Introduction
During the past three decades, numerous social movements have become more visible in both local and international politics. Women, workers, indigenous peoples, human rights and peace activists, people concerned with environmental degradation and gays and lesbians, among others, have mobilized for social and political change in different parts of the world both within and across state boundaries. But until recent years, the contribution of social movements and citizen's groups around the world to peacemaking and to the transformation of their societies has been either ignored, marginalized or not studied systematically.
This paper will provide an overview of the existing body of literature on this topic and examine the actual and potential contributions of social movements and private citizens to peacemaking and conflict resolution around the world. The paper will also address some of the challenges facing social movements and people's diplomacy and examine strategies to successfully deal with them.
There are three central terms that are often used to discuss the contribution of people and citizen groups to peacemaking and conflict resolution: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), people's diplomacy and social movements. I prefer the terms social movements and people's diplomacy over non-governmental organizations because in my view the use of the latter reinforces the centrality of governmental initiatives and further marginalize the activities of ordinary citizens. Nevertheless, since this term has become popular in the past decade, it is important to explore its meanings.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have come into existence because of some shared concerns of people within and across state boundaries. According to Elise Boulding, NGOs and INGOs, unlike other popular movements, "tend to represent longtime commitments to human welfare on the part of their members." She points out that NGOs and INGOs played an important role during the cold war and that "the nongovernmental sector provides major programs of education, training, and social investment in human welfare infrastructures of the South while governments of the North denounce the new international economic order. Further, Boulding argues that because of their transnational nature, INGOs "are able to hold the world public interest above national interest in ways that neither the nation-states nor even the UN itself can do."
Like NGOs and INGOs, social movements tend to address social and political concerns in ways that differ from those of state institutions and leaders. The term social movements is often used to refer to various groups such as peace movements, women's movements, labor movements and environmental movements, to name only a few. There are local, community-based movements, national organizations, international, and transnational movements and they include both ad-hoc and permanent organizations. As Alberto Melucci points out "contemporary social movements, like all collective phenomena, bring together forms of action that involve several levels of the social structure." Further, social movements may act independently of or in collaboration with one another. This point is clearly underscored in Paul Smoker's definition of the global peace movement as a "combination of local, national, and international social movements that are working for global peace and security." As Smoker points out, these movements may be formal -- Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Oxfam will fall under this category -- or informal, that is providing "the dynamic for events such as citizens' prodemocracy revolutions in Eastern Europe or consumers' proenvironment ethics in many parts of the world." Their particular objectives and strategies of struggle notwithstanding, social movements are often viewed as having transformative potential both locally and globally.
Unlike the previous terms discussed here, people's diplomacy is not a movement or an organization, but rather a strategy or venue that could be employed by NGOs, INGOs and various social movements as well as by ordinary citizens that are not part of any existing group. In other words, people's diplomacy is a more specific term referring particularly to citizens' initiatives designed to bring about the non-violent resolution of conflict. Other terms such as "track-II diplomacy," "unofficial diplomacy," and "citizen's diplomacy," have been used to describe conflict resolution attempts initiated and carried out by ordinary citizens and groups. The use of the term diplomacy in conjunction with citizen's peaceful interventions is designed to call attention to the fact that diplomacy takes does not take place only between official representatives of states and around the negotiation table. Rather it is presented as a task that could and should be carried out by ordinary citizens. Examples of people's diplomacy may include the separate and joint struggles of Israeli and Palestinian women to against the occupation and for a just and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another example of people's diplomacy lies in the work of the "Blessed are the Peace Makers" (BPM) movement, a grass-roots group of religious people s which was born in 1986 in the North-East of Italy. The group became particularly active with the escalation of the conflict in the Balkans when BPM activists participated in the Peace March from Trieste to Sarajevo and subsequently continued to express solidarity with the people of Sarajevo.
To come to terms with the use of people's diplomacy by NGOs, INGOS, social movements and ordinary citizens and to assess their contributions to peacemaking efforts and conflict resolution processes around the world, I utilize John McDonald's and Louis Diamond's framework on multi-track diplomacy which reflects the variety of activities that contribute to international peacemaking and conflict resolution.
