused to be introduced.”
With a mix of full-timers and
reservists on a CPT team, it is important to
stagger arrivals. The full-timers might stay
three months and go away for a period and come
back for three more months, or they might stay
six months or more. Sometimes a team might be
made up of two long-term people and two or three
reservists.
Staggered arrivals at the beginning
of a project are not a good thing, however, according
to Kate Kemp of the Cyprus Resettlement Project.
”[Other difficulties] could have been overcome
had we all arrived at the same time so that initial
orientation could have involved discussion of
these points.... We could have saved a lot of
time (and perhaps confusion) later on in the
project.”
Thorough and sensitive orientation
can helps a new member acquire skills and information
needed to accomplish group goals and tasks; introduce
him/her to the neighbourhood, the conflict, and
team contacts; ease the disorientation and emotional
turmoil of ”culture shock”; and allow her/him
to work through the identity transition that
is always part of joining a new group. But this does not always happen. If a team
is over-extended in its work or experiencing
conflict within, for example, often less care
is given to the orientation of a new member.
The result is that it takes the new volunteer
far longer to become effective, more team time
is taken in answering questions, the new member
will lack confidence to become a full participant
in the work or in team decision-making, meetings
will be inefficient and consensus process compromised.
3.2.1.4 Team compatibility and
internal conflict
”Some
people have some gifts, skills or capabilities.
People
who work in teams and who are committed complement
and influence each
other in a synergetic way. This compatibility is
an important criterion
when constituting our peace teams.”
-Katarina Kruhonja
This is an issue which will just
be touched upon here and which needs to be considered
in depth in the training plan for NP. It is clear
that team-sending organisations have relied too
heavily on the ”gifts” of incoming team members
and that specific skills of conflict resolution,
team-building, and multi-cultural sensitivity
must be taught more extensively during training.
Good intentions for being a part of international nonviolence do not necessarily
come accompanied with person-to-person skills
for problem solving and relationship. Training
must take that into account.
John Heid,
finding himself on a very unformed Michigan Peace
Team, said, ”There were all kinds of people coming
in who had gifts that I didn’t have, but they
didn’t know how to build community.”
One team member told me that
living and working with people you have never
met before and people that you would perhaps
not usually befriend is too hard to do and only
enjoyable ”on those rare occasions that nobody
was pissed off at anybody.”
Team members at times experience
”burn-out” on internal team dynamics. During
these times, a team might put a great deal of
energy into its work in the field, even its clerical
work, but do anything to avoid meetings about
team dynamics. This will inevitably compromise
the orientation of a new member arriving during
this time, and if there are actual disputes within
the team, the new member may be quickly recruited
to take a side.
CPT has a written policy to address
internal problems, which is included here as
a relevant example:
”Procedure for Dealing with Conflicts and
Grievances in CPT...
· Any
concern or disagreement should be addressed by
either party within a reasonable length of time.
As a general guideline, no more than five days
should elapse between any of the following procedural
steps. When delays are involved, the procedure
to be used and the time frame should be outlined
and agreed upon in preliminary discussions. These
procedures apply to areas of personal relationships
and to work/supervisory issues.
· Step
1: Where there is a concern or disagreement,
the two people involved should attempt to come
to a satisfactory solution through honest speaking
and compassionate listening.
· Step
2: Where a solution is not found, the two parties
together will agree on a third party to be a
mediator. CPT encourages use of the next-level
supervisor as a mediator.
· Step
3: Where the first effort with a third party
mediator is unsuccessful, one or both of the
parties should take the matter to the CPT Executive
Director for resolution.
· Step
4: If steps 1-3 are not successful, any of the
parties concerned should submit a written request
for help to the chairperson of the Steering Committee...”
3.2.1.5 Behavioural ethics
Very little about behaviour on
a team is found in writing, either as rules or
as narrative of what goes on within a team. Some
organisations, like SIPAZ, believe that rigorous
application screening and training processes
will reveal problems that would manifest themselves
in inappropriate behaviour in the field. The communication of ethics begins in their
job announcement: ”As a SIPAZ volunteer you must
be willing to live simply, sharing in the lives
and work of the Mexicans you will meet, and being
respectful of their cultures and beliefs. It
may require adjusting to new ideas, cultures,
climate, living conditions, etc...” And because peace team organisations train
applicants before accepting them onto a team,
there is opportunity for assessing a person’s
judgement rather than enforcing a set of rules.
For SIPAZ team members, the strict
screening is followed by a three month trial
period and then an evaluation. Director Poen says
there have been times when that initial evaluation
revealed that things weren’t working out well.
No person has had to be removed from a team;
rather there have been a couple of times when
the volunteer and evaluator agreed after training
that placement wasn’t appropriate.
BPT, however, had a written list
of rules, included below (their Conduct Policy
is discussed in Chapter 4.5).
BPT Rules and Guidelines
1. Go in pairs
2. One person stays at the home base
3. Tell the others where you are and how long
you will be
4. Files and documents should be kept in a
safe place
5. Don’t disclose information
6. Use prudence at all times
7. Volunteers are not to work for any other
person or organisation during the term of service
nor fundraise on behalf of other groups.
8. After service with BPT is over, volunteers
cannot work with another organisation in the
area for a period of one month
9. Take 1 day off per week and 2 more days
a month
10. We are not here to solve the problems, but
to enable local people to solve their problems
themselves
11. Be aware that it is not our business as
foreigners to tell people what they have to do,
and be cautious against the Western tendency
‘to do something.’
12. Each action should be assessed as to what
risk the action entails for the volunteer, what
risk it entails for the BPT getting evicted from
the country, what it means for the people you
are working with, what the long term effects
of it probably are.
13. Never give in to the pressure that ‘you
have to do something’ or act against the will
of the people concerned
14. Do not promise anything you are unsure of
being able to fulfil
15. Respect the rules of non-partisanship. BPT
organisers have defined impartiality as not working
for any organisation/group as volunteers by:
a) counselling them; b) hanging around in their
offices too much; c) translating letters, making
telephone calls, etc for them; d) have their
office in an independent building; e) present
themselves as members of the team; f) avoid political
statements; g)maintain contacts with many different
groups and organisations; h) stress their independence
as foreigners; i) listen
to people, without offering agreement or support;
and j) avoid close personal friendships.
BPT policy discouraged team members
from favours for locals outside the activities
of the project, nonetheless translations were
sometimes made and cars loaned. ”Sexual relationships
were discouraged but nevertheless happened, and
three volunteers ended up getting married to
locals... Social relationships with ordinary
locals were encouraged, however, to get a better
understanding and find friends outside of the
team and activist populations.”
Steven Bennett acknowledges that
there have been plenty of personal crises on WfP teams.
The organisation has rules for the conduct of
a team member officially representing WfP in
the field, but not for personal relationships.
”It would not be right for us to make policy
about relationships between team members,” and
there is no proscription on relations with locals.
Bennett says there have been many marriages both
on the team and with locals..
”Romantic pairings among team
members are common and impact on the consensus
process and team relations in a variety of ways.
Most team members appear to go along with these
relations, are willing to make the switches in
bedroom assignments that are usually necessary
to accommodate them, and accept the extra demands
they made on consensus and team relations...
Yet they are not always welcomed by the entire
team. While no doubt an extreme example, one
Japanese volunteer was distressed in late 1993
when the other six members of the Sri Lanka team all paired
off romantically.” The result for that man was
loneliness, a complication of team relations,
a feeling that others were less committed to
the work and the team, and a moral issue based
in cultural difference.
