One look at the title may send different opinions and views just because of the word in front but it’s really just a comparison of past and present ways of tracing a conflict.

It is no secret that the whole world is so worried about reaching some level of peace and maintain it when the big issue that should be confronted head on is to identify how a conflict erupted in the first place.

Tracing a conflict to its origin is quite a big challenge for anybody but when it comes down to using the local knowledge to trace a conflict, the results are pretty amazing.

In a recent two week course called the Social Justice and Peace Development run by the Melanesian Institute, 20 participants from the 6 highlands region dioceses were fortunate enough to be introduced to carrying out diachronic conflict tracing.

The 20 participants which comprised of pastoral workers local clergy and missionaries, lay leaders and grassroots development workers who were also participants of a former peace building workshop had all in some point of their professional and personal life faced confronted conflicts.

The process of applying the diachronic conflict tracing method in relation to the Social Justice and Peace Development course addressed toxic anti-social behaviors stimulated in the society.

You can think up of all the anti-social behaviors which disturbs peace in the community and of course there is a reason for all that happening.

However the four toxic conflicts distributed to the participants were Gender Violence or GV, Sorcery Accusation Related Violence/Virus also known as SARVID, Inter-Group Conflicts and anti-social behavior which is loosely used as rascalism.

In four crucial steps using diachronic conflict tracing, the participants were now tasked to identify the What in Tok Pisin “sekim”, the Why in Tok Pisin “skelim”, the deeper why which includes social analysis and finally the How in Tok Pisin “stretim”.

In the context of “sekim”, the participants identified situations and contexts of the conflicts which occurred.

In addition, they identified patterns and manners of the disputes and conflicts which occur in their area.

They did the scoping of those who were involved whether directly or indirectly with and in the end assessed the impact of those affected.

On the other hand-the “Why” part of diachronic conflict tracing-triggers of conflicts were identified as well as what factors caused the conflict to turn into violence. The final part highlighted justifications for the conflict and the violence.

Moving on to the deeper why and social analysis, structural factors were to be checked to see what was done in terms of economic, political, social,cultural,religious developments.

 Finally the context of “stretim” gave an opportunity to the participants to list all the different activities that were and are conducted and how it was regulated, how it helped or will help to resolve the conflict or whether it will be transformed.

The overall effect of the participants’ efforts was amazing as they compared the four aspects of diachronic conflict tracing in the context of the past and also of the present.

This goes to show the amount of local knowledge kept an upheld may prove to a significant source of contribution to constructive and transformative peace building. Because at the end of the day, peace is what we all need in this world.

Amanda Kundil

Melanesian Institute