The concept of multi-track diplomacy evolved from earlier work on what is often referred to as "track-two diplomacy." Track-two diplomacy was a term coined by Joseph Montville in 1982 to refer to methods of diplomacy that were outside that formal governmental system. It refers to non-governmental, informal and unofficial contacts and activities between private citizens or groups of individuals. Montville viewed track two diplomacy as a process designed to assist official leaders to explore possible solutions out of public view and without the requirement to formally negotiate or bargain for advantage. The secret negotiations between unofficial representatives of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which led to the signing of the Oslo accord in September 1993 are an example of track two diplomacy.
According to Diamond and McDonald track two diplomacy initiatives are designed
(1) to reduce or resolve conflict between groups or nations by improving communications, understanding and relationships;
(2) to lower tension, anger, fear or misunderstanding by humanizing the "face of the enemy" and giving people direct personal experience of one another;
(3) to affect the thinking and action of track-one (i.e., official diplomacy) by exploring diplomatic options without prejudice, thereby preparing the ground for more formal negotiations or for reframing policies.
While many scholars tend to use the terms citizen diplomacy and track-two diplomacy interchangeably, John Burton and Frank Dukes draw a distinction between them. Based on this distinction, "'citizen diplomacy' refers to an entire class of informal and unofficial procedures for application at the international and intercommunal level where there are different cultures and an apparent need for better understanding that cannot be achieved through more formal contacts and interactions." The examples they cite in this category include citizen exchange visits, rock concerts, twin city bond, educational exchanges, joint research projects and humanitarian aid. Track-two diplomacy, on the other hand, is described by Burton and Dukes as "unofficial, informal interaction between members of adversary groups or nations which aim to develop strategies, influence public opinion, and organize human and material resources in ways that might help resolve their conflict. . . [T]rack two activity is designed to assist official leaders by compensating for the constrains imposed on them by the psychologically understandable need for leaders to be, or at least to be seen, strong, wary, and indomitable in the face of the enemy."
In sum, the basic premise of track two diplomacy is that the expertise for resolving conflicts peacefully does not reside solely with official government personnel or procedures. Rather, citizens and groups from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of skills can play an important role in peacemaking and conflict resolution processes. Indeed, the model of multi-track diplomacy emerged from the realization, by diplomats, social scientists, conflict resolution professionals and others, that formal, government-to-government official interactions between instructed representatives of sovereign nations were not sufficient to secure international cooperation or resolve differences or conflicts. Rather than limiting their inquiry to a comparison between track-one and track-two diplomacy, Diamond and McDonald have identified nine tracks that are involved in the complex and comprehensive process of peacemaking and conflict resolution: official diplomacy, education, research & training, business, funding, media & communication, religion, NGOs & advocacy groups and private citizens.
Multi-track diplomacy, according to Diamond and McDonald is "a conceptual framework designed. . . to reflect the variety of activities that contribute to international peacemaking." The underlying assumption of this conceptual framework is that individuals and organizations are more effective working together than separately, especially since most of the conflicts confronting us presently involve a large and intricate web of parties and factors that requires a systems approach. Diamond and McDonald insist that each of the nine tracks brings with it its own perspective, approach, and resources, all of each are needed in the peacebuilding process.
Several tracks are particularly relevant to our discussion of conflict resolution from the bottom-up since they refer to potential interventions by ordinary citizens and/or social movements. These include tracks which describe interventions by NGOs and professional conflict resolution organizations. These interventions by "non-state actors" are designed "to analyze, prevent, resolve and manage international conflict." In addition, there is a track that accounts for "the various ways individual citizens become involved in peace and development activities through citizen diplomacy, exchange programs, private voluntary organizations non-governmental organizations and special interest groups." Yet another track focuses on activism more generally with particular emphasis on peacemaking through advocacy. According to Diamond and McDonald, "this covers the field of peace and environmental activism on such issues as disarmament, human rights, social and economic justice and advocacy of special interest groups regarding specific governmental policies." Finally, there is a track, which accounts for "the beliefs and peace-oriented actions of spiritual and religious communities and such morality-based movements as pacifism, sanctuary and non-violence."