A member of the Guatemalan Accompaniment
Project spoke of sexual relations between volunteer
men and Mayan women. ”There’s so much of it.
And when it happens, that young woman becomes
a social outcast in a way. She will most likely
never be able to marry.”
Problems with behavioural ethics
are much more likely to occur within large groups
that have been hastily recruited or not unified
by one organisation’s standards and style. An
example would be the mass accompaniment of returning
Guatemalan refugees in 1993. Hundreds of unscreened
volunteers came from all over the world to respond
to the need - many with no organisational affiliation,
training or preparation.
”The accompaniment did not always
put its best foot forward: the volunteers couldn’t
stop bickering among themselves. Cultural, ideological
and strategic differences among the volunteers
were difficult to overcome in such a short, intense
period. The Guatemalan government refugee commissioner
even accused the accompaniment of using illicit
drugs and stealing food and blankets, and some
volunteers admit that this may have occurred.” A UNHCR official denigrated the situation
and volunteers thus: ”These people get into buses
that we paid for. They sleep on mattresses that
had been given to refugees. They are eating [the
refugees’] food. They are really tourists or
hippies, joining the movement. I don’t think
they really represent a real protection, because
you don’t know who they represent, seriously,
coming on their own like that.”
Choices that seem minor can undermine
the respectability of an entire group. The leader
of WfP delegations
to Central America required women to wear bras
and forego short shorts to respect the local
standards of modesty. One woman went running
in jogging in shorts anyway. Another time, a Wicken group
that was part of a WfP delegation
celebrated winter solstice with a dance on beach.
”Wherever you are working, there needs to be
exquisite sensitivity to history and culture!”
says Phyllis Taylor
The European Network for Civil
Peace Services has started to discuss " Guiding
Principles for Civil Peace Services". A
first draft of a paper that might become something
like a Code of Conduct, and that was heavily
influenced by the Code of Conduct developed by
International Alert, was presented in 1991.
3.2.1.6 Stressors and other
problems
Stress is created for the team
in the field by:
Living closely together
Danger
Lack of clarity about what to do and how
to do it
Fear of being ineffective
Disillusionment
Cultural discomfort
Boredom
Dealing with people who are traumatised,
grieving, fleeing, hungry
Viewing death and destruction
Overwork without sufficient time for relaxation
Insecure funding
Psychological or physical health concerns
One of the frequent stressors
mentioned and experienced by teams is that of
living and working together in limited space.
SIPAZ volunteers rent an office/house in Chiapas. Interntional Coordinator Poen says "If
it’s a positive experience, you become very close...
But it’s an extremely difficult thing to succeed
at." BPT team members found it difficult. They
lived in a small house, using the living room
as office space. Sandra van den Bosse advises
NP, ”Don’t make people live and work together
in one house... Do it professionally!”
Ambiguity about the team’s role
or about the effectiveness or appropriateness
of that role undermines confidence. John Heid of the Michigan Peace Team
gives this a creative spin: ”Being there is like
being in a petri dish;
you’re introduced into the culture and it isn’t
clear yet what you’ll be. We’re acting on faith;
this isn’t rocket science.”
Inadequate or insecure funding
forces teams to work harder, scrambling to keep
equipment running and trim costs. ”BPT funding
was very insecure most of the time, which led
to a lot of completely stressed meetings and
very demotivated volunteers,”
says van den Bosse.
Debilitating stress was created
in the Gulf Peace Camp by an inordinate number
of people with special psychological needs, whose
activities regularly disrupted camp routine. Such extreme problems will be screened
out by NP, but all teams need to be aware of
and deal with psychological needs. A CPT team
in Hebron was really struggling and describing
what they were experiencing as burn-out. However,
with counsel from the home office they realised
it was really one person on the team who was
not functioning well and affecting them all adversely.
Subsequently they were coached to be aware of
the signals early on.
Teams and their sending organisations
need to be proactive in elimination of unnecessary
stress, in development of coping tools, and in
support for healing and growth. It often takes
difficulties to bring about the awareness of
what is needed. After an intense experience for
the Guatemalan PBI team, ”they worked more deliberately
on team support and mental health, conscious
that its own teams were as vulnerable to the
debilitating psychological effects of state error
and political threats as the Guatemalans they
hoped to serve.”
To some extent, the stresses
of team work can be mitigated by eliminating
as many of the surprises as possible. PBI team
members composed a letter to accompany the recruitment
of potential short-term volunteers, to prepare
them:
...We have seen many people suffer
a lot of emotional turmoil because they were
not adequately prepared for the difficult situation...We
cannot guarantee our presence will prevent acts
of violence, rather we hope it will lower the
probability of such acts. The possibility of
violence against the people we are with and against
ourselves remains very real and we need to be
able to accept that. Do not think, as many do,
that you are safe... Your ability to respond
to a violent or tense situation could well depend
on how honestly you have accepted the danger
and prepared yourself.
... The very protection you offer
as an international observer is in itself a constant
reminder of the danger they face and the oppression
that makes you safer than they. The response
to this contradiction varies, but it can express
itself in outright anger and mistreatment. Dealing
with this requires patience and tolerance, and
a belief that people who fight for human rights
have a right to live, and an accompaniment service
cannot be contingent on their personality or
their emotional response to an intensely stressful
situation. We must all keep in mind that it is
not their responsibility to please us, to meet
our needs, or even to pay attention to us. We
are there to serve.
The idea of accompaniment may
sound glamorous or romantic from a distance,
but in fact it is hard work, and very demanding.
..One of the most difficult problems volunteers
face is boredom. The work is not for everyone,
and we’d like you to think seriously in advance
about whether it is the right work for you.
George Willoughby, one of PBI’s founders, admonishes that
foreigners cannot know what they can do for a
people in conflict. A long-term relationship
needs to be formed with groups in a region if
intervention is to take place.[71]
The forming of this relationship
is often referred to as partnership, but the
term has no consistent definition among peace
team organisations. It sometimes connotes a formal
arrangement with the local group which includes
agreed upon goals and tactics. I use the word
in this chapter to indicate a working relationship
in which the third party organisation is invited
to contribute its energy and expertise and the
local organisation is relied upon for insight
to the conflict, connections to other groups
and leaders, and the personal investment of its
members.
Lisa Schirch advises
approaching this relationship by asking the following
questions: What kind of peace efforts are already
going on inside the country? Who are the non-aligned
groups that the teams can work with and empower
with moral and practical support? Who are the
authentic leaders that might already be involved
in efforts towards peace and reconciliation and
who will have the authority to provide leadership
after the teams have left?[72] Is there broad-based
support for intervention among local people who
will be working with the invited team,[73] clear and shared perception
of goals of outside intervention,[74] and a common understanding of how and by
what means those goals will be achieved?[75] Schirch proposes
empowerment of the leaders locals turn to (which
might be traditional leaders such as chiefs,
elders and religious leaders) [76] and a multi-track approach
to the field with relationships on levels which
include government, middle-range actors (religious,
ethnic, sectoral leaders
and NGO), and grassroots (Indigenous NGO, community
developers, women’s associations, local religious,
health, municipal and business leaders and refugee
camps).[77]
Partnership to local groups has
direct bearing on non-partisanship. Placing volunteers
with a local group means that you are working
for them--any claim on non-partisanship would
be misleading. This becomes even more complicated
when ”formal” partnership is established and
yet the project seeks to remain somewhat independent.
