Charity or Global Responsibility?: The Kony Children

 Charity and the Kony Children

There was a story in the Globe and Mail on March 27 called "A Made-in-Canada Way to Help Children Hurt by Kony".  This story features Lorna Pitcher, a woman who started a charity to address the issues faced by children who had been forced to be child soldiers by Joseph Kony and others.    This is a wonderful example of  'social entrepreneurship' where someone has seen a need, and acted in a positive way.  Ms Pitcher was not overcome by the size and complexity of the issue, she was not cynical, and she took responsibility to help fellow human beings.

However, as much as I support grassroots initiatives, I also worry that shining examples of individual action take the pressure away from governments to protect the common good, and to take coordinated action for long-term peace building.  I also worry that people get used to the idea that some governments are unable to fulfill their responsibility to provide a baseline level of care for its citizens.  It becomes normal for small scale charitable activities, driven by the frustration of individuals who see the need, to step into the breach left by governments instead of there being pressure to develop a stable society with proper social and public infrastructure.   In other words, it becomes normal for governments not to act; it becomes normal for people to accept responsibility to provide some services, though perhaps inadequate for the need that exists.  The larger projects that support long-term peace development on a comprehensive scale get dropped off the radar and our collective responsibility falls by the wayside.

Clearly, the people who take action are good people who are making a bad situation better.  They are doing the best they can and cannot be criticized for it.  But do we stop talking about government and international responsibility to support these children?  Do we avoid talking to the communities who also must grapple with these challenges? NO.  These things must also be done, and we cannot sink into thinking that these amazing individuals speak and do for all of us. Because they don't.  Lorna Pitcher happens to Canadian, but unless we do in fact provide governmental support in some fashion (and I don't know if we do or don't - this is not a critique of any particular government initiative or lack, it is a critique of a general trend) the rest of us are not contributing through tax dollars or other means to support the Kony children.  And it is not truly 'made-in-Canada'.  If our government does not participate in supporting local people to participate in their own solutions, then neither do we as a nation.    We shouldn't lapse into complacency as we bask in Ms Pitcher's shine.

All efforts need to be made at all levels to work toward peace for these children and communities.  We need to make sure that we participate as much as our dedicated fellow citizens who took matters into their own hands. We are all global citizens.

!NEWS FLASH!  I just heard that Pablo de Greiff, currently the research director for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, has been nominated as Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.  I have not yet heard confirmation through a UN press release of an appointment.  Regardless, an appointment seems imminent if the nomination isn't already the actual appointment.

This selection process and nomination follows the establishment of the new office on September 29, 2011.  I think that with the establishment of the new office and an appointment, the United Nations is signalling the importance and relative permanence of victim reparations, international criminal justice and truth commissions, given developments in these areas over the past two decades.   For more information about Pablo de Greiff, please check out his biography.

For more information about the Special Rapporteur for Transitional Justice please check out the September, 2011 news release from the United Nations.

Williams Lake Unity Ride - The Power of Community Generated Reconciliation

Two Unity Riders arriving at the site of St. Joseph's Indian Residential School

A few years ago I was invited to a Unity Ride.  I didn't quite understand what it was, or what was going to happen.  Someone just told me that horses were involved, which was a bit daunting since I had never ridden a horse before.

It turned out that the Unity Ride was developed and run by members of the Indigenous communities in and around Williams Lake, which was the site of St. Joseph's Indian Residential School.  Over the past century, Indian Residential Schools in Canada (and Indian Boarding Schools in the US) were notorious tools of forced assimilation.   Children were taken away to live in institutions, often at a significant distance from their families so that their families and communities could not ‘interfere’ with the process of assimilating them into the settler population.  The impacts on Indigenous people in Canada were deep and broad.  Several generations were impacted and individuals suffered from serious sexual and physical assaults, cultural and familial alienation, and assaults on their identities.   For more information, please see CBC history of Indian Residential Schools.  Also, there are many publications available through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

At the St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School at Williams Lake, children were taken to the schools from the surrounding communities by horseback and horse-drawn carriages.  The Unity Ride was a type of healing re-enactment of that ride, with members of the community and dignitaries accompanying them in solidarity as they reclaimed the ride.  The goal was to provide a way for survivors of the school system to overcome their sense of alienation and hurt.  It was also to bring the broader community to a level of understanding of the impact of residential schools on their Indigenous neighbours and reach out to survivors.