Taken together, these different tracks described here, which are not mutually exclusive, demonstrate the range of roles that ordinary citizens and social movements could play in peacemaking, peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The framework of multi-track diplomacy in general and the four tracks outlined above in particular, can be useful in mapping the interventions of various groups and citizens, in examining the relationship between them and in assessing their contribution to peace and conflict resolution efforts.
The involvement of citizen groups around the world in initiatives designed to bring about peace, justice and reconciliation has a long history. Yet, the stories that are featured in the world politics sections of widely circulated newspapers focus on the interactions between leaders of states and state officials. Only seldom could one find stories about citizen groups and social movements working for peace and conflict resolution. Occasionally, when citizen initiatives and actions of social movements find their way to the conventional media, they serve merely as human interest stories, utilized to garnish accounts of "real" politics. But despite the fact that the political and social interventions of private citizen and citizens' groups have been either ignored or not studied systematically, the existing body of literature on their actual and potential contribution to peacemaking and to the transformation of their societies raises important issues and outlines an interesting terrain for investigation.
Despite the different theoretical and methodological approaches that inform the growing body of literature on social movements, there are several reoccurring and interrelated tendencies that have emerged in this work. The most common tendency is to view social movements as agents of social and political change and to examine their responses to contemporary political developments and global changes. Another tendency has been to present social movements as transnational actors who challenge the centrality of state sovereignty in international politics. A third tendency, treats social movements as contexts for the exploration of new ideas about political identity and community and alternative answers to the question "who are we?" which have been heretofore answered by the claims of sovereign states. While the focus on transnational social movements emphasized challenges to state sovereignty that come "from above" the state, the focus on social movements as sites for alternative explorations of identity and community involves mainly challenges to state sovereignty "from below" the state, that is from groups that have been relegated to the margins of their collectivity. Social movements can also challenge the state "from outside" through alliances with citizens and groups worldwide who share their social and political agenda.
The analysis of the present and potential role of social movements in peacemaking and conflict resolution depends to a great extent on one's definitions of peace and conflict resolution. According to Paul Smoker, social movements tend to subscribe to a definition of peace that is "positive," that is more than the absence of war. Adapting a broader, more comprehensive definition of peace, that is positive peace, is crucial to understanding the contribution of environmental movements, human rights movements, indigenous people's movements, and women's movements to peacemaking and conflict resolution. These groups struggle to eradicate all forms of violence, including structural violence, and to bring about social and political transformation mainly through non-violent means.
The underlying assumption of much of the literature on NGOs and social movements is that various citizen groups can play a crucial role in peace and conflict resolution processes precisely because they stand apart from the government, and thus are able to relate to the hopes and fears of their fellow citizens. In addition to the ability to link abstract political formulations to people's daily lives and put a human face on the conflict, these organizations provide citizens with a rare opportunity to articulate their political views and to feel part of a larger community of like-minded people.
While putting a human face on conflict may be an important task in and of itself, it will be impossible to radically and peacefully transform the arena of international politics unless our understanding of politics expands in ways that will not marginalize nor trivialize the actions and contributions of social movements and private citizens. In other words, to come to terms with and assess the significance of the role of social movements and of different initiatives labeled as "people's diplomacy," one has to begin with some critical reflection on conventional understandings of what is considered politics, especially in the international arena.
To move in that direction, we should begin by challenging the largely accepted distinction between such dichotomies as governmental and nongovernmental organizations and official and unofficial diplomacy since like most dichotomies these too are hierarchical and thus contribute to the view that "real" politics or conflict resolution initiatives involves exchanges between official representatives of state, often conducted, at least partially, in the public eye, while initiatives by individuals and movements are treated as "private" and seen at best as supplementary to "real" politics. By re-defining politics, social movements may map new and original venues for peace and conflict resolution that official representatives of state are not willing or not able to envision yet.
Along these lines, Richard Falk insists that "social movements and the theorizing that accompanies their emergence and evolution, reconstitute our understanding of 'the political' and 'the global.'" This new understanding depends according to Alberto Melucci on the movements' ability to "highlight the insuperable dilemmas facing complex societies, and by doing so force them openly to assume responsibility for their choices, their conflicts and their limitations." Take for example the struggle of Solidarity in Poland against their authoritarian government. According to Richard Falk, this struggle had "transformative reverberations at all levels of political life."
