AT THE HEART OF CONFLICT

A collection of in-depth interviews with peacemakers of all kinds.

“Peace mediation itself,” writes Jonathan Cohen, executive director of Conciliation Resources, “needs to evolve and demonstrate its contemporary relevance and effectiveness, amid rapid changes in how wars are fought and in the face of destabilised international security.” These modern challenges, and the various organizations dedicated to meeting them, are the focus of this assemblage of interviews with people working for peace in the world’s dozens of conflict zones. A common denominator, as professor Oliver Richmond writes in his foreword, is an approach to peacemaking that transcends “old boundaries of thought and practice” in attempts to “bridge both distant scholarship and the polemics of politics.” In these interviews, serious and probing questions are put to people in peacemaking roles, and their answers speak more directly to those polemics than any standard narrative could convey. Mohammad Latif Fayaz, for example, who is currently director of the Hazara Cultural House in Finland and formerly served as NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, talks about the “very hard moment” in 2021 when he learned that the international community intended to withdraw from the country “without considering on-the-ground realities,” thereby undermining decades of peacebuilding work. Sandra Melone, founder and CEO of Zancora Consulting, touches on the subject of peacemaking as it relates to supporting women’s rights. “When a government claims that girls and women have the right to health and education,” she attests, “I would say, show us where the health services and education actually are.” The assemblage of these voices makes for valuable storytelling; these are men and women who have faced what Helen Kezie-Nwoha describes in her introduction as “the growing complexity of achieving negotiated settlements” in an increasingly fragmented and extremist world.

A valuable reminder of the value of fighting for peace.