Some organisations have decided against having
a local partner (or at least a single local partner)
in order to avoid identification with one side
(e.g. Pax Christi in
Herzegovina).[78]
There are four models of ‘having
local partners’:[79]
a) International volunteers are
placed with the local group, working for them
as their international volunteer. Examples: most
projects of the Austrian Peace Services, Pax Christi
(one volunteer with church community in Columbia),
BPT-France plans to do the same in Kosovo/a.[80]
b) With a formal local partner,
but volunteers bring their own (an ‘extra’) project.
This could be done in two ways:
1) with a formal invitation
but carried out as independent work (as BPT and
PBI)
2) as a partner with whom a
project is then developed (typical for German
CPS, and especially for German development services.)[81]
c) With no single partner but
with a developed relationship to a network of
groups. Example, Pax Christi
in Herzegovina. Reason: Having one partner (as required
by law in order to get government funding under
the CPS scheme) would be detrimental for mediation
work because it would place PC with one of the
ethnic groups. Therefore, PC made its own locally
registered office the formal ‘partner’ and works
with a variety of groups.
d) Formation of a network of
mutually supportive partner organisations which
includes both local and third party groups[82]
Witness for Peace practices the
third kind of partnership, with a network of
local groups. They have maintained a practice
of working closely with local groups in each
country they have entered, and their intervention
goals develop from contacts with religious communities
and government officials.[83] One of the factors of
their success, according to Ed Griffin-Nolan,
is the emphasis on development of partner relationships
with local people and agencies.[84] These include organisations
that do educational and religious work, regional
and local task forces concerned with Central
America, and the Inter-religious Task Force on
Central America.
BPT worked on peacebuilding with
a variety of local groups. One service valued
by the local groups was helping them keep in
touch with each other. BPT found it problematic
to be asked by embassies and donors about the
groups they worked with; so ”an informal policy
was made that we would not recommend any groups
but give a neutral answer that was honest.”[85]
Sandra van den Bosse reports
that local appreciation of BPT was spotty; ”We
were not appreciated by all at all times.”[86] A
very positive evaluation of Balkan Peace Team's
work comes from Albanian and Serbian activists
in the region. Ymer Jaka,
a leader of the Council for the Defense of
Human Rights and Freedoms stated: "If reconciliation
is going to happen, the work of the Balkan Peace
Team must continue and be strengthened."[87]
Christian Peacemaker Teams, in Hebron, has worked
closely with the Israeli Committee Against Home
Demolitions and the Palestinian Land Defense Committee
on the issue of the demolition of Palestinian
homes by Israeli authorities. CPT also engages
in non-violent actions with Israeli peace groups
such as Gush Shalom and Rabbis for Human Rights.
Any slight claim they have to non-partisanship
is helped by the affiliation with Israeli groups
while living in solidarity with Palestinians. CPT
does not have formal partnerships, but works
with local groups who share their desire for nonviolent pursuit
of justice.
Local groups report that they
respect the CPT team and feel encouraged to keep
up the work because of their presence. In Chiapas
it was harder to gain good rapport with local
groups simply because there are so many NGOs
working there. ”Now we have gained respect,”
says Claire Evans. ”Though some groups think
we’re too weird; that our public nonviolent actions are too scary.”[88]
Peace Brigades International
has a unique partner relationship with the groups
it accompanies, e.g. returning refugees, human
rights groups or labour movement. They have been
practitioners of multi-track entrance to the
field since their first year in Guatemala,
which they spent ”visiting rural farmers, clandestine
contacts, and government and military officials,
introducing themselves and feeling things out.”
They were determined above all, to take the lead
from local groups.[89]
SIPAZ, as an international coalition,
has Latin American member organisations, a Mexican
woman on the Board of Directors and a local team
leader in Chiapas. This
helps with the issues of outside intervention.
SIPAZ is usually viewed by local organisations
as ”cautious,” according to Director Poen.
He believes they find this caution comforting
in the beginning, perhaps allowing them to enter
into a relationship with less fear. The SIPAZ
team strives to develop affiliations with every
level and category of organisation.
The Michigan Peace Team was in
Chiapas at the invitation of the Delores Hildalgo community,
which sought internationals to be present but
absolutely covert so armed factions wouldn’t
know when they were there and when they were
not. ”Each community we went to was a community
that invited us. That’s foundational.” Extending
the invitation is a risk to the communities in
and of itself in a counterinsurgency situation.
The difficulty is that it doesn’t stay clear
what they invited you to do and what you came
to do. ”An invitation doesn’t protect you from
the opinion that you shouldn’t be there.”[90]
Being sufficiently clear about
the relationship with local groups is a challenge
all intervention teams face. Teams have had to
learn how be very explicit in describing their
mission and goals in order to avoid misunderstanding
and false expectations. All have had the experience
of discovering that the local people thought
they would bring money or material aid, that
they would work for them (doing translations
or driving people around), that they were missionaries[91] or U.S. spies.[92]
Working closely with local organisations
is essential to all the teams. They would no
doubt share the basis for an evaluation Dave Bekkering made
about BPT, ”The future of Otvorene Oci depends
on the length of time domestic NGOs think they
need its support.”[93] Intervention decisions
are best made within relationship. This is the
strength of third party ”outsider” but at the
same time an inhibitor. An example might be made
of the Delores Hildalgo community
decision that MPT volunteers should be covert
in their movements from village to village. If
peace team experience is that tactics of presence
and accompaniment depend on visibility for effectiveness,
does this wisdom take precedence over the wishes
of a local partner? Will the partner agree? Is
the partner perhaps right, bringing judgement
on specifics of the local situation unknown to
the team? CPT Director Stoltzfus draws
the line at risk. ”We as outsiders can and should
make the decision about the amount of risk we
are willing to face based on advice we choose
to listen to, recognising that the final responsibility
for the decision is ours.”[94]
Following a time of armed conflict,
a region is sometimes inundated with international
NGOs, perhaps tripping over fresh grant money
and one another as they try to help locals get
back on their feet. This less often true before
or during the escalation of violence, but it
remains important for INGOs and GOs to
co-operate and allow one another to utilise the
special skills each brings.
The organisations studied and
other compatible INGOs usually
support one another’s work. WfP works with SIPAZ, Mennonites,
AFSC, and the Interreligious Task Force on Central
America. PBI entered Sri Lanka with the help
of Quaker Peace Service and other INGOs.[95] SIPAZ co-ordinates its work in Chiapas
with CPT, WfP, and Michigan Peace Team and
will accompany the relief caravans of INGOs. Osijek teams
work in good relationship with INGOs from
Norway, US and Sweden and partners with Austrian
Peace Services.[96]
Often it takes more than one
INGO to get a job done, as can be seen in the
case of protection for Selvakumar in
Sri Lanka. The ICRC visited him in prison and
documented his case; Amnesty International in
London contacted PBI and suggested a visit; a
Sri Lankan human rights organisation arranged
a meeting between PBI and Selvakumar,
and Amnesty International sent out an Urgent
Action appeal. This sort of information-sharing
and task-sharing is a typical activity among INGOs like PBI and Amnesty International.[97] Likewise, in order to
monitor Sri Lanka’s election in 1994, two domestic
coalitions joined with a third group made up
of PBI and two other INGOs.[98]
CPT’s use of civil disobedience sometimes keeps
them a bit separate from other INGOs and
definitely suspect to GOs. Some international groups
want to keep their distance from CPT for fear
of being lumped in with the activist team when
dealing with immigration officials.[99]
CPS in the Balkans strives for
co-operation by simultaneously making contacts
for logistical and security reasons, for goodwill,
and for pursuit of program goals.[100] Examples include participation in NGO meetings,
attendance at security briefings, checking passports
and registration with UN/ KFOR/ OSCE, arranging
for mail delivery via the German army (ForumCPS in
Kosovo/a), registration for evacuation lists
with KFOR/ SFOR. These early contacts would also
include registration with embassies for any of
several reasons: protection, because the embassies
might be asked to give information on the project
if a government is asked for funding, or because
volunteers are COs doing alternative service.
