Ervin Staub
In this chapter I write about reconciliation both after and before significant violence between groups. Reconciliation between groups that have long been hostile to each other can prevent violence. After significant violence, whether the violence ended through a peace treaty or victory of one side, new violence is highly probable without reconciliation (Long and Brecke, 2003; Staub, 2011). The hostile attitudes toward the other that led to the violence and have intensified in the course of it are still there.
Reconciliation may be defined as mutual acceptance by two groups of each other (Staub and Pearlman, 2001), and “the societal structures and processes directly involved in the development and maintenance of such acceptance . . . Genuine acceptance means trust in and positive attitude toward the other, and sensitivity to and consideration of the other party’s needs and interests” (Staub and Bar-Tal, 2003, p. 733). “Reconciliation also means that in people’s minds the past does not define the future. It means that members of previously hostile groups can engage in actions that represent and further create positive coexistence” (Staub, 2011). Most definitions, like mine, focus on relationships, whether between individuals or groups—for example, “restoration of trust in an interpersonal relationship through mutual trustworthy behaviors” (Worthington and Drinkard, 2000, p. 93). To the extent that reconciliation addresses inequitable relations between parties, it can lead to a new moral and political framework and “mutual legitimacy” (Rouhana, 2010). The practices and institutions that foster reconciliation fulfill basic psychological needs and are likely to create a peaceful society.
Reconciliation is progressive, with likely setbacks. For example, Israeli collective narrative has increasingly acknowledged that one of the reasons that about 700,000 Palestinians left Israel during the 1948 war was expulsion, whether by force or pressure. This shift from the earlier narrative that they all left due to their leaders telling them to do so for the duration of the fighting, or because they wanted to escape danger, facilitates reconciliation. The number of Israelis who accepted this narrative or collective memory increased over time, but it then decreased in the course of the violence of the second intifada between 2000 and 2005, the second Palestinian uprising (Nets-Zehngut and Bar-Tal, 2011). There can be reversals in other elements of reconciliation as well, whether forgiveness or positive attitude toward the other.
Arie Nadler and Nurit Schnabel (2008), Israeli psychologists, differentiated between instrumental and socioemotional reconciliation. Instrumental reconciliation refers to cooperation to achieve common goals, socioemotional reconciliation to the admission of past wrongdoing and subsequent forgiveness. The practices that promote the former include contact, that is, engagement or working together, the essence of the latter is an “apology-forgiveness” cycle. This is a worthwhile distinction, although I see the two types as overlapping. After significant violence that deeply wounds people, the capacity to cooperate for shared goals is an initial step. Without emotional reconciliation, without addressing psychological woundedness, fear and anger, new threat, or changing conditions can bring an end to cooperation and lead to renewed violence. However, the practices that contribute to either type of reconciliation also contribute to the other. Significant contact in the course of cooperation can humanize the other, reduce fear of the other, and make forgiveness more likely.
Reconciliation requires that people engage with what happened during past violence. Bert Ingelaere (2008) wrote that the gacaca , the community justice process in which well over 100,000 accused perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda were tried between 2001 and 2010, broke down the amnesia that had begun to characterize Rwandan life as people settled down to “normal” everyday relations—coexistence required by circumstances. We can see such “amnesia” as psychological defense in people who have to live together and feel it is dangerous to address the past emotionally and practically in engagement with each other.
The frustration of universal, basic psychological needs is a core influence in leading to violence between groups. Violence in turn deeply frustrates such basic needs. Practices and conditions that help to constructively fulfill these needs contribute to reconciliation and lasting peace.
Difficult social conditions in a society are one starting point for an evolution that can lead to genocide or mass killing or intensify conflict between groups. Such conditions include economic deterioration, political chaos, enormous social change, and especially a combination of these. These conditions often frustrate material needs but even more universally frustrate basic, universal, psychological needs for security, feelings of effectiveness and control over important goals, autonomy and choice, positive identity, connections to other people, and a comprehension of reality and of one’s place in the world (Staub, 1989, 2003, 2011).
Certain cultural characteristics that can be present in societies to different extents are another potential influence. A history of devaluation of some subgroup of society preselects this group as a likely scapegoat or ideological enemy. Past victimization of the group and psychological woundedness make the group feel vulnerable and the world seem dangerous, and it can lead to hostility and unnecessary “defensive” violence. Overly strong respect for authority makes it less likely that people speak out against destructive leaders.
In difficult times, members of a group often blame or scapegoat a previously devalued group for life problems. They create a vision of a hopeful future for their group, an ideology that is destructive in that it identifies enemies who stand in the way of the ideology’s fulfillment, usually the scapegoated group. These processes fulfill frustrated needs for identity, effectiveness, community, and understanding of reality. But they do so destructively because they lead to turning against and harming others (Staub, 1989, 2003, 2011). Without restraining conditions and forces (especially active bystanders), there tends to be an evolution of increasing harm doing and violence.
Another starting point for the evolution of intense violence is group conflict (Fein, 1993; Staub, 2011), especially conflict that becomes intractable—persistent, resisting resolution, and violent. Intractable conflict also frustrates basic needs. It is often maintained by ideology, as well as by people seeing their own cause and group as right and moral, and the other as responsible and immoral (Bar-Tal, 2000; Kelman and Fisher, 2003). Over time the groups often come to see each other as implacable enemies. Anything good that happens to the other group is seen as harmful to one’s own group. I have called this kind of enmity an “ideology of antagonism” (Staub, 1989, 2011).
