So long Holland, brief Brussels interlude

So, before leaving Utrecht, I took a day trip to Brussels to meet with Michael Keating of the European Institute for Peace and Hilde Deman of Search for Common Ground.

First Brussels itself: meh. A boring city with officious looking architecture everywhere. I did find the enigmatic piece of sculpture above (sculpture?), just toes in sandals emerging from rock without explanation. Somehow, it felt like Brussels.

Michael Keating, like everyone I have met, was interested and helpful. The European Institute for Peace was established by European politicians looking for a vehicle to talk to people they couldn’t talk to without political cost, and now EIP has hundreds of employees and works worldwide as an independent entity, often on Track 1 and 2.

Digression: *What are the tracks in peace and conflict negotiations? *
Track 1 is State to state relations, the UN, governments, official contacts, treaties, official meeetings. Based on diplomacy.
Track 2 is non-state actors, intermediate organizations, business and academia and NGOs, and conflict resolution is the means.
*Track 3 is people diplomacy, at the grassroots level, community baed, trying to create better understanding of the other and promote tolerance. *
These tracks can be combined; e.g., Track 1.5 is meetings between government and non-government actors. There are also other tracks - private individuals, research, etc.

OK, back to Michael - as an Executive Director, he got down to brass tasks quickly. What was my funding model? But not just that, it was the insight that the work itself is shaped by the funding because without an endowment, the controversial or difficult tasks of conflict resolution can offend funders and grantors. To end conflicts, you have to speak to problematic people - warlords, and factions, and bad actors in government, and the “other side” whatever your side happens to be. Without secure funding independent of people’s political feelings, it is difficult to do the work of peacebuilding.

Then I met with Hilde Deman, at the Brussels office of Search for Common Ground (which is HQed in Washington DC). A 40 year old, large peacebuilding organization (over 1000 employees), SfCG, unlike many of the other programs I have met with, intentioinally also works on domestic conflicts. They see themselves as working on community-based peacebuilding, so tracks 2 and 3, and try to establish long-term presence and relationships with communities. They have their own methodological philosophy - “The Common Ground Approach” - interpersonal, working with peoples’ and groups’ complex identities.

Of many important points, Hilde lamented that peace as a concept has become marginalized, almost discredited. People are not convinced peacebuilding has vale, that it works. Even dialogue itself has become suspect. Despite its many successes, work to transform conflict has to struggle to be accepted in the current climate. So we have our work cut out for us.

Before I leave The Netherlands, just a last, longing glance back to a city Valerie and I fell in love with: Utrecht. Plan to go sometime, it is just a lovely place.