Last year on February 3-4, 2011, seventh and eighth grade students at Soundview School participated in a two-day peace negotiation workshop, “ Workable Peace, One Village, Six People: Living in Rwanda After Genocide.” The workshop is taught by Carl Hobert, founder of Boston-based Axis of Hope (axisofhope.org). Students learned to negotiate rather than argue and how even things like body language and word choice can impact negotiation.
The Axis of Hope program focuses on improving the practice of international conflict analysis, management and prevention with students worldwide through hands-on practice.
Soundview's workshop was based in a village called Gisenyi, one of the last strongholds to be taken over by the Tutsi Mwami that ruled Rwanda before it became a colony of Germany. When Rwanda gained its independence and government fell under the control of the small group of Hutu elite, some Hutu took out their anger on their Tutsi neighbors in Gisenyi. Some Tutsi were killed and others fled the country.
After the civil war in 1996, when people returned to Gisenyi, the village was not completely deserted. Some people, both Hutu and Tutsi had settled there and claimed squatter’s right to the land they occupied. Some of their land had been claimed by others. All the people in this negotiation knew each other before the genocide, except for the new perfect (governor) of the region who had been sent by the new government.
The students sought a workable solution for three issues:
- Ownership of the land: Who owns the land claimed by Bernadette, Ancille, and Fredrick?
- Cattle: Whose land should Fredrick graze his cattle?
- Decision making: Who should decide the answers to these two questions?
The six people in the role play (Bernadette, Ancille, Fredrick, Joseph, Charles and Perpetune) were entangled with land ownership and related issues. Negotiation began as a village meeting, which six people attended. Joseph, as the one who called the meeting, began as the meeting chairman. Charles had the opportunity to challenge Joseph’s right to chair the meeting, which would give the group a chance to decide together who the chairman would be.
This is a complicated and complex issue where answers to each problem are not clear. It is a real problem that exists in our world and because people cannot come up with workable solutions, we have and continue to lose many innocent lives.
The objectives of these exercises are:
- To give young students the necessary tools to work out interpersonal conflict in their everyday lives
- To introduce young students in an academic manner to areas and conflicts around the world which they may not be exposed to in middle school
- To instill ideas of "preventive diplomacy" and peacemaking at a young age, when they have the best chance to take root
- To prepare students for the increasingly globalized world of the 21st century
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