Instigating conditions and the violence that evolves out of them have destructive effects not only on victims but also on perpetrators and members of the perpetrator group who passively stand by. In contrast the processes of reconciliation in table 40.1 help fulfill basic needs constructively. They contribute to feelings of security, the belief by people in their capacity to influence events, fulfill the need for a positive identity, create connections within and between groups, and help develop a new, positive understanding of the world.
Table 40.1 Reconciliation and the Prevention of New Violence
Source: Developed from tables and materials in Staub (2011).
| Inhibitors | Promoters |
| Lack of understanding of the roots of violence | Understanding and actions guided by it |
| Lack of understanding of the impact of violence | Understanding its impact on survivors, perpetrators, bystanders |
| Devaluing the other | Humanizing the other and developing positive attitude toward the other through words, deep contact, working on shared goals, education |
| Unhealed psychological wounds of survivors, perpetrators, bystanders | Healing the wounds by all parties |
| Lack of Truth | Truth (complex: shared) |
| Conflicting collective memories—histories | Working both toward a shared history and toward accepting that the other group has a different view of history |
| “Chosen” traumas | Addressing the impact of the past |
| Lack of Justice | Justice: punitive, restorative, procedural, economic |
| Lack of forgiveness | Moving toward forgiveness (with mutuality) |
| Lack of acknowledgment of their responsibility by perpetrators and their group | Acknowledgment, apology, regret, empathy |
| Lack of acceptance of the past | Increasing acceptance of the past: “This is what happened, this is part of who we are.” |
| Destructive ideologies | Constructive ideologies |
| Undemocratic systems and practices | Developing pluralistic, democratic, values and institutions |
| Raising children as obedient followers | Raising inclusively caring children with moral courage (positive socialization) |
The question has been raised in the literature as to whether reconciliation can begin when there is still ongoing violence. In the eastern part of the Congo (DRC), starting in 1996 (Prunier, 2009; Staub, 2011), millions of people died due to violence and accompanying disease and starvation. Huge numbers of women were raped. To a lesser but still substantial degree, the violence is continuing through 2013. Fear and mistrust create a challenge for effective reconciliation processes. The ongoing violence and the insecurity it creates interfere with healing from past violence, an important element in reconciliation. Nonetheless, even in such a situation, public education in the form of educational radio programs and accompanying grassroots activities such as the training of conflict resolution agents using the principles guiding educational radio, can build underpinnings for reconciliation (Staub, 2011).
In conflicts with less chaotic conditions and less widespread violence, small groups of people from the two sides have engaged with each other. Engagement between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and contact and dialogue in many settings between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, most likely limited the level of violence and have created the basis on which further reconciliation practices can build (see Staub, 2011, for an overview).
In the following section, I discuss the principles and practices of reconciliation that I consider especially important (see also Staub, 2011, 2013). They are presented in table 40.1 . In discussing the first two of these, I briefly review the work that my associates and I have been doing in Rwanda, starting in 1999, and then in Burundi and the Congo, to promote reconciliation and help prevent further or renewed violence.
Understanding the conditions that lead to violence and the impact of violence can provide a useful framework for people to work on both prevention and reconciliation. It can lead them to resist these influences, to respond to them in ways that makes violence less likely. It can lead them to use their critical consciousness, their own judgment in evaluating the meaning of events. It can lead to active bystandership in the service of prevention, reconciliation, and peace building. After violence, understanding how it came about can contribute to healing.
In the genocide in Rwanda, in 1994, about 700,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutus—parts of the military, young men in militias (the Interehamwe ), as well as neighbors and even relatives in mixed families. About 50,000 Hutus were also killed because they were politically moderate, or opposed the genocide, or, as it happens when violence becomes widespread, because of personal enmity (des Forges, 1999; Melvern, 2004; Mamdani, 2001; Staub, 2011).
Starting in 1998 and ongoing, my associates and I have conducted two types of interventions in Rwanda to promote reconciliation and help prevent new violence, and we have conducted research to evaluate their impact (for a detailed description, see Staub, 2011). We first conducted workshops and trainings, lasting from two days to two weeks, with varied groups. The first training was with the staff of local organizations that worked with groups in the community. A central element in all trainings was information about how genocide originates (based primarily on Staub, 1989). We described the influences that lead to genocide and other intense violence between groups and provided examples of these from varied instances except Rwanda. In the course of extensive discussion, the participants applied these concepts to Rwanda. Other elements of the trainings included information about the impact of violence on people and about the role of basic human needs in the origins of genocide, in woundedness, and in healing.
We evaluated the effects of the approach primarily not on the participants but on people once removed from the training, members of newly created community groups (Staub, Pearlman, Gubin and Hagengimana, 2005). Training participants and these groups included both Tutsis and Hutus. The community groups were led in twice-a-week meetings, for two hours, over a two-month period, either by facilitators we trained (integrated groups) or by facilitators we did not train (traditional groups), or without a facilitator (control groups). There were many groups, controlled for various characteristics, in each of these three conditions.
Treatment group members showed positive changes from before the training to two months after the end of the training and greater changes than the changes in the traditional and control groups from before the training to two month afterward. These changes included increased understanding of the complex origins of genocide, more positive attitudes by Hutus and Tutsis toward each other, “conditional forgiveness”—expressing the willingness to forgive if perpetrators acknowledge what they did and/or ask forgiveness—and reduction in trauma symptoms (Staub et al., 2005).
Knowledge of the influences that lead to group violence seemed to become experiential understanding, deeply held, as people applied the information they received to the genocide in Rwanda, and thereby to their own experience. Such understanding can be an avenue to healing. In addition to the reduction of trauma symptoms by members of community groups, when the participants in our training were exposed to examples of group violence around the world, seeing that others had experiences similar to their own, they seemed to feel reincluded in the human realm (“so God did not select us for such punishment”) (Staub et al., 2005).
