engaging fragile states - Woodrow Wilson International Center for ...

the stage for societal transformation. The next step is to bring them into a process
of training that engages them in a process of relationship building and conflict
deconstruction, not with debating policies. As the discussion of elections above
suggests, process can be much more important than substance. Eighty percent of
conflict resolution is process while twenty percent is substance.
Consequently, what the Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity
(Leadership Project) of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
has been doing in recent years in places like Burundi, Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), Liberia, and East Timor is to engage key leaders in a training program
that spans two or more years and is directed at building their collaborative
capacities. Specifically, it is directed at changing the “winner-take-all” paradigm
by prioritizing collaboration instead of competition. Its second aim is to rebuild
the trust that has been fractured by conflict. Third, it takes up how one goes
about organizing and sharing power, as well as making public decisions. Finally, it
empowers people by providing them new tools and skills of communications and
negotiations. In this way, the participants in the program gain the capacity to put
themselves in the shoes of others and identify ways of satisfying the interests of
belligerent parties altogether.
The training strategy has very little didactic lecture material, but a lot of interactive
exercises. It uses simulations in which people are put into situations where
they are confronted with the kinds of dilemmas and choices they must make in
the real world. However, because these are simulated situations, when they sit
down to evaluate their behavior after the exercise, they are much less defensive.
They are more objective in appraising what worked and what did not, what might
have been done differently, what lessons were learned and how to apply them in a
real world context.
In the first three days of the initial six-day retreat, there is no talk about the
country or any public business with the leaders. Strangely, many diplomats think
it makes sense when they bring people to sit together who are in conflict and distrust
each other that the interaction should start with the issues that divide them.
In this scenario, all the participants will do is defend their own positions and
nothing will be accomplished. The better approach is to engage in process first.
The first three days of the workshop involve very intensive work on communications,
negotiating skills, analysis of conflict, and understanding of the conditioned
nature of perceptions. Trainers have discovered that it takes no more than three
days to break down the barriers between adversarial participants. Once these barriers
fall, people no longer look at each other from within their ethnic or political
boxes, but instead, accept each other as individuals that may have different interests
and perspectives, but that they can begin to collaborate.
As far as results of these workshops are concerned, a number of evaluations
62 | Engaging Fragile States: An International Policy Primer