of my journals I wrote earlier. There are clear and overwhelming lessons of what works and best practices that have been documented by different program initiatives. However, these lessons are not adequately utilized particularly, by state actors.
One of my recent assignments I completed for the Justice and Reconciliation program was to support the development of guidelines for the concurrent jurisdictions of the African criminal tribunals. In the course of accomplishing this task, I have to review volumes of research papers produced by IJR. Most of those documents emanated from their project implementations and interventions in the past. I asked a senior program leader about how those documents are utilized or disseminated. I was told the
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This means that peacebuilders need to be able to put themselves in the position of those they seek to serve and to share in their pain. Emotional strength is an essential trait one needs to have in order to empathize will people. Empathy builds trust which, in turn, leads to people having confidence in interveners’ activities and programs.
On the question of scholar-practitioner
My main argument is this reflective essay is that the practice of peacebuilding must constantly be informed by evidence, lessons, research, and best practices that are relevant and applicable to different contexts. Also, state actors must use these evidence to feed into high-level policies.
More often than not, the successes, failures, and important lessons that emerge from the practice of peacebuilding are not effectively communicated and/or used in future planning, policies, and formulating new approaches. In my view, a scholar-practitioner is the one who bridges the gap between theory, policy, and practice. The scholar-practitioner contribute to translate policies into actionable instruments and practical activities that can be used by those operating at the level of implementation. At the same time, the scholar-practitioner must participate at the level of
One being that the Scholar-Practitioner is located at the end of the continuum. This displays that the Scholar-Practitioner is the ideal level. McClintock states “Scholar Practitioners are committed to the well-being of clients and colleagues, to learning new ways of being effective, and to conceptualizing their work in relation to broader organizational, community, political, and cultural contexts.” From McClintock’s model, the Scholar-Practitioner is described as a scholar who has an intimate understanding of their specialty and are able to apply their knowledge in several ways. Capella’s Learning Model also differentiates the Scholar-Practitioner and describing them in that same fashion. The Capella’s Learning Model provides in depth examples of a Doctoral-Level (Scholar-Practitioner) assignment. In the assignment, terms such as extract and evaluate, demonstrate the higher level thinking required as a Scholar-Practitioner. Bloom’s Taxonomy also identifies terms such as evaluate and create as higher thinking processes. An expert, the Scholar-Practitioner, is able to put together information in innovative ways and think outside of the box, versus recalling information. Both the Capella Learning Model and McClintock’s Scholar-Practitioner Model support the idea of the Scholar-Practitioner being a researcher who is highly skilled and able to apply their knowledge in unique
"Peacekeeping and Peacemaking." Reading and Remembrance . N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2014. . (tags: none | edit tags)
Example, I am a practitioner-scholar at Capella University acquiring the required knowledge and skills that are essential for the field of clinical psychology specialization in forensic psychology. Whereas, the scholar-practitioners are experiential scholars who are aspiring toward or already hold a doctoral degree, the scholar-practitioner connects academia and experience amalgamating both research and theory McClintock
In conjunction with the practitioner-scholar learning method, the development of
Mallinder, Louise. "Can Amnesties and International Justice Be Reconciled?" The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1.2 (2007): 208-30.
Thinking about peace requires understanding peace itself as thought, as knowledge, and as a critique of its others, its opposites: violence, terror, and war. Peace is encyclopedic in terms of the knowledge that it generates as well as the knowledge upon which it draws. This essay is a brief attempt to explore what the circumstances are for peace as thinking and what goes into that thinking. What I'm saying here rests on three important assumptions: first, we cannot simply point outward to terror and "hit" the right target; second, to have peace one must extend peace; and third, the necessary counter to notions of a "just war" is a "just peace."
According to Arianna Huffington in the article “Empathy: What We Need Now”, during hardships and instability of society, empathy is needed to find solutions to those issues. Huffington writes about how empathy is needed in our country in order to produce a positive social change. She begins by giving an example of a movement that Martin Luther King created and how empathy was a part of this movement. King as well spoke of how empathy is the sign of living. To become involved in the situations of humanity in order to improve it, displays that empathy is the core of a human’s existence. After reading this article, I do agree with Huffington about how individuals need to fully understand and put themselves within the situation to fully comprehend the issue to solve.
...s toward peace”. Proving that being pacifist does not necessarily mean that war is unacceptable, it can also stand for bringing peace by a different point of view.
Empathy is used to create change in the world by reaching out to the emotions of people and attending to them. It is used to help others learn and decide on matters that would not be reasonable without feelings attached to them. Empathy helps bring together communities that would have long ago drifted apart, but instead welcomed all who were different. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This attribute of human-beings really allows us to not only attend to situations as if they were our own, but it allows us to feel most of what others feel because humans are very much alike in some ways. In many of the articles and novels that we have read this quarter, characters from different pieces of context have portrayed empathy whether it was toward
Rethinking Violence: States and Non-state Actors in Conflict. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed April 22, 2014).
First we need to recognize the scholar's resources: nature, classification, and the presents of spirit. Second, we need to examine the duties associated with being a scholar: trust, honor, and the ability to dedicate ourselves to the institution in which we belong. Third, we need to go beyond our old ways of thinking we need to create a unique culture and traditions distinctive to this new Country.
Ripeness and readiness are good theory’s to explain why conflicts ends. They both show how multiple factors come into play to end a conflict. “Ripeness is not sudden, but rather a complex process of transformations in the situation, shifts in public attitudes and new perceptions and visions among decision-makers” (Rambotham, 2011: 180). The Oslo negotiations and the peace process are good examples of the readiness theory and its ease explaining the resolution of these conflicts. The Cambodian conflict poses more difficulty being explained through ripeness. When conflicts are multilateral poses a challenge to readiness theory. Adapting readiness theory
...ous situations, possibly because these studies have attributed motive and action to the states rather than to the decision-makers within them. Thus, foreign relations and policies can truly be strengthened when people can view and truly appreciate international issue in many different perspectives, such as realist, idealist, liberalist, constructivism, feminist, world economic system analysis, etc. When people are able to see issues and solutions to problems in many different ways world peace might be reachable.
Of course there is a challenge in implementing justice. Whether it’s a corrupt justice system, a fragile peace transition, large numbers of perpetrators or victims, and legal impediments such as amnesty laws. People can get justice through fair trials, truth seeking and fact finding, reparations, institutional reform, or memorialization. These mechanisms can be implemented by the national government, United Nations, international organizations or civil society. In order for these mechanisms to be successful they must be victim- centric, pragmatic, empowering, and work in the path of rebuilding trust relationships. Also, to emphasize the balance and for choosing the best strategy for justice, it is necessary to:
...who have specialist knowledge, experiences, and skills in working on comprehensive peace processes can advise and leverage the support from other sectors of government on behalf of developing a sustainable outcome.