Understanding the influences that lead to mass violence also seemed to humanize Hutus, members of the group that perpetrated the genocide, in both the eyes of Tutsis and their own eyes. Seeing that understandable human processes can lead to terrible acts made it less likely that members of either group viewed perpetrators as simply evil. By reducing defensiveness, this makes it more likely that members of the perpetrator group accept responsibility for their group’s actions, an important contributor to forgiveness and reconciliation. In all of these ways, understanding can initiate and contribute to reconciliation. It can also increase people’s ability to foresee the long-term consequences of events, including destructive leadership, and increase their resistance to them emotionally and as active bystanders, thereby preventing violence (Staub, 2011).
In subsequent years, we conducted separate trainings with national leaders, journalists, and community leaders, and we also trained trainers in our approach (Staub, 2011; Staub and Pearlman, 2006; Staub, Pearlman, and Bilali, 2010). In these trainings, we also introduced information about avenues to prevention and reconciliation. In the training with national leaders we used separate tables of origins and prevention that are partly summarized in table 40.1 . One column in the table shows the influences that lead to violence (or inhibit reconciliation), the other side those that prevent violence (or promote reconciliation). At the end of the training, we had leaders in groups of three evaluate whether the policies they were just introducing in the country would make violence more likely or help prevent violence. Within the training, they did this highly effectively.
To expand the reach of this approach, we developed educational radio programs, in collaboration with a Dutch nongovernmental organization, LaBenevolencija, which produces the programs. The central aims again were to help listeners understand the influences that lead to violence between groups; how extreme violence such as genocide evolves; psychological woundedness; and avenues to healing, reconciliation, and prevention. Our first program, a radio drama, Musekeweya (New Dawn), that began to broadcast in Rwanda in 2004 and is still continuing, has become extremely popular. It is a story of two villages in conflict, with attacks, counterattacks, destructive leaders and followers, positive bystanders, a love story between two young people from the two villages in conflict, a village fool who is also a wise man and a truth teller, and more. The educational content is embedded in the story and in the actions of the characters (Staub, 2011; Staub et al., 2010). For example, the story aims to promote community healing as people empathically listen to each other’s painful stories and support each other. Over time in the radio drama, the people in the two villages move toward reconciliation.
An evaluation at the end of the first year (with a complex design due to the fact that the program aired nationally) showed a variety of significant effects. In comparison to a control group in which people listened to a radio program about health, treatment group members expressed more empathy with everyone—survivors, perpetrators, and leaders. They expressed, and showed in behavior, greater willingness to speak what they believe. They also showed greater independence of authority and a willingness to discuss issues and make decisions for themselves (Paluck, 2009; Staub, 2011; Staub and Pearlman, 2009).
The educational radio dramas and other radio programs were expanded to Burundi beginning in 2005 and to the Congo in 2006. While it is important to develop general principles of prevention and reconciliation, they need to be applied with sensitivity to particular contexts (Staub, 2011). The situation in the Congo is highly complex. Many groups, motivated by varied factors, have been involved in violence (Prunier, 2009, Staub, 2011). The government and military are highly dysfunctional. The radio drama aimed to apply the conceptual elements of the educational approach to the existing conditions in Burundi and the Congo. Evaluation studies found positive effects in Burundi and more complex effects in the Congo, mostly positive but not on all dimensions (Bilali, Vollhardt, and deBalzac, 2011). The limitation on the effects of the radio drama may have been due to the chaotic and insecure conditions in the Congo. However, the evaluation also showed what may have been too much conflict between groups within the radio drama, which in the context of ongoing violence could be responsible for the less positive effects. These findings of the evaluation now inform the continued development of the radio drama in the Congo.
Both the trainings and the radio programs aimed to foster understanding of the impact of violence on groups and individuals. One of the influences leading to violence by a group is past victimization of the group, which creates a feeling of vulnerability and seeing the world as dangerous, and may generate hostility to the world. When there is new conflict or other instigating conditions, previously victimized groups are more likely to respond with violence that they see as defensive but may be unnecessary, making them into perpetrators. At times victimization and unhealed trauma become persistent aspects of the group’s culture and identity. Such “chosen traumas,” as Vamik Volkan (2001) called them, shape the perceptions of and responses to new events (Staub, 1998, 2011).
Understanding the impact of violence is an important beginning step on the road to healing and can motivate activities that promote healing. It helps people interpret certain emotions and actions of their own and others as the result of psychological woundedness or the way woundedness is passed down to children. This can improve social interactions and people’s quality of life. Seeing children as traumatized is likely to lead to more constructive reactions to them than seeing them as disobedient and bad.
From the standpoint of both positive social relations and reconciliation, it is important to understand that engaging in violence is also wounding (McNair, 2002; Staub, 2011), as is to some extent remaining passive in the face of it. Even soldiers fighting wars are psychologically wounded (Maguen et al., 2009), and more so if they have perpetrated atrocities by killing civilians (McNair, 2002). The relatively new concept of moral injury was proposed because of the widespread psychological woundedness of soldiers returning from the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, a result of killing, witnessing killing, or being unable to take actions in situations when their fellow soldiers were killed (Litz et al., 2009). Perpetrators of group violence and passive bystanders are thus likely to be wounded; at the very least, they undergo personal transformation as they justify violence, increasingly devalue victims, and experience less empathy with their suffering. This lessening of empathy over time tends to generalize to other people as well, partly explaining the frequent expansion of group violence to new targets.
