Ethnic war specialists draft broad curriculum

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 11 December 1999

PUBLIC INTEREST

The program will blend conflict resolution with trauma intervention.

By Lisa Rabasca
Monitor staff

Experts on ethnopolitical warfare recently met at a remote retreat center to draft a one-year professional training curriculum that integrates trauma intervention and conflict resolution--two disciplines that traditionally haven't worked together.

The 30 participants--a mix of mainly psychologists, with sociologists, political scientists and historians who have studied or worked on ethnic conflict in Kosovo, Bosnia and Rwanda--met in August.

They noted that the bucolic surroundings of the Institute of World Affairs in Salisbury, Conn., were a striking contrast to last year's meeting site in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. There, amidst long-standing tensions between Protestants and Catholics, they began laying the foundation for a new field of psychology that intervenes in ethnopolitical conflicts.

This year, the joint steering committee of APA and the Canadian Psychological Association asked the group to draft a curriculum that research and training institutions around the world could use as a template for designing their own training programs for addressing ethnopolitical warfare. The U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent organization that aims to better understand the nature of international conflicts and their resolution, funded the meeting.

The cycle of violence

What sets this curriculum apart from others, participants say, is the way it blends trauma intervention with conflict resolution. Existing programs, which are few, focus on either one or the other. But trauma intervention without conflict resolution, and vice versa, isn't enough to break the cycle of violence that prevents victims of ethnopolitical warfare from living together in peace, says Ron Fisher, PhD, chair of the curriculum design task force.

"Individual change alone won't lead to community change, and just political change may not affect individuals to actually forgive and make a choice to live together again," says Fisher, a psychology professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

Both individual and social change are needed to achieve reconciliation, Fisher says, because many ethnic conflicts leave a legacy of hatred, mistrust and retaliation that fuel the flames of ongoing hostility.

"People have searing memories of what happened, 'That guy burned down my house or raped my wife,'" says psychologist Michael Wessells, PhD, of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. Those memories, he says, trigger fear and a desire for revenge. Until the cycle is broken, there is no mechanism for reconciliation.

The new curriculum, he added, will teach practicing psychologists, graduate students and others how to help victims of ethnopolitical warfare break this cycle of violence by encouraging healing and reconciliation.

Three areas of focus

The draft curriculum from the Connecticut meeting defines three broad areas where psychologists need to develop competency:

Knowledge of theory: This includes an understanding of culture, of the impact of modernization and globalization, of how society forms ethnic attitudes and conflict behavior, and of ethnicity and spirituality and their role in conflict.

Knowledge of practice: This encompasses approaches to conflict assessment--including historical, cultural, trauma and healing literature; an understanding of the impact of violence; group dynamics and their cultural context; educational interventions; community intervention methods for reducing and preventing conflict; and conflict resolution practices.

Knowledge of skills: Stressed here are interpersonal communication, cross- and multicultural sensitivity, group and team skills, skills for working with local partners, field survival skills--such as flexibility, security, adaptability--and reflective practitioner skills.

Students would also be required to complete a four-month supervised internship working with victims of ethnopolitical warfare.

The curriculum is still being finalized and will be circulated among the participants who developed it, as well as among other experts in ethnopolitical warfare, for their input. It should be distributed to research and training institutions by the middle of next year.

Experts agree that substantive, specialized training is necessary for proficiency because psychology professionals are relatively new to the field.

"Psychologists can go into areas where there is conflict and do things that seem like they would be helpful, but unless they are based on theory and empirical knowledge, we can't be sure what we're doing is helpful," says Laurie Pearlman, PhD, president of the Trauma, Research, Education and Training Institute in South Windsor, Conn.

Often, she says, psychologists take a weekend or week-long workshop and believe they're prepared to work with victims of ethnopolitical conflict. But, the Connecticut group emphasized, it takes more to understand the depth and complexities of ethnopolitical warfare.

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