Summary for a process-oriented dialogue – 2023

Background

A  failure to pursue peaceful ways to resolve disagreement has led to escalated war activities and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. War continues to cost much human life, maiming and killing many thousands of civilians, destroying cities and villages, displacing numerous families with millions of Ukrainian refugees. As expected, the acts of military invasion bring forth a military resistance. And as usual, interest groups who benefit from arms production and selling continue to gain unprecedented profits at the same time as war is deepening and widening poverty among millions of people. War creates real threats to human security and international peace. It spirals arms race world over. It further deplete earth’s resources and obliterates our environment. 

Do people world over, particularly in Russia and Ukraine have a direct stake in stopping war activities and recovering a lasting peace and stopping the inevitable evils of war and violence.? If yes, the question is whether ordinary people can embark in any meaningful work for peace. When fire, bombs, killings, and animosities prevail, dominate, and escalate, is a useful and effective work for peace work possible? If yes, how? Those are questions that the Support Action for Peace and Development (SAPD) which is a Swedish-registered NGO wants to address in the format of a series of seminars with 15 activists from Russian and Ukraine as well as from neighbouring countries including Belarus and Sweden.  

Objective

The long-term aim is to strengthen SAPD:s possibility to engage in peace work especially in a time when war activities seem to be the only alternative to resolve conflicts. 

The direct aim is process-oriented and twofold. 

1. Macro aim. To elicit views on whether a useful and effectual peace work is possible to pursue. If that is possible, then what kind of work it should be, what is its aim, target group, methods, strengths, weaknesses, risks, windows of opportunities, and expected effects.  
2. Micro aim. To explore whether the methodology of dialogues among activists especially from countries in war in the formats of seminars and workshops is possible to pursue; whether it creates a meaningful way to develop a process of peace work that contributes to reducing the miseries of war and violence.
   

The activity and method

3 online seminars and workshops to be dialogically facilitated by SAPD. A few open-ended questions will be jointly developed and addressed. The facilitator together with the group will summarize the course of the dialogue for each 30 minutes. Each seminar will end by a 5-minutes summary and next steps to be agreed on by all participants. 

Where 

 Online Zoom Meetings. 

Outcomes

Opening a new door to raise the issue of peace and negotiation in the crisis between Ukraine and Russia was a perfect gesture between activists from both sides. Participants from both sides shared their vision of the conflict and ways to achieve peace between the two peoples.

 

The participants are coming up with a working paper that is discussing whether useful and effective peace work is possible to pursue. If that is possible, then what kind of work it should be, what is its aim, target group, methods, strengths, weaknesses, risks, windows of opportunities, and expected effects (Ongoing).

 

The most important outcome is also the consolidation of the method of effective dialogue as an effective methodology for discussing ways of peace between warring parties and between quarreling groups and peoples. All attendees acquired effective dialogue skills and how to manage sessions in which the discussion table sought peace as a primary goal.

 

The participants agreed on joint humanitarian actions to help the victims and those affected by the war. These joint humanitarian actions also aim to show that the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are united by strong common ties that should not be severed by the war machine.