Healing by survivors can lessen their feelings of vulnerability and their perception of the world as dangerous, and open them to increasing engagement at least with members of the perpetrator group and, over time, even with actual perpetrators. Healing by perpetrators and passive members of the perpetrator group can diminish their (usually unacknowledged) guilt and shame (Staub and Pearlman, 2006), which may be limited at the time of the violence but can become more intense as the violence is brought to an end and the world points to the immorality and horror of their actions (Nadler Malloy, and Fisher, 2008; Staub, 2011, 2012).
In order to heal, survivors of violence need to talk about their experiences (Pennebacker, 2000), ideally to empathic others (Herman, 1992; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995). Rather than individual therapy, healing in groups is usually preferable or even necessary. After group violence, usually huge numbers of people are psychologically wounded, and there are few resources available for healing. In addition, the violence was perpetrated by members of one group against members of another, and the culture may be collectivist, so that connection to the group is of special importance.
Because of the widespread psychological woundedness, we have advocated in our workshops and in educational radio programs person-to-person engagement—people talking to each other about their experiences and providing support to each other. Doing this in a group setting can be especially beneficial (Herman, 1992; Staub and Pearlman, 2006). For example, in a religious community in Rwanda, Solace ministries, people give testimonies and describe their experiences during the genocide in front of the community, with others supporting them.
Commemorations are also important for healing. However, they are likely to work best if, in addition to remembering the violence and their losses, and grieving, which by themselves can maintain psychological wounds, they point to the possibility of a better future. They can do this, for example, by including in remembrance “rescuers,” members of the perpetrator group who saved lives or attempted to save lives, endangering their own (Africa Rights, 2002; Oliner and Oliner, 1988; Staub, 2011). This can show the possibility of living together in peace as members of both groups are reminded that there have been caring and courageous people in the perpetrator group. Commemorations of mass violence will ideally include honoring rescuers.
Empathy with perpetrators can contribute to their healing. It is daunting, of course, to feel and express empathy with perpetrators of extreme violence. One example of engagement with and over time empathy with a perpetrator seemingly leading to his regret about his actions was the conversations and interviews between Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and De Kirk, a notorious killer in the South African apartheid system (Gobodo-Madikezela, 2003). Including members of the perpetrator group in commemoration and over time as it becomes psychologically possible even perpetrators can also contribute to the healing of all parties.
An aspect of healing important for both prevention and reconciliation is exploration within a group of past victimization, psychological woundedness of the group and the extent the culture has maintained or even built itself around past traumas. Woundednesss can be handed down through the generations and shape perceptions of and responses to events (Volkan, 2001; Vollhardt, 2012). Gaining societal self-awareness is likely to lessen the impact of past trauma on group life and call attention to the need for healing (Staub, 2011).
An aspect of healing and community building is the reintegration of harm doers into the community and productive civilian life. There are many different kinds of harm doers, ranging from child soldiers who were abducted or enticed into rebel groups and often were led to engage in violence against their own communities, to adult perpetrators—of violence, rape, and genocide. Some can be reintegrated into the community only after appropriate justice processes and punishment, while others, such as child soldiers, may not need to be punished. Depending on who they are and what they have done and on the culture, different processes of reintegration are required. Often a combination of Western and traditional approaches is used. For example, in Angola and elsewhere, to reintegrate them into the community child soldiers are led to engage with the spirit of ancestors (Wessells, 2007). In another example, by providing the opportunity to talk about their experiences, to work and study, and to live in a community of their own, the community has led a group of former child soldiers to become a constructive group that helps others (Myers, 2008).
While some individuals and groups that have been victimized have a propensity to turn against others, there are people who have been victimized who want to help those who have suffered, and prevent others’ suffering. An important aspect of reconciliation and stable peace is to learn how to develop what I have called altruism born of suffering (Staub, 2003, 2005b; Staub and Vollhardt, 2008) so that those who have suffered become agents of positive change. Positive experiences in childhood, others reaching out at times of persecution and violence to its targets, intended victims acting on their own behalf and helping others, can all mitigate the negative effects of victimization. Healing practices, caring, and support by other people and the world after suffering harm, strong human connections, and people who have been harmed beginning to help others so that they “learn by doing” can all contribute to altruism born of suffering.
Among the influences leading to violence between groups differentiating between “us” and “them” and devaluing “them” is a central one. Moreover, devaluation increases in the course of the violence, as harm doers justify their actions, exclude the other from the moral and human realm, and even come to see killing their victim as right (Fein, 1993; Opotow; 1990; Staub, 1989, 2011).
Humanizing the other, developing a more positive orientation to the other, is a crucial aspect of reconciliation and prevention. Others can be humanized by words: what people say about them, what they write about them. This is likely to be especially effective if the words refer to real and significant positive actions of the other, for example, Hutus saving the lives of Tutsis, or if they show communality in the lives of people, such as Macedonian journalists from different ethnic groups together interviewing and writing in their newspapers about the lives of people belonging to those groups (Burg, 1997). Print media, radio, and television can all humanize members of groups. Symbolic acts are also important, such as Arafat and Rabin shaking hands, and Willy Brandt, the chancellor of Germany, kneeling at Auschwitz and asking forgiveness.