Witness for Peace actively seeks
meetings with governmental and international
organisations for both long-term teams and delegations.
This has been so from their beginning, as can
be seen in early work along the Nicaragua/ Honduras
border. At that time they met with government
figures Ernesto Cardenal,
Sergio Ramirez, and Interior Minister Tomas Borge and
with Daniel Ortega, head of the governing junta.[101] WfP finds
that governmental organisations are sometimes
more willing to meet with them because of their
outspoken policy against advising locals on how
to govern themselves. This policy of non-interference
does not guarantee amicable relations with governmental
organisations, however, if they depend on U.S.
connections for money or military and WfP has
taken a stand against the U.S. foreign policy
which provides it (e.g. paramilitary in Colombia).
SIPAZ volunteers visit embassies,
political offices, and leaders of military groups.
Their mission involves relationship on as many
levels as possible and with as many groups as
possible. One thing the team will do for government
officials is arrange meetings and visits for
them, for example a visit last year for the Undersecretary
of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of Great
Britain into rural areas of Chiapas.[102]
The work and presence of Osijek teams is tolerated by governmental
authority but sometimes seen with suspicion (especially
under Tudjman government). A good relationship
exists with OSCE and UNHCR. For example, in order
to begin work in Berak and Popovac,
the Peace Team made arrangements with the National
Committee for Trust Rebuilding, municipality
authorities, and OSCE.[103] BPT utilised the Refugee Protection Working
Group meetings provided by the United Nations
High Commissioner on a bi-weekly basis which
provided networking and sharing of resources
with other NGOs.
Like every other action in the
field, affiliations with other organisations
must be based on careful analysis of that group’s
relation to other actors and to the conflict.
An example of this would be BPT’s decision
in Croatia to remain distant from UN and European
monitors because they were despised by locals;
BPT did not, therefore, use UN cars or carry
their passports around openly. In another situation,
that relationship might be quite different. Case
by case analysis is urged here. Good relations
to the international military might be helpful
in a practical sense, but will certainly effect
the perceived identity of the group.
Good connections in this international
scene can clearly make program goals possible.
They have the additional benefit of making it
possible, when appropriate, to introduce one’s
local partners to INGOs which will be helpful to
them. Then again, perhaps familiarity with the
operations of INGOs and GOs might reveal that these groups
do not act in the interest of conflict resolution
and justice. Then the opportunity and responsibility
for whistle-blowing will present itself. (For
example Pax Christi criticism of OHR for
not implementing the requirements of the Dayton agreement quickly enough).[104]
Where does the ”expertise” lie
for different types of decisions about work in
the field? How will these decisions be made quickly
enough and with the input of people with maximum
information and vested interest? The team itself
has first hand information of risk and the political
situation; outside committees are removed from
it. Short-term team members may not understand
the history of the organisation and may not have
as much nonviolent experience
of the activists on the project steering committee
or international directorate. Only the head office
struggles to match the activities with requirements
of donors and public relations issues. The result
of this can be constant tension within the organisation.
PBI has struggled since its beginning
to become an efficient bureaucracy that can make
and implement effective and informed decisions
about complex conflict situations. The International
directorate delegates most of the project-related
decisions to semi-autonomous project steering
committees. These hold intense week-long meetings
with the team in the field several times a year
to hash out policy and program strategies. Meetings
”sufficiently thorough to enable the project
committees to absorb as much as possible of the
current field reality from the team, and for
team members in turn to clearly understand the
long-term concerns of the more experienced project
committee members.” These meetings take considerable
time because of PBI’s commitment
to consensus but lay the groundwork for later
decisions that will have to be made quickly by
the team in an emergency.[105]
Often there may be a general
feeling on the part of the people in the field
that those back home do not understand what is
going on, are too slow in decision-making, or
do not take input from the field seriously enough.
A bewildered e-mail sent back to the Michigan
Peace Team reflects the same doubt, laced with
anxiety: ”I am not sure if the gravity of the
situation here is familiar enough to all parties
in the office, and the trust I had put in the
office to offer enough team support on the ground
was why I ended up here.”[106]
John Heid described
his Michigan Peace Team as hampered by poor communication
with the home base. In that case, the team felt
their ability to determine a safe course for
themselves was undermined by the fact that the
home base was communicating with villages in
the field and making commitments about when the
team would arrive, without allowing the team
to make that determination based on its actual
situation. [107]
A person on a team or delegation
has the right to assume that the sending organisation
has put together a team that can be trusted,
with communication that can be counted on and
a plan that is in keeping with the overall philosophy
of the organisation. CPT once erred by trying
too quickly to put together an emergency delegation
to Vieques, recruiting people they
didn’t know well, five of whom hardly knew anything
about CPT. The opportunity for civil disobedience
came 24 hours after the delegation’s arrival
in Vieques, and the
team leader and co-leader were both arrested,
leaving the others to figure out what to do next.
Difficulties in the relationships
between Balkan Peace Team Coordinating Committee,
the teams, and the sending organisation eventually
became so insurmountable in the team’s eyes that
they resigned. The office memo began: ”On January
11, the BPT Coordinating Committee received an
email letter from the five volunteers on the
Kosovo/a team, stating that they had all decided
to end their work with BPT. They explained in
their letter that they felt, after a number of
situations, that Balkan Peace Team was unable,
as an organisation, to fulfil its responsibilities
to them as volunteers nor to the team's projects.”[109]
Among the structural shortcomings
listed in an internal paper written by Christine
Schweitzer about the collapse of BPT[110], the following points speak of the relationship
between teams and their sending organisations.
for many areas no clear responsibility
was assigned within the Coordinating Committee,
which meant that often nobody in the CC had the
'last word', which meant that decisions not only
took a long time, but sometimes simply were not
made in time.
information transfer between field and IO,
field and CC
no sufficient guidance and efficiency in
dealing with emergencies in the field
In her summary evaluation of
the Mir Sada attempt, Schweitzer illuminates
a problem which may be inherent in all working
relations between teams and their sending organisations.
”A big problem for the organisers probably was
that of the responsibility they bore. Since they
initiated the project they felt more responsible
than those who came following their appeal. And
of course it would have been them who were blamed
by others... if something had happened to participants
of the action. When it became obvious that travelling
on after Prozor bore a high risk, they did
not feel capable of taking the responsibility
for it. I think that this was also the result
of an organisational structure which does not
guarantee real equality between all participants.”[111] This last sentence speaks precisely to
the issue. Those in the field and those at home
base all need timely information and parity in
decision-making in order to share the burdens
of responsibility.
3.2.5.1 Entrance to the field
(Visa, registration with authorities, etc.)
