“Peace activists tend to be sensitive to interacting with the military and police,” said 91����Ƶ professor , as she introduced the speakers. “We often define security in a different way, focused on ‘human security.’” But she believes the two sides can – and must − work together even in countries where the security forces are part of a repressive government.

“We’ve come a long way in civil society to move from protesting security policies to making policy proposals for how to better pursue human security,” said Schirch, who has been invited to speak at the Pentagon, the Army War College and West Point Military Academy. She noted that several Harrisonburg Police Department officers were guests at the luncheon.

A research professor at 91����Ƶ’s (CJP), Schirch is also director of human security at the , an international network of peacebuilding practitioners and scholars that promotes “sustainable peace and security.”

Schirch and many of the luncheon attendees are currently involved in the final phase of a three-year project: the creation of a master curriculum, including a handbook and training modules, to help security forces and civil society groups learn how to collaborate on human security, community engagement and security sector development. The project, supported by the , partners the Alliance for Peacebuilding with the and the at the University of Notre Dame.

Approximately 30 contributors travelled from 26 countries for the one-week “training of trainers” on the 91����Ƶ campus. The luncheon speakers, who were part of the training session, spoke about their experiences engaging with military and police.

Reforming police practices

Kamal Uddin Tipu started his career as a police officer in Pakistan, eventually rising to deputy inspector general in the city of Islamabad. He came to CJP as a Fulbright scholar in 2004 to earn a master’s degree.

At 91����Ƶ, Tipu focused on restorative justice as a better way to deal with crime, law-breakers and victims. He spoke fondly of his time on campus, his family’s experiences while living in Harrisonburg, and his internship with the police department in Rochester, New York. He returned to Pakistan to implement what he had learned, introducing reforms in local police practices.

In recent years, Tipu went to Africa as a police adviser to the African Union and United Nations. “I saw how we need to focus more on the root causes of conflict,” he said. “I also saw the enormous amounts of money that countries spend on the military.”

A ‘peace general’

Deng Giguiento, a longtime peacebuilding trainer and practitioner, counts two generals as her friends on the Philippine island of Mindanao. As training coordinator for the Peace and Reconciliation Program of , she often interacted with security officials on local situations of conflict.

When a German couple was abducted by anti-government insurgents, for example, she helped negotiate their release alongside an army general. The general had rejected military action, despite opposition from his officers. Afterwards, the general started a class for his officers. His textbook was “The Little Book of Conflict Transformation,” written by John Paul Lederach, founding director of CJP.

“When the general got stuck, he would call me and put me on speakerphone,” said Giguiento, who helped to establish the after attending SPI in 1997.

Moving from protest to proposals

Bernardo Arevalo de Leon, a former Guatemalan diplomat, talked about how his country is still trying to recover from a 33-year civil war between armed rebels and a repressive right-wing government. After 10 years of peace talks, the two sides signed a peace accord in 1996, but the country is struggling to implement reforms that were promised.

“The big task is to transform the way the government uses its security forces,” said de Leon, who was involved in the peace process. “We needed to think differently about the role of the police and the army.”

He also pointed out that civil society needed to move from protest to proposal to engage in the reform of the security sector.

De Leon is now based in Guatemala, where he is director of the Regional Office for Latin America for , a global peacebuilding nongovernmental organization based in Geneva.

The -sponsored workshops in July and August introduced the approaches used by 91����Ƶ’s for addressing trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and building individual and collective resilience, said STAR lead trainer .

Though the content was condensed and delivered in two- or three-day sessions, the workshops “affirm the power of the integrated STAR curriculum,” Barge said. “When you look at conflict and violence through a trauma lens, it gives people on the ground new perspective and new possibilities.”

Barge facilitated the August training in South Sudan’s capital city, Juba. She was joined by faculty member and two alumni of , (MA ’06) and (MA ’98), both from Kenya. Shiphrah Mutungi, a Ugandan alumnus of 91����Ƶ’s , also facilitated.

The introductory workshops, held in Nairobi in July, were led by Ruto and a 2005 CJP grad, of , with input from CJP administrator .

Having experienced violence . . .

Many of the participants had recently returned to South Sudan, after having fled with their families during a December 2013 attempted military coup and related ethnic violence. This upheaval displaced more than 1 million people. The men in the workshop – almost all were male Foreign Service Nationals – were from a range of professions, including drivers, guards, program managers, office staff, doctors and lawyers.

In the six months when they were displaced, many had similar experiences of “running, refugee camps, and deaths in the family,” one participant explained.

Many also came to the trainings preoccupied by strong feelings of anger and abandonment towards “others they felt had wronged them, such as the political system, the government and their employer,” said Ruto. “Most of them felt that the training would not be sufficient to resolve some of the unmet needs and grievances that had not yet been expressed.”

But after activities and small-group discussions that focused on the impacts of the conflict in their personal and professional lives, workshop participants began to see these events with a new perspective.

Seeing with a new perspective

“They realized that traumatic events are caused by multiple events, especially in a situation of war, and that the evacuation they were focused on might not have been the only traumatic event they were experiencing at the moment,” Ruto said.

One participant noted that learning about the cycles of violence “helps us understand how we keep hurting each other and why the violence/conflict hasn’t ended.”

“As participants learned about more tools and developed more of an understanding of the STAR principles, they became more hopeful about how they could use this training for themselves and their families,” Barge said.

Participants advocated for further exposure of trauma-resilience training beyond the “foreign service national” community served by the USAID-sponsored workshops.

More trainings wished for

“They do not want their children to experience 21-plus years of conflict and violence, and they see that this training could play a real peacebuilding role in the region,” Barge said. “It’s important that USAID supports the development of trauma-informed staff, but the positive reaction of the participants and their recommendations to get this training to more people in South Sudan challenges USAID and CJP to do more.”

Generations of South Sudanese have been affected by two civil wars lasting a total of nearly 40 years, encompassing 1955-1972 and 1983-2005. In 2005, a comprehensive peace agreement was signed. South Sudan voted for independence in January 2011 and was declared a sovereign nation six months later. Inter-ethnic warfare, a large refugee population, and internal unrest are among the young nation’s challenges.

In de-briefing sessions after the workshops, Barge said that (who recently left that role, but stays engaged with South Sudan issues) and other officials expressed optimism about the training. Discussion touched on the potential for longer and more extensive workshops for local and expatriate staffers, as well as STAR trainings for a trauma resource team and USAID employees.

Both Barge and Ruto return to South Sudan in October 2014 to lead follow-up workshops.