Contact has an important role in overcoming devaluation and coming to see the other’s humanity (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2066), especially significant, deep contact (Deutsch, 1973; Staub, 2011). Its varied forms can include working on joint projects, such as cooperative learning in schools (Aronson, Stephan, Sikes, Blaney, and Snapp, 1978), building houses together (Wessells and Montiero, 2001), deep engagement between Hindus and Muslims in work settings (Varshney, 2002), or persistent dialogue. One barrier to peace between Israelis and Palestinians has been the absence of persistent engagement and dialogue between leaders (Staub, 2011). However, even imagined contact can promote positive attitudes (Crisp and Turner, 2009) and give a positive start for actual contact.
I have referred already to the importance of active bystandership. To create social change requires people joining together, building connections and networks (Thalhammer et al., 2007). This is necessary to create and maintain motivation, as well as to exert influence. However, single individuals sometimes have a dramatic role in limiting violence as well as initiating positive processes (Staub, 2011). An example of this is Joe Darby, who was instrumental in making public the photos of the treatment of prison inmates at Abu Ghraib.
Another example is a woman who for a period of time settled in and studied the conflictual and potentially violent conditions in a community in Poland. She found that one segment of the community had access to most of its resources, and two groups, disorderly and aggressive youth and old people, were excluded from social processes. She organized the young people to collect recipes of traditional dishes from the old people, which they gathered in a book. The book was a success, and a later more formal edition became an even greater success (Praszkier, Nowak, and Coleman, 2010). Contact and cooperation changed attitudes toward the other and significantly affected the way the young people related to the world, benefiting the community as a whole.
Each of the contributors to reconciliation listed in table 40.1 can have multiple effects. Understanding the influences that have led to violence, healing, and other influences can contribute to more positive attitudes towards members of the other group.
Truth is essential for survivors. Their society and the world establishing what was done to them, and proclaiming that the violence and victimization should not have happened, acknowledges their suffering, confirms their experience, and affirms the moral order. It thereby increases survivors’ feelings of security. Establishing the truth is also important to make it less likely that perpetrators deny their actions or claim that they had justifiable reasons such as self-defense or were the victims.
While the truth can sometimes be simple, often it is complex. Both sides may have been violent. Or actions in the past by one side may have contributed to later violence by the other side, as in Rwanda (Mamdani, 2001; Staub, 2011). But perpetrators tend to deny or justify their actions, and even when the violence is clearly one sided, the two sides usually have different narratives or “truths.”
The history of events is sometimes established through documents and testimonies during trials, such as of German leaders at Nuremberg. The aim of the people’s tribunals in Rwanda, the gacaca , was also both truth and justice. Offering testimony often has negative emotional consequences for witnesses. The gacaca took place in many locations, in front of local communities, with a large majority of the people Hutus, including the relatives of those who were being judged. The difficulty was even greater for Hutu than Tutsi witnesses, who probably felt that they betrayed their group. In addition to the emotional difficulty of talking about painful events in front of hostile people, there was often harassment before, during and after providing testimony (Bronéus, 2008).
It has become common to use truth commissions, which interview many people and provide a report of events. An early example was Nunca Mas (1986), the report on the “disappearances” in Argentina in the late 1970s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa powerfully showed what the apartheid regime did. This had little effect on black people, who were the victims of the apartheid regime, but it contributed to reconciliation by affecting whites (Gibson, 2004), who either did not know or had avoided knowing the violence of the apartheid regime.
Differing and conflicting views of history, usually each party blaming the other, are usually deeply held (Newbury, 1998) and are a likely source of new violence. Seeing the other as the one responsible maintains fear and antagonism. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has been difficult for people to engage with and seriously consider the other’s narrative (Staub, 2011). But exposing Israeli high school students to both sides’ narratives in a conflict removed from their own, the Northern Irish conflict, increased their ability to take the Palestinian perspective (Salomon, 2004). We have also found in our training in Rwanda that giving examples from other countries has been useful.
Establishing who did what can move the two groups toward a shared narrative. The “new historians” in Israel, using historical documents, showed that Palestinians did not all leave voluntarily, that in part they were expelled in the course of the 1948 war (Morris, 1989, 2004). Autobiographical writings by soldiers and other witnesses describing their experiences at the time, supported the new history (Nets-Zehngut, 2009). These were published many years after the events due to a combination of government censorship and loyalty to the country that made people unwilling to write about questionable Israeli actions. Open communication in a society and positive active bystandership—an aspect of which is telling the truth—contribute to peacemaking. Four studies with groups of Palestinians living around the region also showed that contrary to the dominant Palestinian narrative, especially by leaders, while there was expulsion, it was not the only or even the primary reason for the Palestinian exodus. Many left because of fighting at or near their villages, as well as other reasons (Nets-Zehngut, 2011).
Collective memory consists not only of facts, but also of their interpretation. Groups often claim that their violent acts were necessary self-defense. Dialogue and negotiation between parties can shape their interpretation of events and, in domains where no common ground is found, at least acknowledge the other’s view of history. Moving toward a shared history can benefit from commissions composed of representatives of the two parties, as well as dialogue within populations (Staub, 2011).
However, when the parties reach a limit in the extent to which they are able to create a shared history, a related task is to accept that they have different views of events—when neither view is clearly historically incorrect or morally unacceptable. It would indicate a significant level of reconciliation by Israelis and Palestinians if they taught in their schools some version of both groups’ views of the history of their conflict.
There have been arguments among scholars and practitioners, some stressing the importance of human rights and justice, others claiming that punishment interferes with reconciliation and peace. I see justice as an integral part of reconciliation. It balances the relationship between members of perpetrator and victim groups and reestablishes a moral order. But the punishment of perpetrators is only one form of justice. Another is perpetrators or their group participating in restoring society. In Rwanda many perpetrators are sentenced to community labor. Working to compensate victims, at least by helping to rebuild society, is one meaning of restorative justice. Another, increasingly practiced in crimes committed against individuals and beginning to be used in cases of group violence, is to bring the parties together so that perpetrators can apologize and express regret. This requires a readiness by both parties and has beneficial effects on both victims and harm doers (Strang et al., 2007).