A good share of the time, team
members have had to enter the field with a tourist
visa. This was true for BPT in Yugoslavia and for PBI in their early work in Guatemala,
it is true for CPT, MPT, SIPAZ and for most WfP team
members.
Tourist status has been a problem
for peace teams in Chiapas. Michigan Peace Team
volunteers, in spite of their efforts to just
blend in, were stopped at barricades and told "Tourists
don’t visit here." Robert Poen is
very frustrated by the visa situation for the
SIPAZ team in Chiapas. Their volunteer from Uruguay
had to renew her visa every two months; the U.S.
volunteers get six months if they’re lucky. Travelling
to renew visas is "a tremendous burden financially,
and the time costs are enormous. On a tourist
visa you’re not supposed to interfere in the
domestic politics in Mexico, and you can be expelled
on the flimsiest excuse. Our volunteers have
never been expelled, but they are often stopped
at road blocks and not allowed to continue to
where they were going.".
During their early work in Guatemala,
PBI volunteers could enter only on tourist visas;
applications for formal legal status met consistent
delays. It was only after deportation and return
that PBI was allowed a change in status. Team
members witnessed a police shooting, were questioned
in the Office of Foreign Relations and given
15 minutes to choose between legal deportation,
court charges of ”illegal involvement in an event
resulting in a woman’s death”, or leave the country
voluntarily under protection of their embassies.
The volunteers were told that if they refused
to leave, the entire PBI team would be expelled
and their lives in danger. They co-operated and
were deported. But PBI went public with its story after
the murder and deportation, insisting on the
legality of their presence; and in the end special
visas were sanctioned by the Guatemalan Congress.
In Colombia,
the Government considered PBI presence consistent
with its own commitment to human rights and thereby
authorised special ”courtesy” visas for team
members, which were eventually registered and
legally recognised. This is unique in the history
of peace team projects.
SIPAZ reports that their 30 international
observers during the Mexican elections were required
to get FM3 visas (for human rights monitoring),
which was an unbelievably time-consuming process
and limiting to their activities. The new government
has made it possible to do international observation
work without an FM3 and not be expelled. Michigan
Peace Teams found that the visa for observers
was too restrictive for regular team work in
the villages, however.
PBI begins their program at each
location with a round of visits to national and
local authorities, both civilian and military.
In Colombia, for example, PBI explained the function
and methodology of accompaniment to each authority,
thus fulfilling the deterrence strategy requirement
for communication regarding the existence and
possible political consequences of accompaniment.
They also recruited support from the diplomatic
corps, which was kept closely informed of PBI
work. The Colombian groups receiving protection
also formally notified the government of the
accompaniment they were now receiving.
For all projects in the Balkans,
registration with the police is required by law,
even if entering the country as a tourist as
many projects do. BPT sometimes avoided it in
Kosovo/a, but it was a risk. They tried registration
as an INGO in Croatia, but it was very slow to
come through because the law was just being put
into practice. CPSes do not necessarily contact
national governments upon entering the field
but in BiH and Kosovo/a
are registered as internationals. .
3.2.5.2 Facility in local language
and use of interpreters
SIPAZ, PBI, and WfP all
have very high standards for fluency in
the local language. Any person who inquires about
being on a SIPAZ team is sent information and
an application form in Spanish; so the relationship
is begun in the language which will be needed.
BPT and Austrian Peace Services offer two-week
language classes during training and expect team
members to continue to learn while in the field
(BPT held these classes in the country). Resultant
facility is minimal for use in the field. German
CPS (and development services) offer intensive
language training with a special organisation
before going to the field.
A new volunteer on a Michigan
Peace Team was at Spanish immersion school on
her way to Chiapas before she realised that no
one on the team would be fluent in Spanish. She
wrote back to the base, ”Moving ahead with this
without a strong base of fluency would be not
only personally challenging but potentially life
threatening for people we are trying to shield...
If I do not have a fluent person on the team
I am considering leaving... This is not tourist
travel where one can muck along through language
with a conversation travel book”. John Heid reports
that as he worked in Chiapas he had many doubts,
questions and suggestions, but had to go along
with the program because of his weak language
skill.
In Colombia, all CPT team members
must be fluent in Spanish. Originally, only one
person on their Chiapas team was fluent; now
they try to have two at all times. In Hebron,
they rely on locals who speak English and the
on translators who have assisted CPT long enough
to understand their work.
Team-sending organisations do
not normally require familiarity with indigenous
languages or with second languages of the region.
PBI, for example, was handicapped in its Guatemalan
work, particularly in rural areas, by the fact
that no volunteer spoke a Mayan language.
How much fluency is needed? Beth
Abbot of Project Accompaniment says it is ”the
ability to speak Spanish well and not to lose
that ability in tense situations!” WfP tells potential
applicants, ”Conversational fluency means that
you can converse with fluency in Spanish, that
you can communicate your thoughts and ideas without
much hesitation and that those you are talking
to can understand you. It also means that you
can understand and respond to those talking to
you. This implies that: (a) you can use all the
verb tenses: present, past, future, imperfect,
subjunctive, conditional, present perfect, past
perfect, and future perfect tenses, (b) you have
a good working vocabulary.”
3.2.5.3 Unwelcoming local government
Only in Guatemala and El Salvador
have any of these peace teams experienced being
made explicitly unwelcome by the local government.
In Guatemala, General Mejia Victores used
the immigration department to cut off visas for
10 PBI volunteers in 1985, saying they were illegally
meddling in internal politics. In El
Salvador,
five PBI volunteers were detained in November
of 1989, and the entire PBI team was ”exiled”
to Guatemala.
Both CPT and PBI have practised
the peace team ”relay method” - if one team member
is expelled, she/he is replaced as quickly as
possible by another.
PBI believes that accompaniment
as effective deterrence depends on adequate communication
with the state, but this has not always met with
positive response. In Guatemala, PBI met with
local military and civilian authorities to inform
them of its presence in El Quiche. The meetings,
which called for attention to protection and
international interest focused on the CERJ, had
mixed results. Local mayors were polite, some
supportive. But the governor threatened to have
volunteers thrown out of country if they got
involved in internal politics by attending CERJ
events.
PBI’s heaviest clout is the use of political
influence from Northern Hemisphere countries.
They used this to good effect after their expulsion
from Guatemala by issuing a public statement,
visiting embassies and government officials,
emphasising PBI commitment to nonviolence,
to non-intervention in internal affairs of Guatemala
and to acting within the law. Their international
alert system includes government officials in
places a small country may not want to offend.
PBI insists on high visibility, use of international
pressure, and a claim of non-partisanship to
work in the field even when a local government
is less than excited about their presence.
Corey
Levine
This chapter is based on the
author's experiences of 6 years working in conflict
areas with a particular focus on civil society
development, human righs and
democratisation. During this time the author
worked with the following organisations: Helsinki
Citizens' Assembly, CARE International, Amnesty
International and OSCE in Bosnia, Croatia, Russia,
Bangladesh and Kosovo.
The following are reflections
of her observations in the field as well as discussions
with colleagues, from both NGOs, IGOs,
and national government organisations (GOS) including
OXFAM, IRC, UNHCR, UNDP, IPTF and other UN civilian
peacekeeping personnel, the Council of Europe,
CIDA and USAID on many of these issues.