The transformative potential of such struggles lies, among other things, in their ability to redefine the relationship between citizens, the state and like-minded individuals and groups around the world. This ability rests first and foremost on the commitment of social movements and NGOs to social and political change. Indeed, NGOs and social movements are often viewed as agents of social and political change who search for creative responses to contemporary political developments and global changes. Moreover, some have insisted for example that peace and human rights movements were essential in helping to end the Cold War as well as a major factor that contributed to the dramatic political changes in Eastern Europe which culminated in the fall of Communism.
Another crucial role attributed to NGOs and social movements involves their participation in the process of nation-building. Gidron for example explains the proliferation of such organizations within the Jewish community in Palestine in the prestate period as both an attempt to provide services where the British rulers refused to, and to establish the infrastructure for social and political institutions that will be established after independence. A similar trend became evident on the other side of the Palestinian-Israeli divide with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, known as the intifada in 1987. The intifada triggered the emergence of a multitude of grass-roots based organizations and social movements. In addition to providing necessary services for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and playing a key role in the popular resistance against the Israeli occupation, these groups were viewed by many Palestinians as the backbone or infrastructure of the future Palestinian state.
By providing an alternative model of social and political life and by establishing the infrastructure to implement it, social movements call into question the existing power relations both within and between states and/or national or cultural collectivities. Social movements often expose power asymmetries by voicing the concerns and perspectives of underprivileged and marginalized constituencies. In so doing, they call attention to problems and issues that are often excluded from conventional analyses of conflicts and from the processes outlined for their resolution. These issues go beyond the exclusive focus on resolving conflicts of interests between states; they involve social issues, such as economic inequities, environmental degradation, violence against women, and human rights violations which cannot be dealt with simply at the international level, but require an intra-national or trans-national approach.
By challenging the primacy of state sovereignty and the confines of national boundaries, social movements open up space for the emergence of transnational coalitions, campaigns, and movements that respond to the challenges of an interdependent world. The four United Nations world conferences on women (1975, 1980, 1985, 1995) offer an example of attempts to forge transnational alliances among women 's across national boundaries and various other divisions including class and religion. In addition to challenging state sovereignty, social movements can offer new definitions to central concepts in social and political life. For example, women activists who have long argued that violence against women is a violation of human rights, have been quite successful in broadening conventional understandings of human rights to include women's human rights.
Security is another concept which various social movements have sought to transform. Transnational initiatives are instrumental for the transformation of conventional meanings of concepts such as security; they call into question the limitations of the dominant concept of "national security" and seek to create conditions for collective, global security that is not simply concerned with policing state boundaries, but rather with the eradication of structural violence and insecurities. Indeed, Paul Smoker points out that social movements tend to define security in much broader terms, transcending narrow definitions of "national security." These definitions are often grounded in clear distinctions between "us" and "them" which become particularly rigid in times of crisis and conflict escalation and manifest themeselves in tendencies to view security as a zero-sum concept. By focusing on people's security rather than on national security, social movements gradually begin to challenge the rigid distinctions between "us" and "them." Overcoming these distinction is an important aspect of people's diplomacy.
Social movements have the capacity to educate people and communities about the conflict and its effects on their lives and to offer them a glimpse of hope by empowering them to get involved in initiatives designed to resolve the conflict. Instead of passively waiting for governmental solutions that will be imposed from above, these community-based groups encourage citizens to take charge of their lives and work for social and political change in their own neighborhood or in the national or international arenas. From mothers in the inner-city of Chicago who are determined to take back the streets of their neighborhood, making them safer for their children and for the rest of their community to ordinary citizens on both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland who have tried to end the violence -- these initiatives demonstrate the transformative potential of activism inspired by a vision of a more just society, free of all forms of violence.
Indeed, most social movements that are involved in peace and justice struggles are committed to radical social-change and political transformation, not simply to stopping the killing and restoring the old order, that is the status-quo. In other words, social movements' concerns are not limited to the need to bring an end to direct, physical violence, but also with the need to confront various forms structural violence and to transform structures and institutions, so they are more responsive to the needs of the disenfranchised. The agenda for structural change is often grounded in a vision for the future society and strategies of how to realize it.