One potential problem after group violence is unequal justice. After the genocide about 1.5 million Hutus streamed out of Rwanda into Zaire, now the Congo (DRC), including many of the perpetrators. These genocidaires then conducted raids into Rwanda, killing more Tutsis. Just as at the time of the genocide, the international community did nothing. The new Rwandan army invaded the Congo twice to fight these genocidaires , but it also killed a very large number of Hutu civilians. The justice processes in Rwanda have addressed only crimes of Hutus during the genocide, and not these crimes of the Tutsi-led army.
Countries that forgo justice processes tend to return to them after some period of time. In Argentina, perpetrators of the disappearances in the late 1970s received blanket pardons. This led to persistent distress and protests in segments of the population. As a result, amnesty laws have been overturned and the prosecution of harm doers began more than twenty years after their deeds (Burchianti, 2004). In Cambodia after the genocide in the late 1970s, a tribunal began its work only in 2009, with the first sentence of a perpetrator in 2010.
Economic justice is also very important. Tutsi survivor women in Kigali said at a hearing in 1999 as the Unity and Reconciliation Commission began its work: “We lost everything, cannot feed our children, cannot pay for their schooling, and need economic compensation.” One aspect of economic justice is to help those devastated by violence. This often happens only minimally. In South Africa, victims received much less compensation than initially promised by the TRC (Byrne, 2004). In Rwanda, a poor country, they also have not received sufficient help.
Another aspect of economic justice is addressing inequalities, often a primary source of conflict and violence (Fein, 1993). This requires psychological change in attitudes by the more powerful toward the less powerful and an accompanying change in legitimizing ideologies that justify group differences in access and privilege (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). Only then is it likely that institutions will be created that provide equal access for all groups to society’s resources. Equal access may also require practices that address the consequences of a past history, whether differentness or discrimination, such as helping immigrant groups like Muslims in European countries to acculturate (Staub, 2007, 2011),
Forgiveness means letting go of anger and the desire for revenge and moving toward an increasingly positive view of and acceptance of the party that harmed oneself or the people one cares about (McCullough, Finchman, and Tasang, 2003; Worthington, 2005; Staub, 2011). Forgiveness is an aspect of reconciliation, central to which is mutual acceptance. But forgiveness is one-sided: it comes from the party that is harmed, victimized, injured. Forgiveness by victims after intense victimization is extremely difficult. However, it is much more likely if harm doers, or the group they come from, acknowledge their actions, the harm they have caused, express regret, apologize, and show empathy with their victims or the survivors of their violence. The joining of acknowledgment and progressive forgiveness is then a mutual process, which is the essence of reconciliation.
Private forgiveness, with its element of letting go of pain, can bring relief to people who suffered. But one-sided public forgiveness can be dangerous. Violence creates an imbalance in the relationship between harm doers and victims. While publicly forgiving people who have not acknowledged and showed regret for their actions can sometimes make further harmful action by them less likely, this is more probable if there has been no intense hostility between the parties (Wallace, Exline, and Baumeister, 2008), or if their power to harm has diminished. Otherwise, it can instead increase the imbalance in the relationship and embolden perpetrators, leading to more violence (Staub, 2005a, 2011). The conditions under which unconditional or one-sided forgiveness by those who were harmed moves groups toward peaceful relations, rather than new violence, requires further research.
Usually it is a combination of processes that effectively promotes reconciliation. For example, forgiveness is more likely after some degree of healing and in the context of or after appropriate justice processes (Deutsch, 2008). In our research, soon after the genocide, without yet a justice process, we thought it unreasonable to expect that people would forgive. It is for that reason that we measured “conditional forgiveness” (Staub et al., 2005). As I noted, with many reconciliation processes, there can be reversals, as there was in the Israeli public’s view of the “new history” in the course of the second intifada. Immacule Ilibigaza (Ilibagiza and Erwin, 2006) described in her memoir forgiving the Hutu killers while still in hiding from them. But when she went back to her village where all except one other member of her family was killed, it took her time and effort to recapture the feeling of forgiveness.
Acknowledgment of suffering—by perpetrators, bystanders, the rest of the world—is likely to contribute to healing. But perpetrators tend to deny what they did or justify their actions as necessary self-defense or in other ways. The devaluation of victims, or opponents in a violent conflict, that is normally present from the start and intensifies in the course of the evolution of increasing violence does not disappear when the violence stops. Members of groups that have engaged in violence often continue to blame victims or opponents and hold on to a destructive ideology that made the other the enemy. These tendencies may be enhanced by guilt and shame that is unacknowledged (Staub, 2011).
However, feeling affirmed can lead people to acknowledge the harm their group has done. When Israelis, and Serbs in Bosnia, were led to focus on experiences that affirmed them, they were more likely to both acknowledge their group’s responsibility for harmful actions and support reparations for them (Čehajić;-Clancy, Effron, Halperin, Lieberman, and Ross, 2011; see also Nadler and Schnabel, 2008). And after their group was affirmed, participants in several studies were more willing to accept shame and guilt for harmful actions by their group—e.g., Canadians for their treatment of Aboriginals (Gunn and Wilson, 2011). Healing also strengthens the self and presumably makes acknowledgment more possible (Staub, in press).