There is a wide range of practices
used by IGOs, GOs and INGOs in
the field. On the one hand you have an organisation
like ICRC which has its delegates both live and
work together, to the other end of the spectrum
where people are responsible for their own living
arrangements. They make whatever arrangement
may best suit them – living with a local family;
sharing a place with other internationals; living
in a hotel, etc.
Many organisations fall somewhere
in between. They may have a house for their workers
and others attached to the organisation who come
through from time to time, such as consultants.
If the organisation is very small (in terms of
personnel and/ or programs on the ground), the
living and working quarters may be in the same
place. Some organisations such as the U.N. maY even
take over a whole hotel or series of apartment
buildings for their personnel.
Many living and working arrangements
depends on the security situation on the ground
and how security conscious an organisation IS.
For example, employees of the U.S. government,
either with the embassy or an organisation like
USAID, are only allowed to live in places which
are deemed ‘secure’ by the U.S. government, often
behind a tightly secure and barricaded compound
with their fellow compatriots.
This is the norm for all U.S.
government employees in almost all overses postings
considered unstable. However for IGOs and INGOs,
how much of a role they will play in their employees
living situations more depends on the security
situation on the ground as well as factors that
address the liveability factor of the place rather
than any coherent policy. For example, it would
be more common for international personnel to
live in compounds in a Mission like East Timor
rather than Kosovo. However, most organisations
are security conscious and so encourage group
living in places considered ‘secure’. ICRC is
the only other organisation which demands of
its delegates that their employees live together.
Living arrangements also depend
on whether or not the posting is a family posting.
In most conflict and post-conflict Missions,
the posting tends to be a non-family station.
But some people, not wanting
to be posted for such long periods away from
their families, move their families to the nearest
safe place to which they have easy access. For
example, although Kosovo is a non-family posting
for international organisations (both for INGOs and IGOs),
some people moved their families to Skopje Macedonia
(approximately 1 ½ hours’ drive from Pristina) so they could at least
spend the weekends with their families. And some
postings allow for families to come along, even
if it is not a family posting. For example, during
the war in Bosnia, many INGOs had their HQ in Zagreb, Croatia
for safety reasons. Some workers moved their
families to Zagreb even though they themselves
might have spent most of their time in Bosnia.
Although neither one of these
scenarios is that common a practice, you do find
some international workers trying to make arrangements
like these, depending on several factors such
as how long the posting is, the nearness of ‘liveable’
places, whether the worker has young children,
and whether it is the mother or the father working
in the field, etc. Mothers would be more likely
to make some kind of arrangement to be closer
to their families. However, it is much more common
to find married men with older children, single
women of all ages or younger, single men in the
field than it is any other type of person.
Given that most of the smaller INGOs generally do not have family
postings as it is expensive proposition and that
the vast majority of postings, IGO, GO and INGO
in conflict areas are non-family postings it
is not surprising that this is the majority composition
of those working in the field. However, the possibility
of family postings versus non-family postings
are one of the factors that distinghish larger scale missions
from small peace teams.
There are both pros and cons
to living together as a team. If the security
situation is such that the organisation explicitly
demands or encourages its personnel to live in
one place, than the place will have any number
of security arrangements and precautions. Internationals
who do not live in ‘secure’ conditions are more
vulnerable to being targets to local warring
factions (the ICRC delegates who were killed
in Chechyna for example) but on the
other hand those living mixed in with the local
community could just as easily be perceived by
the local population as more committed and more
trustworthy than fellow internationals living
behind a secure compound.
Ultimately I think there needs
to be a balance maintained between attempting
to secure your safety but not being walled off
from the environment in which you are living
although it is often a delicate and at times
competing balancing act.
Aside from security precautions,
while living together can produce more of a sense
of community and team spirit between individuals
working in the same organisation, it can also
produce tensions, especially because there is
often little other diversion – no families; few
extracurricular activities or community involvement
outside of the work. Living and working together
at the best of times can be a recipe for difficulties
but when you add in an unfamiliar environment
where there is often nothing much to do outside
of work or no one else you can depend on, the
closeness that develops can be a two-way street.
Most people living and working together in the
field find it really important to have their
own time and their own space at least some of
the time.
The relationship between local
groups and the international community is often
a complex one. There is a mutual dependency that
is beneficial but it can also be a doubled-edged
sword.
Often the very presence of the
international community creates an atmosphere
of expectation, much of it unrealistic, of what
can be achieved on the ground. These expectations
are created as much by the international community
bringing in large infusions of financial and
other aid and resources and implicitly or explicitly
offering solutions to the problems that have
plagued the country. As well promises are often
made which cannot be kept.
However the dependence goes the
other way as well. Both the IGO and INGO communities
need local groups to give their work legitimacy
and relevance, but as in all other benefactor-type
relationships, the relationship on the part of
the international community to local groups is
often patronising and paternalistic. Many international
organisations feel it is their right to dictate
course of action because they are the ones with
access to vitally needed financial and material
resources and assistance.
These days in conflict and post-conflict
areas international organisations, both INGOs and IGOs, generally tend to work either
through, or with, local groups either on a formal
or informal basis. Most INGOs have
formalised relationships with local partners
through which their assistance is channelled
while IGOs at a minimum
collaborate with the local community in developing
projects for the targetted group.
While this can be seen as a positive
development in that rarely is programming developed
without some input from the local community,
as mentioned above the dynamics of the relationship
is often one of paternalism. As the old adage
says, those who hold the pursestrings also hold the power.
This kind of situation works
to create competition rather than cooperation
between local organisations because local organisations
must compete with each for assistance from the
international community. Not only do local groups
often find themselves pitted against one another
in accessing aid but because of the explosion
of financial and material resources in the area,
local NGOs have been purposefully set up, often
at the initiative of the donor organisation,
which are not self-sustaining.
And because these local initiatives
are donor-driven, they will take on activities
that do not necessarily reflect the needs and
priorities of their constituents that the NGO
is not equipped to work on.
For example, there are two programs
funded by UNHCR that are dedicated to improving
the situation of the women of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Known as the Bosnian Women's Initiative (BWI)
and Kosovo women's initiaitve (KWI), they are a $2
and $5 million USD program respectively set up
to fund women's groups and initiatives by and
for the women of Bosnia and Kosovo. However,
the problem with both BWI and KWI, which came
into existence as a grant from the U.S. Dept
of State, was that they, like other donor organisations,
are in a hurry to see their money disbursed.
Thus, many of the women's NGOs in Kosovo and
some of the women's NGOs in Bosnia were set up
to access this windfall.
Activities for a single NGO could
include everything from basic humanitarian aid
to legal projects, to hairdressing courses. What
all this means is that there is an extreme amount
of competition between the women's NGOs of both BOsnia and Kosovo, all competing
for the same source of funding, an overabundance
in the provision of some services and a gap in
the provision of others depending on donor interests.
As well, there is a strong question of the sutainability of
many of these NGOs.
The most important relationship
in the field is that with the local population.
After all, all intervention is ostensibly on
behalf of the local civilian population, whether
it is strictly delivery of humanitarian aid or
an international military presence or anything
in between.
Many people deployed to the field
have no or little understanding of the current
social and political context, or historical and
cultural framework of the region in which they
find themselves working. Although the issue of
training is dealt with in depth in Section 7,
it is important to point out in addressing best
practices in the field, how effective an organisation
on the ground will be, often boils down to how
individuals within the organisation [on the ground]
not only understands both the current context
and historical framework of the local population
and the culture, but is able to parlay that understanding
into a relationship on the ground with the local
population.