Social movements and people's diplomacy do not take place in a vacuum. They tend to occur at the same time, and often in direct relation to official attempts to resolve the conflict. State officials and third parties must realize that once they reach a peace accord, limited or comprehensive, its implementation will depend first and foremost on the popular support it receives. In most conflict areas, social movements are the only force that is able to mobilize a broad constituency in support of a peace accord. By having representatives of social movements present at the official negotiation tables and by listening to their perspectives on the conflict and the prospects for its resolution, conflict resolution scholars and practitioners may gain insights that could be instrumental to a successful implementation of a peace accord when reached.
In sum, given the multitude of roles and functions that social movements have in the field of peacemaking and conflict resolution, it is troubling, though not surprising, that the body of literature of NGOs and social movements has not been central to the study and practice of peace and conflict resolution studies. The focus of conventional conflict resolution literature on the interactions between official representatives of state (track one) notwithstanding, the changing political context, especially the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the so-called "New World Order" has contributed to the marginalization of attempts to resolve conflict from the bottom-up. This marginalization is related at least partially to some of the challenges that social movements have encountered on the past decade.
The end of the Cold War marked a serious challenge for grassroots activists around the world by creating a new political context not structured around the rigid distinctions between "us" and "them" -- East and West. This new political context brought to the fore new types of conflicts and introduced new issues. As a result many NGOs and social movements around the world were forced to reassess their political platforms and ideologies as well as their strategies and relationship both with the state and with other social movements locally and globally.
While many peace researchers and activists around the world welcomed the end of the Cold War with reactions that ranged from sighs of relief to relentless optimism and excitement, some are starting to realize as Richard Falk points out, that "the mood of exhilaration that accompanied the end of the Cold War and Soviet collapse" ushered in new problems and challenges. According to Falk, the end of the Cold War triggered "an abrupt awakening to the realities of the new era, including the harsh human costs associated with speeding the transition from state socialism to market constitutionalism and the realization that many of the acute causes of human distress in the world had virtually nothing to do with the East/West axis of struggle or with the sterile choice between Marxism-Leninism and globalizing capitalism." Falk traces the origins of the problems and challenges facing concerned citizens and social movements at the end of the Cold War to what he terms "inhumane governance." Inhumane governance, according to Falk, manifests itself in the following dimensions of international political life:
(1) the most disadvantages 20 percent of the world population do not have access to adequate food, shelter, health care, clothing, education and housing;
(2) the most vulnerable identities -- socially, politically and culturally -- are denied full protection of human rights. These include indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians and women and children, among others;
(3) the lack of significant progress towards the abolition of war as a social institution;
(4) the lack of significant improvements in the area of environmental degradation; and;
(5) the failure to achieve much progress with respect to the extension of the primary democratic practices of respect for others and of accountability of political leaders as well as market executives, managers, and traders.
This new troubling political context introduces numerous challenges for social movements and NGOs in general and for their attempts to facilitate peacemaking and conflict resolution efforts in particular. The first challenge involves coming to terms with the shift in understanding global politics -- from East-West to North-South relations. To successfully deal with this challenge, social movements ought to critically examine the dynamics of the relationship between North and South, with particular attention to the disparities in power and privilege between them. Such an analysis should take into account the North's control of most of the world's resources, their military strength and their technological superiority. These disparities in power and privilege manifest themselves in the structure and work of NGOs and social movements and in their ability to trigger peaceful transformation. For example, NGOs, social movements and concerned citizens in the North have better access to resources than do their counterparts in the South.
A related problem concerns the relationship between groups based in the North and those based in the South and the tendency of often well-intentioned conflict resolution experts, peace researchers or activists from the North to impose their analyses and solutions on their Southern counterparts. The challenge facing social movements in the North is to forge alliances with groups in the South without obscuring or reproducing the structured inequalities that characterize the relationship between nations in the North and in the South. The effectiveness and durability of such alliances depend first and foremost on the willingness and ability of individuals and groups based in the North to come to terms with the disparities in power and privilege between North and South, to critically examine their own social location and to engage in solidarity work that is based on needs assessment and priority setting conducted by people in the South.
