*EPF107 08/25/2003
Ivorians Learn Conflict Resolution and Mediation Techniques
(Embassy sponsors six-day reconciliation workshop outside Abidjan) (1320)

By Charles W. Corey
Washington File Staff Correspondent

Washington -- More than 40 Ivorians representing Cote d'Ivoire's main political parties in that country's national reconciliation government, along with representatives from the country's rebel groups, participated in a six-day reconciliation workshop held outside Abidjan.

The July 13-18 event, entitled "The Amelioration of Skills on Compromise and Consensus for Political Stability," was co-sponsored by the Ivorian Ministry of National Reconciliation and the U.S. embassy's public diplomacy section.

One of the seminar's participants, I. William Zartman, spoke with the Washington File about his experience at the seminar. Zartman is the Jacob Blaustein professor of international organization and conflict resolution who directs the African Studies and Conflict Management Programs at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

The purpose of the workshop, Zartman explained, was to teach conflict management skills and techniques, and to explore ways to implement the Marcoussis Accord that the parties to the conflict in Cote d'Ivoire had signed earlier in the year.

[The Marcoussis Accord, reached under the aegis of France and ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), established a framework between the Government of Cote d'Ivoire and the various rebel forces for moving toward peace and reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire. The accord provides a format for addressing some of the key issues -- citizenship, land ownership, and eligibility for the presidency -- that have divided Ivorians for some time.]

The workshop, according to Zartman, was structured around several different types of activities that would stimulate broader perspectives as well as forcing the participants to eat and socialize together.

The activities included a simulation or role-playing game about a village conflict; a series of presentations by Zartman and other participants, followed by discussions; and breakout sessions that focused on the five essential questions that, according to Zartman, would lead to resolution:

-- Where are we now?
-- Where do you want to see Cote d'Ivoire five years from now?
-- What are the obstacles to realizing that dream?
-- How do we overcome the obstacles?
-- How do you institutionalize those activities; how do you make those activities regular and routine rather than one-shot deals?

Zartman said the participants broke up into four groups to address these questions, reported back to the workshop and discussed their findings and conclusions in plenary sessions.

Additionally, the participants spent three days in a conflict resolution exercise trying to solve a conflict in the fictitious village of Ndougou that Zartman developed with one of his Ghanaian graduate students. "I wanted to get something that got people away from the national politics that they represented and reached back into their own roots and their own kind of instinctive experiences and feelings," he said.

The scenario posed a situation involving the succession of a chieftainship in a village. "The successor to the chief was supposed to be the next closest living relative who was an old man. Just as they were about to choose the new chief, the son of the late chief, who had been in school in Paris, came back and presented himself as the young and modern candidate," Zartman explained.

"Other complications were also in play," Zartman added. "The teachers went out on strike to support the young candidate and to support succession by election rather than by village council. The market women also went on strike to protest the strike of the teachers who were not taking care of their children anymore.

"Then there was a group of people who had come to the village many generations before and were farming the land but were not allowed to own the land. They protested for their rights and wanted to elect their own chief and people came down from Abidjan to support the students."

Three two-hour sessions were held -- one each day -- which were devoted to solving the scenario. "The first session centered on how do you solve the problem. The second, on how do you reconcile the people after you solved the problem. The third session asked how do you institutionalize the solution to this problem," Zartman said.

Solving the scenario, he explained, was "most exciting," for the participants because "they recognized themselves and their situation." The participants told Zartman, "You must have been thinking of Cote d'Ivoire" when you developed this scenario!

"The most striking thing was, as each one played his role, they all kept saying, ����Think of the village!' They would present their point of view and someone would again say ����Think of the state of our village, we must save our village,' which is exactly what we wanted them to do. We wanted them to think that when they said 'think of the village' they were saying think of Ivory Coast," he explained.

"The immediate effect of all of this on the ground was that they (the Ivorian participants) [who] came in glowering at each other, during the course of the event ate together and talked together until the wee hours of the morning, went home very much united" as a group.

Zartman quickly stressed, however, that even though the participants went home "united" as Ivorians, they had not lost their party identities. They were united in their thinking of the village and as such, were more amenable to trying to compromise and work something out for the overall good of the village.

Zartman said he stressed to the attendees that by working to find a compromise, "You are no less party people, you have a program, and you stand for certain things and think you have an answer to the problems. Don't, however, impose that solution in such a way," he said, "that you will destroy the other party. But rather work toward the common good, particularly at a time when you have to put the country back together again."

As a direct follow-up to the event, Zartman said groups continue to meet and the 40 Ivorian participants pledged to return in a few months to take up where they left off. Additionally, he said, a peace caravan is now being formed to travel throughout Cote d'Ivoire.

In the peace caravan, Zartman explained, the representatives of the various parties will travel around the country together, stopping at towns and villages to make presentations. The participants, he said, will go out and hold their particular rallies and then come back together to show one message: "We can travel together. We can be together. We don't give up our identities. We can differ but differ in such a way that benefits the country overall."

Zartman said a major obstacle -- the division of the country -- must be surmounted if the peace caravan is to take place. "You can't go from the south to the north. So for the peace caravan to work, they have to take down the barriers and allow the people in and that is part of the process. That is one of the things that we tried to attack -- the division inside the country."

Asked if the workshop was similar to other such seminars, Zartman said, "I think there are a lot of similarities. The five questions came out of a Liberian national reconciliation workshop that we did at SAIS ten years ago which was enormously successful at SAIS in conjunction with the Carter Center, except that we did not follow through.

"We had no resources for it when it took place in May 1993." At the beginning of the school year, he said, we had to go back and teach.

The key lesson learned from that experience, Zartman said, is if you have a success, keep at it. In that (aim) I think this seminar promises a greater success "because of its continued sponsorship and involvement by several large parties."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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