Practices of reconciliation usually involve a combination and intermingling of elements. As an example, consider a project in Sierra Leone of Fambul Tok, “Family Talk,” a community organization that has designed ways of engaging people with each other:
Under a tree, or in other settings, organizers, ex-combatants, and victims/community members sit around a bonfire. Religious leaders start the meeting, saying, “If you have done something wrong, come forward, tell about it, apologize to the family of the people harmed, and the whole community.” Confess to a person who never knew who killed his or her son that you did it. The spirit of these meetings is that the truth is cleansing and can be the beginning of reconciliation. This is followed by engaging people, killers and survivors, in varied activities. Some are recreational, such as a soccer match, followed by dialogue. In others people work together, for example, to replenish stock. Others are community forums that people initiate. In still others, sitting under a tree, they talk through how to engage in acts that contribute to reconciliation—such as having worn a blue shirt while killing someone’s parents, and not wearing blue when visiting that person. (Staub, 2011, p. 485)
In Sierra Leone, violent groups not only killed but also maimed many people, cutting off arms or other body parts. One of the activities of Fambul Tok has been to bring perpetrators together with survivors whose family members they killed and the communities in which they killed people. This also is a multifaceted process, more so than it looks on the surface. The public aspect of it is to bring a perpetrator to a community and face-to-face with a survivor who seemingly miraculously forgives him in front of the community (Fambul Tok, 2012) . But there is a great deal of both preparation, working with the perpetrator, the community, and the individual who publicly forgives, as well as follow-up. Over time the symbolic act of forgiveness turns into real reconciliation. In this process, some perpetrators become agents of reconciliation.
Letting go of the past, not dwelling in pain, is an important contributor to reconciliation. This view comes from my experience in the field. Acceptance of the past does not mean forgetting. It requires healing and is furthered by understanding, but it may precede forgiving. Accepting is a psychological state or attitude that says: “This is what happened to us, this has been our life, this is who we are. But our past does not dictate our future. We can use what we learned from the past wisely, not be a slave or victim of it.” It is one of the things that Palestinians and Israelis seem to have difficulty with (Staub, 2011). At least some Palestinians cannot accept the state of Israel, a well-established entity, and the loss of the homes of their grandparents or parents and their suffering as refugees and having lived under occupation. At least some Israelis cannot move beyond all the Jewish victimization in the past, the terrorist attacks on them, and Arab hostility toward them over the years. Although Israelis are in a dominant position relative to Palestinians, they cannot live enough in the present and future to trust reconciliation with Palestinians and engage in actions that can lead to it. Both groups also hold on to destructive ideologies that interfere with peace.
Ideologies are visions of social arrangements and of relationships between groups and individuals. In the face of difficult social conditions, new ideologies tend to emerge, visions of the future to be created, that provide hope for their group. These visions, and joining together in an ideological movement, help fulfill needs for effectiveness, community, identity, and an understanding of reality. However, they are often destructive, as they identify enemies who stand in the way of the fulfillment of the ideology—the creation of the better future. These ideologies are powerful motivators of violence against the identified enemy.
Among some Palestinians, in particular Hamas, a continuing vision is the elimination of Israel (and perhaps of Jewish Israelis) and the creation of a Palestinian state in its place. Among some Israelis, the destructive ideology is the recreation of historical Greater Israel, which includes the West Bank, with the Palestinians who live there, standing in the way. Reconciliation requires moving from destructive to constructive ideologies in which the vision of the hopeful future includes all groups. This makes it possible for all groups to join in working for the ideology’s fulfillment. Such a shared vision for Palestinians and Israelis can include, minimally, two states in an economic community living in peace, thus benefiting the region and making terrorism less likely (Staub, 2011).
What are the institutionalized practices and institutions that promote reconciliation, or interfere with it and with one of its primary aims, a peaceful society? As I discuss them, I will provide examples for some of them from Rwanda.
Pluralism, the free flow of ideas, and the access of all groups to the public space, all groups having a voice, are essential for reconciliation and lasting peace. Sometimes reconciliation processes and the sociopolitical context are at odds with each other. For example, in Rwanda, the government advocates reconciliation and promotes certain reconciliation processes. At the same time it holds an “ideology of unity,” that there are only Rwandans, not Hutus and Tutsis. In the name of unity, it discourages references to Hutus and Tutsis. There are laws that can lead to jail sentences for vaguely defined “divisionism” and advocating genocidal ideologies, also vaguely defined. This limits the free expression of ideas and the discussion of issues between Tutsis and Hutus (Prunier, 2009; Staub, 2011).
Limits on press freedom and on the expression of varied views limit political processes. It is a free and active press that enables people to make their own judgment about events and advocate for political views and parties. The government limits political opposition in other ways as well. This may be in part because Tutsis, about 15 percent of the population, still fear Hutus, about 84 percent of the population, and in part because once in power, governments in countries that have not developed democratic institutions resist yielding power.
Democratic political institutions mean a free press, civic institutions that involve people in the political process, and free elections. These create trust that through proper representation of the different groups in the population, conflicts can be peacefully resolved. In societies with subgroups of very different sizes, with each holding on to its identity, constitutions are needed that provide for representing the interests of each group. External bystanders working together with internal groups can be helpful in this. In Macedonia, external nongovernmental organizations developed ideas that were used in creating a new constitution that helped address some of the issues between ethnic groups (Burg, 1997). The US Department of Justice provided such help in Rwanda. Other important institutions are the police and the justice system. To create a peaceful society, there needs to be equal justice regardless of group differences in wealth and power and accountability for violent and criminal conduct. Even better is the prevention of such conduct. For example, the Rwandan government carefully monitors the behavior of its leaders to prevent corruption.