Another crucial problem facing contemporary social movements involves their relationship with the states within which they operate. While social movements demonstrate that non-state actors have a significant role to play in social and political life, most people still view the state as the principle actor in both local and international politics. Moreover, state officials who have become increasingly aware of the proliferation of social movements and of the implicit if not explicit threat they pose to the status-quo, have tried to both suppress and co-opt these movements. The pressure of states may increase as social movements become more involved in international and transnational projects. At the same time, however, the forging of alliances across state boundaries is perhaps the best assurance that a social movement can have against a crack down by the state.
Alliances, however, especially those which are able to transcend state boundaries, pose serious challenges to contemporary social movements. These challenges are related in my view to the tendency to assume that alliances or coalitions ought to be based on similarities, be that ideology, a common enemy or a shared sense of identity (i.e., women, gays and lesbians, people of color etc.). Along the same lines, attempts to deal with differences within a particular social movement are viewed as divisive, as threats to the unity and survival of the group and its vision. Contrary to this view, I argue that one of the most significant challenges facing social movement today involves our inability to forge alliances that not only respect but also celebrate differences.
But in a global environment dominated by multinational corporations and the military industrial complex which also tend to view differences as a threat, we have no other choice but to turn to our differences as our secret "weapons." Our different identities, social locations and experiences have exposed us to different situations and as a result we have acquired different coping skills. The more diverse a group is, the larger the repertoire of coping skills it has at its disposal and the broader and stronger the coalitions it can forge and sustain. This applies to the tensions between movements in the North and in the South which was discussed earlier in this section, to the uneasy relationship between so-called experts and academics and grass-roots activists and between local, community-based projects and transnational movements. Coming to terms with our differences and utilizing them as assets in our struggles for peace and justice is perhaps the most challenging task confronting contemporary social movements. But dealing with differences is not an easy task. As African American feminist Barbara Smith points out
In sum, despite the serious challenges facing social movements and NGOs today more people and movements around the world realize that they have a unique role to play in peacemaking and conflict resolution. These challenges notwithstanding, the proliferation of community-based citizen groups, transnational social movements and people's diplomacy initiatives around the world should be viewed as an hopeful signs of potential transformation. This potential transformation depends, however, on our ability to critically reflect on our experiences as peace researchers and activists and to seriously and courageously confront the challenges facing us today.
Rather than contrasting bottom-up with top-down approaches , the paper focused almost solely on bottom-up approaches, exploring various types of groups and projects that have been involved in peacemaking and conflict resolution initiatives and situating these initiatives in relation to the local and global challenges confronting us a decade after the end of the Cold War and a few years away from the turn of the century. Based on this exploration, it is fair to conclude that NGOs, social movements, and private citizens have indeed played a particularly significant role during periods of crisis, conflict and transition and that they do have important contribution to make to conflict resolution and peacemaking.
At the same time, what is still missing from this paper as from the growing body of literature on these issues is a systematic analysis of bottom-up conflict resolution and peacemaking initiatives with particular attention to groups' composition and different styles of intervention, their definitions of conflict resolution and peace, their understandings of identity and community and visions for the future and the changes that occur in their functioning and in the social and political roles they undertake as the course of the conflict changes. What, for example, happens to such organizations after the establishment of a state or once the conflict de-escalates and a peace process is underway?
The exploration of these questions is not merely an academic project; grass-roots activists around the world have been grappling with these questions for quite a while. To seriously engage these questions, scholars and activists need to work together. But like in any alliance, the more privileged group must be willing to come to terms with its relative power and privilege. In other words, the challenge for academics (as well as for non-academic experts) is to recognize from the outset that, as Alejandro Bendana points out, "peace-building and conflict resolution must go beyond the elaboration of theories and techniques in order to address the practical and immediate requirements of social actors." Along these lines, it would not be an overstatement to conclude that the future of peace studies and conflict resolution depends on our ability to understand and learn from the daily lives and struggles of people and movements around the world and to devise effective strategies to confront inequalities and injustices both locally and globally.