This of course in part depends
on the kind of training people receive before
being deployed to the field, but a large part
is also dependent on the personality of the individual.
I have seen people deployed into a region with
little knowledge other than the basic rudimentaries and yet because they
come open-minded with a genuine interest and
concern they become well versed in the situation
and earn the respect of the local population.
I have also seen people deployed
in field ‘armed’ with a fair amount of knowledge
of the politics, history and even language of
the region. Yet their arrogance, their unwillingness
to recognise that they may have more to learn
about the situation, or that the local population
understands their own needs better than the intervenor,
has obviously made it difficult to foster a constructive
working relationship with the local population.
Thus, while it best if you know
the language and are well-versed in the issues
before being deployed to the region, personal
attitude also accounts for a lot. People appreciate
effort and not just knowledge. And so, although
it isn’t necessarily always the best situation
to have a translator between you and the local
population, there are also many benefits that
can come in working with a translator.
One is that it can be helpful
to have someone literally to interpret the situation
for you because even if you’re well-versed in
the overall situation and know the language,
as an outsider there will always be subtleties
and nuances that will be impossible to grasp.
As well, because you spend so much time with
your translator, a close relationship often develops
which can also give you insight into the culture
and current socio-political situation of the
society that you might not have otherwise had.
On the other hand, if you do
not speak the language you are always dependent
on someone to ‘interpret’ the situation for you.
99% of the translators working in the field are
not professional translators and many may not
even speak the language in which you are working
very well, and so often ‘interpret’ rather than
‘translate’ what is happening. Cultural differences
often come into play as well. Many times a translator
tells you what he/ she thinks you want to hear
rather than what is actually being said. Some
translators will inevitably have their own political
agenda through which everything gets filtered.
But most important of all, having the local population
work with the international community ultimately
puts them at risk, especially if the intervening
forces pull out of the region. This was well
documented in Kosovo after the withdrawal of
KVM and in East Timor after the withdrawal of
the international community there.
Also important is the question
of what kind of relationship the international
community has with the local power base on the
ground. If those in power are ambivalent or resentful
of outsider presence they could hamper the work
of the international community through a variety
of ways, including not providing access to certain
geographic areas or certain groups of people;
making unwieldy entrance requirements to the
country; being intransigent on issues that could
help work towards resolution of the conflict,
as well as other types of actual and figurative
roadblocks.
There can also be problems when
those in power embrace the presence of the international
community; for example, using their offer of
continued compliance with the international presence
as a means of extracting certain promises or
favours that ultimately run antithetical to resolving
the situation.
This then leads to the question
of neutrality on the ground. It is one of the
more debated issues in the field. For some organisations
such as ICRC, it is one of the main tenets of
their work and guides all their actions right
down to refusing to allow its workers to testify
at war crimes tribunals even if they may have
important information that relate to the charges
of alleged war criminals. Those who are in favour
of neutrality argue that is a much needed basis
from which to operate simply because otherwise
a lack of neutrality would jeopardise an organisation’s
access to those populations most in need of assistance,
including civilian populations trapped between
warring factions, the wounded, the missing and
the detained.
Other organisations, such as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF),
do not feel that an organisation can or should
operate under a guise of neutrality because this
is not reflective of the reality on the ground
in that organisations providing assistance can
often be perceived as favouring one side of the
conflict or another [and sometimes they are].
As well, they see [that the fact of] being ‘neutral’
can sometimes lead to practices and situations
in which the organisation, in providing humanitarian
assistance, aids and abets the conflict as well
as contributes to further human rights violations.
For example, there is a lot of
controversy surrounding the mission and mandate
of UNPROFOR in Bosnia and Croatia from 1992 –
1995. All parties to the conflict perceived UNPROFOR
to be biased in favour of the other side and
thus UNPROFOR often found itself both literally
and figuratively hijacked and unable to secure
the delivery of humanitarian assistance - one
of the main mandates of its mission.
Others feel that any kind of
assistance or intervention whether it is perceived
as neutral or not, leads to prolonging the conflict
and furthering human rights abuses, often because
the international community can be either witting
or unwitting pawns in the conflict as we saw
with the UN Mission in Somalia. The mission was
initially ostensibly about ensuring humanitarian
assistance to the local civilian population,
but soon the U.S. (as the lead country of the
Mission) got caught up in the politics of the
conflict and allowed itself to become an active
player in the conflict further fueling a situation it had come
to alleviate in the first place.
3.3.4.1 Overview
The relationship to other INGOs and IGOs working
in the region very much depends on the Mission,
the goal and objectives of the organisation and
the personnel on the ground. However, generally
there is much competition between the various
international players for resources, overlap
of programming in some areas and a gap in others.
As well, there is often a lack of information
and knowledge about what the various international
counterparts are doing.
However, the international community
is trying to address this issue through a variety
of methods. There are now often committees or
groups formed around an issue (eg.
the demobilisation and reintegration of former
combatants) or target group (child soldiers)
where the international as well as local players
get together to exchange information and sometimes
join together to pool resources.
But part of the problem with
these committees is that often the local community
is either intentionally or unintentionally excluded.
So while there is more information flow and exchange
between the various aspects of the international
community, much of this flow remains outside
the local community.
And even when there is collaboration
and co-operation between the agencies there is
still a good deal of competition and jockeying
for position. For example in the area of monitoring
human rights, you will have the U.N. either within
the Mission structure or by the UN Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
or often by both, as well as a regional intergovernmental
body such as the OAS or OSCE and then by non-governmental
groups as well such as Amnesty International
or Human Rights Watch. This of course leads to
turf wars but often the very issue that should
be addressed is not.
For example, in Kosovo at least
5 different organisations go to see prisoners
– UNMIK, OSCE, OHCHR, Amnesty International,
ICRC. Yet with all these organisations monitoring
and supposedly addressing the conditions and
lack of rights for prisoners, many prisoners
still found their rights denied and facing miscarriages
of justice.
Both the Missions in East Timor
and Kosovo recognised the problems of the inherent
competition and lack of co-ordination between
agencies and programs and tried to address this
issue by setting up a pillar system. The pillar
system is such that one body would be responsible
for the all the activities under one particular
pillar. In Kosovo for example, the European Union
was responsible for all programs and activities
within the reconstruction and development arena;
UNHCR was responsible for all humanitarian assistance;
the OSCE was responsible for the human rights
and democratisation part of the Mission and the
UN itself was responsible for civil administration.
It sounds good on paper, but
unfortunately it did not take away the competition
or turf wars. This is partly because theSE issues can not be so clear
cut and neatly divided into 4 separate boxes
– there is bound to be some overlap. As well,
it is impossible to cut out the competition and
petty jealousies particularly in an environment
where reputations and careers are at stake because
the reality is that for many organisations conflict
and post-conflict situations are a business.
This is especially true for the INGOs where there livelihood depends
on securing funding for programs they want to
run in the region. You might have 3 or 4 different
organisations interested in doing water projects,
all chasing after the same funders, (such as OCHA or ECHO)
and potentially the same geographic or ethnic
target groups depending on the interest of the
donors. For example, there is not nearly as much
aid going to the Serb part of Bosnia as to the
Muslim-Croat, in part because the international
community feels the Serb entity is less compliant
with Dayton and thus tries to use the carrot
and the stick approach to aid and reconstruction
to bring about compliancy.