I was placed on a horse-drawn wagon (thank god...) for the duration of the ride. The ride was a gentle introduction to the people involved with the event and the significance of what we were doing.  The ride, accompanied by a police honour guard, was solemn and contemplative.  Once we arrived at the site of the residential school, I was immersed in two days of transformative and memorable experiences.  Before I went there, I had never been to the interior of British Columbia, and I had no understanding of the social dynamics.  The communities that initiated the Unity Ride created a space where people were able to safely share their stories in an environment of respect.  And it was a space wherein people like myself could be invited to properly listen and interact at a very human level.  Strangers coming together to communicate, share and experience - strangers no more.  Communities manifesting the power to overcome severe disenfranchisement that they had experienced over decades of identity suppression.

 There were many generations at the Unity Ride, as well as much support from the non-Indigenous community members around Williams Lake.  Here is a picture of a very junior rider.

A small Unity Rider - there in support of his Elders.

At one point in the event, a senior officer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police delivered an apology to residential school survivors.  I saw many people weep when they heard the apology, and others who approached the officer to shake his hand and hug him.  Here is a picture of people gathering around to listen to him:

Survivors of Indian Residential Schools and their families listening to an official apology delivered by a senior member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Among the range of emotions experienced were joy, unity and good feeling.  This is why it is so important to participate in all stages of a transformative experience, or a ceremony.  There are stages to go through before you come back to your daily life, and integrate what you have learned.  In this picture, there is a friendly song competition between two communities, with their chiefs in the lead.

Singing competition between two communities. I am standing behind the opposing team.

There were also other competitive and very fun games well into the evening.  I had a chance to play Lahal which is a game of songs, drumming and bone tiles. I can't really explain it....Someone from the territory might want to jump in and explain instead of me.

And yes, by the end of the event, I did get on a horse.....

The Lubanga and Kony crimes: What next for the child soldiers?

Today, Thomas Lubanga was found guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17364988).  Over the past weeks, mass media and social networking tools have brought to the fore awareness of Joseph Kony's similar crimes (check out Sverker Finnström's comment on the Kony viral video:  http://www.e-ir.info/2012/03/15/kony-2012-and-the-magic-of-international-relations/).  Both men have forcibly stolen children from communities, brutalized them in order to isolate them, and then forced them to commit horrific acts such as murder and rape.  But what of these children and youth after they return to civil communities?

I think that the communities and children who are left with the legacy of violence and brutality will face a challenge in living with and among each other.  I think there is a role for traditional reconciliation practices to re-weave the fabric of communities, but it is not an easy task.  Families and communities will have to deal with youth they no longer know.  They will have to deal with feelings of helplessness, shame, horror, guilt and compassion towards those they had lost, but who have come back.  The children and youth will face confusion about their own moral accountability and agency, and their newly discovered capacity to perpetrate violence and atrocity on others.  What will work for these children and communities?

About a month ago I heard a presentation by Dr. Kirsten Fisher (http://helsinki.academia.edu/KirstenFisher) a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. Her most recent work focuses on individual agents of atrocity for whom responsibility is difficult to ascertain.  In fact, her presentation was on the situation of child soldiers who are returned to civil society after their part in the atrocities has concluded.   I found Dr. Fisher's presentation interesting for many reasons.   She discussed the ambiguous status of children and youth who were seen as victims by their home community members, but who were at the same time viewed with distrust.  In other words, though there was a desire to 'forget' about their past and embrace them in the community as children, it was not really possible to forget the horrific, non-childish acts that they had perpetrated, and that fact that these young people have been damaged by the brutality they were forced to perpetrate.

