This book is based on a participatory action research project carried out with a group of former Zimbabwe People's revolutionary Army (ZPRA) which was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) which was led by the late Joshua Nkomo. ZPRA was the primary target of Gukurahundi, a pogrom by the Mugabe government which left an estimated 20 000 civilians dead and countless others tortured in the early 1980s in Matebeleland, Zimbabwe. It has been almost 30 years since the violence ended, but there has never been an official healing and reconciliation programme or truth commission into the atrocities. The government chose the path of amnesia by granting a blanket amnesty to all involved. The regime has enforced a culture of silence over the event through repression and intimidation. The book is a culmination of a two year journey, by the group and the author, of an exploration of group-based self-healing approaches to the pain caused by the violence of Gukurahundi.
This book brings together multiple perspectives to examine the strengths and limitations of efforts to promote healing and peacebuilding after war, focusing on the aftermath of the traumatic armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This book begins with a simple premise: trauma that is not transformed is transferred. Drawing on multidisciplinary insights from academics, peace practitioners and trauma experts, this book examines the limitations of our current strategies for promoting healing and peacebuilding after war while offering inroads into best practices to prevent future violence through psychosocial trauma recovery and the healing of memories. The contributions create a conversation that allows readers to critically rethink the deeper roots and mechanisms of trauma created by the war. Collectively, the authors provide strategic recommendations to policymakers, peace practitioners, donors and international organizations engaged in work in Bosnia and Herzegovina – strategies that can be applied to other countries rebuilding after war. This volume will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, social psychology, Balkan politics and International Relations in general.
Victor Volkman has created a tool that takes the mystery out of one of the more remarkably effective clinical procedures in a way that can help millions of people revitalize and improve their lives. To those desperate people who have experienced trauma or tragedy, this process is a pathway to dealing with their feelings and getting on with their lives. In the new book Beyond Trauma, Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction Volkman presents a series of conversations with a wide range of people from many different backgrounds and experiences. Each provides his or her perspective on Traumatic Incident Reduction, or TIR for short. The book explains the techniques used by professionals and patients to help people sort out, resolve and overcome the negative effects of painful suffering. Untold countless people have to deal with trauma in a wide variety of situations: Soldiers who experience war or injury, families dealing with death, chemical or substance abuse, parental neglect, child or sexual abuse, terrorism, crime and punishment. Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), is unique in that it addresses both people suffering from the effects of traumatic stress and the practitioners who help them. This method has been effective in dealing with many areas of trauma, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), in such diverse groups as veterans, children, 9/11 survivors, motor vehicle accident and sexual abuse survivors. TIR is a brief, one-on-one, non-hypnotic, person-centered, simple, and highly structured method for permanently eliminating the negative effects of past traumas. Contributors include world-renowned experts in traumatology including Windy Dryden, Ph.D., Joyce Carbonell, Ph.D., and TIR's developer Frank A. Gerbode, M.D. Beyond Trauma highlights stories of TIR helping survivors to regain control of their lives. This book will be life changing not only for survivors of traumatic incidents but also for the professionals committed to helping them. "Not in 30+ years of practice have I used a more remarkably effective clinical procedure." --Robert H. Moore, Ph.D. What people are saying about this book: . "Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction is an excellent resource to begin one's mastery in this area of practice." --Michael G. Tancyus, LCSW, DCSW, Augusta Behavioral Health . "I have found Beyond Trauma to be EXCEPTIONALLY HELPFUL in understanding and practicing TIR in broad and diverse areas of practice, not just in traditional trauma work. The information from various points of view is really priceless." --Gerry Bock, Registered Clinical Counsellor, B.C. Canada . "Beyond Trauma offers PTSD sufferers a glimpse at a light at the end of the tunnel, while providing mental health workers with a revolutionary technique that could increase their success rate with traumatized clients" --Jeni Mayer, Body Mind Spirit Magazine . "Having read the book, I feel that I have already become better at working with distressed clients." -- Bob Rich, Ph.D.
Within this reference are synopses of several Traumatic Incident Reduction research projects from the early 1990s to today. Each article, in the researcher's own words, provides new insights into the effectiveness of TIR.
Marcella Rowek explores the paradigm of Deep Democracy and its potential to transform polarized conflicts in the context of the current refugee situation in Europe. Her approach to peace work and research is embedded in the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies’ philosophy of Transrational Peaces and Lederach’s Elicitive Conflict Transformation. At the heart of a deeply democratic attitude is the idea that all perspectives, experiences, feelings, body sensations and awareness levels of the conflicting parties have to be acknowledged and consciously worked with. Only then conflict transformation processes can unfold. This is linked to a systemic and transpersonal perspective, which assumes that not a single person, event or group triggers a conflict, but that it is systemically co-created.
How does a newly democratized nation constructively address the past to move from a divided history to a shared future? How do people rebuild coexistence after violence? The International IDEA Handbook on Reconciliation after Violent Conflict presents a range of tools that can be, and have been, employed in the design and implementation of reconciliation processes. Most of them draw on the experience of people grappling with the problems of past violence and injustice. There is no "right answer" to the challenge of reconciliation, and so the Handbook prescribes no single approach. Instead, it presents the options and methods, with their strengths and weaknesses evaluated, so that practitioners and policy-makers can adopt or adapt them, as best suits each specific context. Also available in a French language version.
This profound guidebook reframes and expands the mission of building a global culture of peace. Going far beyond conventional techniques of conflict resolution, James O’Dea provides a holistic approach to peace work, covering its oft-ignored cultural, spiritual, and scientific dimensions while providing guidance suitable even for those who have never considered themselves peacebuilders. O’Dea is unique in his ability to integrate personal experience in the world’s violent conflict zones with insights gathered from decades of work in social healing, human rights advocacy, and consciousness studies. Following in the footsteps of Gandhi and King, O’Dea keeps the dream of peace alive by teaching us how to dissolve old wounds and reconcile our differences. He strikes deep chords of optimism even as he shows us how to face the heart of darkness in conflict situations. His soulful but practical voice speaks universally to peace activists, mediators, negotiators, psychologists, educators, businesspeople, and clergy—and to everyday citizens.
In recent decades the world has experienced the rise of so-called 'low intensity conflicts'. Unlike conventional wars these very bloody armed conflicts are no longer the affair of state governments and their armies. In their place appear police-like armed units,security services and secret services, groups and organizations of religious, political and social fanatics ready to resort to violence, 'militias', bands of mercenaries, or just gangs of thugs, led by the condottiere of the 21st century, consisting of militant charismatics, militia 'generals', 'drug barons' and 'warlords' of various kinds. They conduct wars in which the soldiers no longer wear uniforms and there is no meeting of armies in open battle. The armed organizations fight in urban agglomerations and in difficult, inaccessible regions. The combatants fight for religion and quasi-religious ideologies, for the 'rights of the people' or 'national liberation', for power, gain, and booty, and above all for recognition. For the practice of peace, this kind of war has far-reaching consequences. In this book the authors examine various paths to peace and reconciliation in low intensity conflicts. They look at processes of peace making from South Africa and the North of Mali to Indonesia and South East Asia. Common to most studies is that they stress the particular local contexts of peace making tied to the highly localized nature of most low intensity conflicts. The logic of peace has become a logic of local and regional power. The articles shed new light not only on ways and chances of interventions by the international community but also on the role of nongovernmental organisations in violent conflicts.