However, overall the problem
of competition and overlap has gotten better
in the past several years even as the field and
the number of players have grown expodentially.
Those who have been working in the field for
at least 10 years talk about the development
of co-operation between various INGOs and IGOs.
Even the ICRC, which has traditionally worked
on its own, is now recognising the value in working
with other members of the international community.
3.3.4.2 Relationship with the
international military presence
The interaction between the military
and civilian components of the international
community presence in the field has also improved.
Both sides have come to recognise THAT there
is a dependency on each other for resources,
information and help. The military now has in
every operation, units and personnel to deal
specifically with the civilian component of a
Mission – called CIMIC (civil – military co-operation)
– it is increasingly becoming one of the more
important areas in a military peacekeeping operation.
The military has shown signs
of opening up and sharing some of its vast resources
for civilian operations and programs since the
adoption of CIMIC. However, one can say there
has also been too much a movement to the other
side, with more dependency rather than distrust
now the common factor. This is in part because
often the military are the only ones with full
resource capacity and hence the dependency on
the military for resources that would otherwise
be impossible to secure has grown expondentially.
Although there remains a certain
amount of distrust with regard to co-operating
with the military, particularly among the INGOs; the international community
in general, especially the IGOs,
have recognised the ‘benefit’ in co-operating
with the military and now the international military
presence is generally recognised as a key and
integral component in missions along with the
INGO and IGO communities, and local governmental
and non-governmental structures. In some missions
the military is even under the command of the
SRSG (Special Representative of the Secretary-General,
who is the civilian head of peacekeeping missions),
such as in East Timor. Although they may not
be under the direct command of the civilian head
of other missions, such as in Kosovo, the military
chiefs are routinely included and integrated
within the decision-making processes from the
top echelons to the grass-roots level.
However, even given the recognition
of mutual dependency, the relationship between
the military and civilian components of a mission
remains difficult and often tense. This is IN
part because the military remains suspicious
of non-military culture and views the outside
world through the lens of its own culture - rigid,
hierarchal and orderly and sees the civilian
world, the NGO world in particular, as chaotic
and ‘undisciplined’. Thus, the military continues
to have a difficult time understanding the non-military
community and the role they play in peacekeeping
missions. Some of this is because of the continuing myopicness of
the military but some of it is also due to the
actions of the civilian presence in the field,
which as mentioned above, is often disorganised
and competitive, with no clear exit strategy.
In conclusion both the civilian
and military components to peacekeeping operations
recognise the need to collaborate and the fact
that both sides have something to ‘offer’, however
the relationship remains rocky.
Similar experiences in the relationship
with the sending organisation exist in both small-scale
and larger scale operations, in that the relationship betweeen the
head organisation and the field component is
a very important element of the equation in missions,
but it is often problematic.
This is particularly true if
the sending office does not have an office on
the ground which is the most common situation
particularly for peace teams such as the ones
addressed in the section on small scale organisations
but also for larger scale missions where the
headquarters may in fact have the final say in
the deciisons affecting
the implementation of programming on the ground.
INGOs probably suffer much less from the situation
of the geographic division between program implementation
and decision-making at the policy level, in large
part because they generally have an office on
the ground which functions as an autonomous entity
from headquarters.
However, even INGOs can
not get away from the fact that field personnel
often complain that the sending organisation
does not understand the difficulties and the
needs faced by those working on the ground. This
is often exacerbated by the difficulties in communication
that can define working in the field, particularly
in a conflict zone.
Unrealistic expectations can
then develop on both sides about what is achievable.
For the field workers, trying to communicate
the priorities and needs to an organisation thousands
of kilometres away from the person’s work can
be difficult at the best of times. Add in a constantly
changing political environment, evolving response
structures on the ground and a lack of reliable
communications, and the potential for the sending
organisation to misunderstand or misinterpret
the needs and concerns of the field workers increases
greatly. This is true for both large and small
scale operations.
At the same time the reporting
requirements of the sending organisation, in
order to remain apprised of the situation, can
be unrealistic by dint of the constantly changing
situation in the field. Thus in conflict zones
the work generally tends to be reactive rather
than proactive. While it is extremely important
to keep the sending organisation as informed
as possible, a balance needs to be struck on
both sides as to what can be feasibly achieved
in keeping the sending organisation informed
and involved.
It doesn’t add to the relationship
that often field workers can have unrealistic
expectations about the kind of support (material,
emotional, financial) that a sending organisation
can give, especially in a constantly changing
environment. If the priorities keep changing
due to the evolving situation on the ground which
dictates the kinds of activities field workers
do, and therefore the kinds of resources they
need, it can be difficult for the sending organisation
to continually meet the resource demands, as
well as other needs, of the field workers. Yet,
there can be an expectation by the field workers
that the sending organisation is an endless reservoir
of resources and support.
On the other hand incredible
loyalty to an organisation or people attached
to a particular organisation often develops in
the field, particularly because field workers
are so dependent on their superiors and their
colleagues as well as on other relationships
they build on the ground for their own survival
as well as the the survival
of their work, often literally as well as figuratively.
This holds particuarly true
for small scale organisations as well as larger INGOs where
the development of loyality is
a natural outgrowth of this dependency on their
peers. This kind of commitment to the organisation
is generally not as strong with the larger scale,
more bureaucratic organisations but nonetheless
a sense of dependency on colleagues as well
as the organisations is much stronger in the
field than in the ‘regular’ working world. There
are many reasons for this.
One is that most people have
other interests and people in their life outside
of their work environment which provides them
with a balance between their professional and
personal lives. In the field it is very difficult
to achieve that balance where one’s professional
and personal lives are far more intertwined.
You find yourself not only working with your
colleagues and superiors, but often living, vacationing
(and mating) with them as well. And although
your work as an accompanist for local human rights
workers will be very different from the engineer
with whom you live; nonetheless you work in the
same context and under the same conditions. All
of this provides for an atmosphere in which intense
and strong linkages are formed. In other words,
in the field your professional life is your personal
life.
The relationship between the
field worker and the sending organisation also
depends very much on the size and type of sending
organisation. For example the ICRC has an intense
training program for its delegates before they
send them to their posts. This is not only because
they want to ensure their delegates are prepared
for what they will experience in the field but
also because they recognise that a strong, cohesive
team is far more equipped to cope with, and resolve
all kinds of unexpected situations the workers
may encounter on the ground. This also fosters
strong loyalty and commitment to the ideals and
goals of the sending organisation which other
organisations might not get from their field
staff.
However, an organisation like
the OSCE is dependent on country secondments
in which to staff over 95% of their missions.
This often means the people sent by a national
government are the ones who are not necessarily
the most qualified for the position, but the
ones with the most connections and often a stronger
commitment to their national government than
to the OSCE either as an organisation or its
mandate. And since an organisation like the OSCE
is mostly field-based once the secondment is
finished there is no further contact with the
organisation.
On the other hand, many of the
NGO personnel in the field have either been with
the organisation on other missions, or working
in the national office of the organisation, or
will go to the national office when they leave
the field. And because many NGOs are staffed
at the headquarters with former workers in the
field, this can help build trust and co-operation
between the sending organisation and the field
staff.
Ultimately though the relationship
between the field workers and the sending organisation
depends on how remote and bureaucratic the organisation
is. The more intimate and responsive an organisation
is to the needs and concerns of its staff on
the ground, the more likely the relationship
will be co-operative and trustworthy.