Coincidentally, about a year ago I had an interesting discussion with Dr. Sverker Finnström (http://uppsala.academia.edu/SverkerF), a cultural anthropologist  who has conducted recurrent fieldwork in war-torn Uganda, with a focus on how young adults, born into civil war, understand and attempt to control their moral and material circumstances.  In his article "Reconciliation Grown Bitter?: War, Retribution and Ritual Action in Northern Uganda" (chapter 7 of Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence, ed. Rosalind Shaw and Lars Waldorf, with Pierre Hazan, http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17292) Dr. Finnström talks about the use of customary reconciliation rituals in Uganda to establish functional co-existence in communities, and to 'share a present that is not repetitive'.  The ritual for creating reconciliation after an injury or death uses traditional criteria for determining when a child has moral agency within a particular cultural framework.  These criteria include the ability to take advice from elders, take responsibility for household maintenance, etc. However, child soldiers are seen as outside this frame of reference.  They are children who are 'out of culture' as 'they just don't know what they are doing', according to one Ugandan elder interviewed by Dr. Finnström.  

I find Dr. Finnström's study of traditional and local reconciliation practices informative and insightful.  I also find Dr. Fisher's line of inquiry around the role of responsibility in promoting re-integration of child soldiers in their own communities to be interesting.  I want to know if there is a way to bring these children and youth 'back into culture'.  I want to know what you think:

What is needed for communities to take on internal reconciliation with their own children, within a traditional framework?  Do they have the capacity already?  What more is needed?  What support is needed from civil society and the international community?

Is it fair to put the burden on local communities to resolve the harms resulting from a civil or international dispute perpetrated by warlords?


Moral responsibility is taught to children in order to bring them into community norm-building and maintenance. How does a community teach children about the responsibilities of adulthood without first addressing the enormous atrocities that they have been part of?

Does avoiding an examination of the responsibility of child-soldiers increase the possibility of endemic violence in the communities when the children and youth grow up?

Berlin - A city of dynamic remembrance

Berlin is the kind of city where you don’t have to specifically look for historical memorials.  Immediately you understand the relevance of understanding the past, the impact of oppressive regimes, the significance of history on the present-day life of the city, and the engagement of the people.  The entire city demands that you understand, remember, learn and interact with the events of its past on a daily basis.  Layer upon layer of its evolving story is reflected in its cityscape - as reflected in this stylized Cold War era building on Karl Marx Allee,

The famous Kino International building on Karl Marx Allée

wartime ruins (check out the history of the Tachele building - currently an artists' squat http://super.tacheles.de/cms/) and the Berlin Wall relics, as well as more deliberate memorials and learning opportunities. 

At the suggestion of my friend Louis Bickford (http://wagner.nyu.edu/bickford) - who is an expert on memorialization and its significance as a means of victim redress - we kept an eye out for stumbling blocks.  Stumbling blocks are small but poignant individual memorials placed in front of the houses of Jewish Berliners who had been forced to leave or who had been murdered during WWII.  We were walking down the street, and then suddenly noticed the small raised bricks in the sidewalk and realized what they were.  It gave us pause and brought us to a deeper, more visceral understanding of the space we were in.

Stumbling blocks in former East Berlin

 

We also came across an interesting temporary outdoor installation set up in Alexanderplatz.by the Dissidents’ Organization.  It took a full two hours to read this "people's account" of the dynamics behind the fall of the Wall.  It was a nice counterpoint to the DDR Museum which was a bit flat, politically speaking.  This was an example of a alternative narrative existing in a public space to provide another side to the story of the Cold War and its end.  

To me, Berlin is a good example of a community which has made an effort to face up to the responsibility to remember its complex and multi-dimensional history.  Perhaps more importantly, there seems to be room for 'non-official' narratives in artistic and public spaces.  Stories from its past are infused throughout the cityscape.  This form of 'commemoration' is not rigid and forgotten as might happen with a statue in a park; rather, it is dynamic, it is everywhere, and there is context and discussion throughout.  There is a much smaller risk of ignoring the past when it is part of one's daily life.

I think that ideally a commemoration initiative that is part of a reparations package includes an ongoing and multi-participatory 'public education' or consciousness-raising effort that is the shared responsibility of leaders and community members.  Equally important are the physical touchstones and dynamic opportunities created by artists, historians, educators and others that bring us to moments of remembrance - points of time and space where we can reflect on what we have learned about our collective past.

Truth commissions like the one in Canada have a coordinating role for commemorative efforts.  Other commission may have the ability to influence the design of commemoration initiatives.  Berlin is a worthy place to consider....