I have already discussed the importance of economic justice. In Rwanda, new laws attempt to create equality of opportunity in access to education and jobs. The fast economic development of Rwanda (Kinzer, 2008) has increased differences in wealth between segments of the population, as usually happens in cases of speedy economic development in poor countries. But equal access to opportunity, especially if it becomes increasingly de facto, can create trust in the system.
Psychological changes and the development of institutions are intertwined. Members of each group, especially powerful groups, increasingly need to see the humanity of other groups in order to be motivated to establish institutions that treat people equally. Such institutions in turn further change attitudes and values. Just as violence and the institutions that serve it evolve progressively, so do the processes and institutions that serve reconciliation and peace.
The presence of the psychological conditions I described and their social manifestations (e.g., positive attitudes toward other groups, some degree of healing, constructive ideology) and constructive institutions can be used together to assess the level of reconciliation in a society and the prospects for peace. In summary, these institutions include a free press, civic institutions that promote political participation by all groups, free elections, a law-abiding and fair police, a justice system that addresses both present and past crimes, the absence of corruption, lack of discrimination in access to education and jobs, and a culture and social system that makes equal opportunity real.
Even if the processes of prevention and reconciliation are effective, conflicts between subgroups of societies can emerge, especially in plural societies. In addition, even after healing processes and more positive attitudes by groups toward each other, great past violence leaves in its wake psychological vulnerabilities. These can emerge and have strong effects under newly developing difficult life conditions or group conflict. Understanding this can serve to some degree as inoculation against its happening. Creating fair and democratic institutions, and knowledge and skills to prevent and or address conflict can build confidence, lessening the impact of challenging conditions as well as enabling groups to peacefully deal with them.
Lederach (1997) has written about downward influence (the influence of leaders on the population), upward influence (the influence of the population on leaders), and groups in the middle (such as the media and church leaders), who can exert both upward and downward influence. One avenue for the transformation of each of these groups, so that it becomes an agent of positive change, is public education through radio and television, depending on what is appropriate for a particular setting, as well as trainings and workshops.
Our trainings in Rwanda and its use with leaders is one example (Staub, 2011; Staub and Pearlman, 2006). However, because of insufficient human and material resources, these trainings were not continued as we moved on to educational radio programs. For lasting change, especially by leaders guided by ideology and part of a highly hierarchical system, extended trainings are needed (Staub, 2013). Another example is the trainings that Howard Wolpe and his associates (Wolpe et al., 2004) conducted in Burundi. In Burundi also, Hutus and Tutsis are the two primary groups, and they have engaged in a great deal of violence against each other. Wolpe and his associates brought leaders of various kinds together—military, different civilian groups, and so on—to develop skills in dialogue and negotiation, as well as comfort with each other, before addressing issues to be resolved. Such trainings can develop the capacity of parties to listen to each other, hear the essential concerns of the other group and express their own effectively, compromise, use mediators as appropriate, to be able to identify escalation and use de-escalation processes, and in general gain knowledge and skills in conflict management and resolution (Coleman, 2012; Kelman and Fisher, 2003). One relevant institution to create would be mediation centers that both provide training and offer mediation services.
After violent conflict or mass violence—one-sided or mutual harm doing—as the parties come together, it is difficult for them not to start with expressing all their pain, anger, and hostility. In our workshops in Rwanda, people interacted around ideas and gained experiential understanding that apparently lessened the negative view of the other party and modulated feelings of hurt and anger (Staub et al., 2005; Staub and Pearlman, 2006). Starting with such a process may help parties to engage effectively with each other.
A crucial aspect of reconciliation and long-term peace is the way children are socialized. How history is taught, how children in different groups are led to engage with each other, affects attitudes toward the other. Fostering inclusive caring, expanding empathy and a feeling of responsibility to all people, is crucial. So is moral courage, the willingness and capacity to express caring and moral values in action, even in the face of possible or actual opposition and negative reactions.
There is research and theory about practices for raising caring and helpful children, with more limited research and theory about raising inclusively caring and morally courageous children (Eisenberg, Fabes, and Spinrad, 2006; Oliner and Oliner, 1988; Staub, 2003, 2005b, in press). These practices include love and affection, and positive guidance, with adults verbally promoting, providing models of, and leading children to engage in positive behavior. To make caring inclusive, this has to be toward all people, not only members of one’s own group. For the development of moral courage, it is important also to allow and encourage children to express their views and act on their beliefs (Staub, 2003, 2005b, 2011, in press). But to engage in such practices, there must be transformation in adults. The processes of reconciliation I described, including ways to promote positive orientation toward others and healing, can contribute to this transformation. But substantially more research is needed on how to develop inclusive caring and moral courage.
Reconciliation between groups requires a variety of psychological changes, which can be maintained and further promoted through the creation of certain kinds of institutions. Just as violence progressively evolves, reconciliation and the building of a peaceful society are also progressive. Following the principles of learning by doing, earlier actions and the changes that result from them can transform people in positive ways. What to do (e.g., humanizing the other group), how to do it (e.g., through significant contact, or what is said about a devalued group in the media or by leaders), and who are the appropriate and necessary actors for particular reconciliation processes and activities all need to be addressed (Staub, 2011). Actions by leaders, followers, bystanders, the media, intellectuals, and parents and teachers who promote devaluation and destructive ideologies are all involved in the development of significant violence between groups; they are also all very much needed for promoting reconciliation and building a peaceful society.
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