The Danger of the Single Story - Video

I was sent this Youtube video called "The Dangers of the Single Story".  It is a brilliant talk about the danger of the single, over-simplifying story that robs people of their dignity and ability to self-define.  It is also a talk about the power of story-telling to repair broken dignity, restore humanity and transform understanding.  

Ms. Adichie is a storyteller.  She uses her own story to illustrate her struggles to find her authentic voice as an author, despite being surrounded by a literary world that did not contain representations of African women.  She speaks about the danger of imposing a simplified narrative upon another, and the impoverishment that results from stereotypes.  Ms Achibie explains that power is the power to tell a story about another person, and to make that story the definitive story.  For example, the single story of the 'discovery' of America affirms the supremacy of the colonizer, while at the same time negating the relevance of the Indigenous peoples of North America.  Though they have negative potential, she points out that stories also have the power to transform and humanize.

It is often the case that victim reparations processes such as truth commissions have the goal of deconstructing 'the single story' held by one community about another.  They also have the goal of developing a complex understanding of particular events that have damaged the social fabric, in order to avoid recurrence.  These processes are spaces to create a multiplicity of narratives in order re-establish a sense of common humanity, as well as accountability.  Though Ms Adichie is not speaking about the work of truth commissions, I thought her talk was a particularly excellent articulation of the type of approach that is possible when truth commissions take statements.

The challenge, however, is that truth commissions themselves can fall into creating another 'single story' through their work.  Though tasked with collecting multiple statements, they may feel the need to simplify what they have heard in order to create an effective counter-narrative.  I think the lesson learned from Ms Adichie is this:  in order to break the 'dehumanizing gaze' generated by the single story, truth commissions should build into their report an emphasis on the diversity of experiences around the events they are exploring. 

good intentions gone bad: does it have to be that way?

For my first post, I want to talk about a particular problem that has raised its ugly head in the reparations processes and truth and reconciliation commission that I have been involved with.  It is the problem of 'good intentions gone bad' or to put another way, 'the devil in the details'.  Too often, the intense emotional drive to address the wrongs suffered and to reach a state of peaceful relations can result in overlooking some very real systemic issues that can prevent the desired result.  These systemic issues - such as inequality, socio-political realities, the lack of an inclusive legal infrastructure, and the underlying relationship dynamic which lead to the wrongs - often manifest themselves in the details of implementing any kind of truth commission, victim reparations process, memorialization or any other form of civil redress.  

For example, take a look at what happened in Nova Scotia.  Here is a link to the Institutional Abuse Response Inquiry of Nova Scotia (the "Kaufman Inquiry") which examined the reparations process set up by the Nova Scotia Government to address claims of abuse by adults who had been institutionalized as children:  

http://www.gov.ns.ca/just/kaufmanreport/fullreport.pdf 

Driven by concern that the process for seeking compensation should not be too difficult for potential claimants, and not wanting to re-victimize people, the process designers established a very low validation standard for abuse claims.  It turned out that the standard was so low that it put the validity of the entire reparations process in doubt, thus doing a disservice to those who were legitimate victims of abuse as children as well as others touched by the process.   Though the policy concern that a process should not create further harm is a legitimate one, there may be countervailing issues, or a greater harm created by a process that is in disrepute.

I think this issue will pop up in future posts as I can think of many more manifestations of this particular problem. So far, I think the only way to address the problem of systemic issues derailing redress efforts is to instill  the following central process features:

- identify and include as many 'stakeholder' members as possible in the inner workings of the process in order to increase the chances of the identification of systemic barriers and negative impacts of implementation;  
- identify systemic barriers immediately and as they come up, no matter how challenging the problem;
- create a culture of transparency and openness in dialogue as well as in decision-making; and,
- identify social and/or legal spaces where there exist the possibility of effecting systemic change. I hope to address this last issue in a separate post.  

To summarize, the process used to address historic oppression/wrongs, needs to reflect and model the change in relations that the process seeks to stimulate in the broader societal context. 

I wonder if there are other ways to create touchstones or guideposts for implementers who want to avoid going off track. What is your experience?